In Susan Petrone’s book Throw Like a Woman, a 40-year-old becomes the first woman to play Major League Baseball, here in Cleveland, an unlikely scenario, but Petrone makes it totally believable. I’m waiting for a real woman to throw 95-mile-an-hour pitches and make real history. And NBC Sports columnist Joe Posnanski is right: “You can hear the pop of the ball hitting the catcher’s mitt.”
Susan blogs about the Cleveland Indians at itspronouncedlajaway.com and has worked at the Baseball Heritage Museum. She knows baseball, which makes her book Throw Like a Woman come alive on the page. Her descriptions of how the media handles players and what it’s like in the locker room also ring true.
Brenda Haversham, the main character in the book, is angry and disappointed with her ex-husband—that negative energy fuels her performance. When she’s playing with her sons before being discovered (starting with a fantastic pitch during a Little League outing at Progressive Field), her boys are pretty impressed.
What they don’t know is she’s picturing ex-husband’s face and her flash of anger becomes “thin golden lines running from her right hand straight to the mitt like a tunnel. All she had to do was throw the damn four-seamer as hard as she could down the tunnel and into the mitt.” She heard a thwump and an almost simultaneous, ‘Holy shit!” Like any mother with sons for whom she makes sacrifices and gives her all, she embarrasses them; the oldest is almost antagonistic about her playing. She’s angry about her powerlessness.
Interesting, huh?
The book is a good read. The pace picks up as the protagonist lands a MLB contract, gathers endorsements, flirts with romance, and finds a little forgiveness. Any woman can relate to how difficult it is to hang on to a job and raise two sons on her own with little help from a partying hands-off father, but any man can appreciate Susan’s knowledge of what it means to play baseball and the spunkiness of a woman willing to go for it. The book was hugely inspiring.
Kudos to Susan. May she sell lots of books during Cleveland Indians baseball season.
You’ll want to meet Susan on 4/25 from 10AM-3PM at the Don Umerly Civic Center Auditorium, 21016 Hilliard Boulevard, Rocky River, Ohio, where the Rocky River Library is hosting a local writing event (http://www.rrpl.org/) and get an autographed copy of Throw Like a Woman. A week later, 5/1 8AM through 5/2 5PM, celebrate the 124th anniversary of League Park with the Baseball Heritage Museum, 6100 Lexington Avenue, Cleveland.
Long-time Cool Cleveland Contributor Claudia Taller’s novel Daffodils and Fireflies is now available through Amazon. She is also the author of Ohio’s Lake Erie Wineries and the soon-to-be released Ohio’s Canal Country Wineries, as well as a spiritual memoir called 30 Perfect Days, Finding Abundance in Ordinary Life. Find her at http://claudiajtaller.com.