AFL
Paul
Hemphill is an author from Birmingham, Alabama, who has
written books focusing on both the the south and on baseball
(The Nashville Sounds, The Heart of the Game: The Education of
a Minor League Ballplayer, among others). Hemphill’s first novel,
Long Gone, is raunchy, and kind of low brow, befitting the characters
in the book, but it is also a fun look at life in the deep south
in the fifties and life in the Alabama-Florida League. Being no
book reviewer, I’ll let the jacket’s liner notes tell you more:
This
raunchy Novel with a heart of gold is about love and loss of innocence
at the bottom of the most minor league in baseball – The Alabama-Florida
League, Class D, in the summer of 1956. Specifically, it
is the story of Cecil B. « Stud » Cantrel, a 39 year old
maverick sour with promise gone bad, once a rising star with the
Yankees and now, with shrapnel in one knee and a failing marriage
behind him, the hard-drinking, womanizing player-manager for the
Graceville Oilers: a man, and a team, in last place, literally
and figuratively. But then Stud’s path crosses
that of Jamie Weeks, a teenage second baseman who hitches from
Birmingham into Graceville with nothing but his bat, his glove,
and his spikes, his hopes and dreams, and a prepared speech.
More important, Stud meets a determined young woman with the improbable
name of Dixie Lee Box who refuses to be relegated to the status
of Saturday-night recreation and who surprises Stud – and the
rest of us – by making him fall in love with her. The disgraceful
Oilers – partly through the efforts of Joe Louis (Jose) Brown,
a black catcher masquerading as a Venezuelan to avoid retaliation
by the Ku Klux Klan – begin, amazingly, to climb out of the cellar.
The owner of the Oilers, the Reverend Q. Talmadge Ramey – a homosexual
sometime used-car dealer, fertilizer czar, moonshine entrepreneur,
and evangelist DJ for station WGOD in Graceville – even stops
threatening to cancel Stud’s contract. Suddenly it appears that
Stud has a chance at a kind of innocence and promise again, until
men and events conspire to show him that even this last chance
is long gone.
Long
Gone is long out of print, but you can get a hardbound copy for
a fair price ($10-$30) at
the
ABEBOOK Advanced
Book Exchange search facility. At the site, enter the search
for either Long Gone, or Paul Hemphill. A listing of bookstores
with copies will be returned along with the price the store is
going to charge. Complete the info and an email is sent
to the store. They will contact you back with purchasing
information. I’ve bought many hard to find books here and
highly recommend the site!
The Last
Rebel Yell by Ken Brooks
is a wonderful book about the Alabama-Florida League (it excludes
the Alabama State League years) that is a must for anyone interested
in Class D baseball. This book is filled with anecdotes,
photos, player profiles, interviews, and stats. The focus
here is on Panama City, but there’s lots of coverage of the rest
of the league too. This book is the only one currently to
profile the AFL. The Last Rebel Yell is long out of print, but
you can somtimes get a copy for a fair price ($10-$30) at the
ABEBOOK Advanced Book Exchange search facility.
At the site, enter the search for either Last Rebel Yell or Ken
Brooks, but be aware that there is a civil war book by the same
title. A listing of bookstores with copies will be returned
along with the price the store is going to charge. Complete
the info and an email is sent to the store. They will contact
you back with purchasing information. I’ve bought many hard
to find books here and highly recommend the site!