Havana Heat

May 1, 2000
Brock (If I Never Get Back) is one of the finest baseball fiction writers around, lucidly rendering the passions, disappointments and excitement of the sport while capturing the defining details of the era he depicts. In this book it's 1911 and Luther "Dummy" Taylor, one of the first deaf-mute players in the major leagues, has been relegated to the minors, his career seemingly finished. But he hopes for another chance with John McGraw's New York Giants, for whom he pitched 115 winning games between 1900 and 1908. After training hard, Taylor approaches McGraw for a tryout. Short of pitchers for a postseason exhibition tour of Cuba, McGraw adds Taylor to the roster. It feels like old times to Taylor when he reunites with some old buddies on the Giants team, with whom he shares several off-the-mound adventures. While his pitching is not top-notch, McGraw assigns him to scout a couple of promising Cuban players. One of the Cubans, Luis, is a deaf pitcher whose arm rivals that of the great Christy Mathewson. Taylor and a friend coach a team of Cuban hopefuls, preparing them to face the Giants in a high-stakes exhibition game in which the young phenom Luis will be pitching. Wisely, Brock doesn't narrow his focus to the outcome of the crucial confrontation, but instead illuminates myriad issues. The embattled Taylor resolves some conflicts in his personal life, feels empathy and responsibility for Luis's drive and learns about the political and social realities of Cuba, in the end realizing that his true calling may be to coach. Brock's re-creation of the John McGraw era in all its rough and tumble vestiges and period details is vivid and believable. Agent, Laurie Harper. (Apr.) FYI: Castro's Curveball, by Tim Wendel, published by Ballantine in 1999, is another baseball novel set in Cuba.