The Lord of the Infield Flies
The Lord of the
Infield Flies
Title:
THE LORD OF THE INFIELD FLIES
Author: Steve Reilly
Publisher: Strong Books
Pages: 126
Genre: Sports Memoir
The Lord of the
Infield Flies will thrill readers with
Coach Steve Reilly’s harrowing, challenging, and adventuresome baseball team’s trek from Connecticut to play in Maine . As a prequel to his award winning
memoir, The Fat Lady Never Sings,
Reilly, a high school baseball coach, narrates the true story from the
beginning of his coaching career at the age of 20. In summer 1977, Reilly plans
to take his high-school-age team on a weekend trip to the baseball mecca on Cape Cod to play a Massachusetts
all-star team. When plans go awry, he jumps at an offer to take the players
instead to the serene surroundings of southern Maine to play that state’s all-star team.
Most of the team’s starters decline; their hearts had been set on “The Cape.”
Determined to go through with his commitment, Reilly gathers ten players to
make the four-hour trip in a cabin truck and his car on a Friday night. Will
the team arrive in time to battle Maine ’s
best the following morning?
After his legal alcohol-age players convince him to stop at
a package store on the way to buy just a “few beers” for the idyllic cabin they
will be staying at in the resort area of Old Orchard Beach, they exit the
package store with hand trucks filled with cases of beer. Chaos reigns. The
cabin truck with its inebriated players gets separated from Reilly’s vehicle,
losing half the team traveling in the opposite direction in Massachusetts ! Will the team ever get to Maine ? Will the team
play Maine ’s
all-stars? And, will the players make it back to Connecticut ?
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THE PEARL WHITE DOOR opened before me. A gaunt man wearing a
gray pin-striped suit and goatee held the door open with his left hand and
gestured with his right hand for me to enter. As I passed through the door,
nervousness came over me. The strong scent of roses reminded me where I was. A
pedestal sign directed me to go left. After an elderly couple crossed my path
with their heads down, another pedestal sign directed me to the right down a
narrow hallway. To my surprise, the hallway was empty. At the end of the
hallway stood a wooden pedestal with a gold banker’s lamp lit above an open
book. I grasped the pen from the slot carved in the pedestal and signed the
book like a schoolboy as I made sure my penmanship was within the lines. I
picked up a small card from a slot in back of the pedestal and put it in the
pocket of my dress shirt; there would be plenty of time to read the poem later.
With no one in front of me, I stood alongside the doorway as if waiting for
permission to enter, but none was needed. As I stood in the doorway about to
enter the quiet room, I thought about the summer of 1977 and my Senior Babe
Ruth baseball team’s trip to Maine
the last weekend of July.
Since 1976, Steve
Reilly, a practicing attorney, has coached high school baseball in Connecticut ’s Lower Naugatuck
Valley . He has spent the
last thirty years assisting other high school coaches and is currently in his
seventeenth season at Seymour High. Reilly and his wife, Suzanne, live in Seymour , Connecticut .
His latest book is the sports memoir, The
Lord of the Infield Flies.
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