Life is a Curveball

What began as a baseball book turned into something else again.

When eight boxes of Waite “Schoolboy” Hoyt’s files arrived on my front porch some five years ago, I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t fathom how I might turn his papers into a book. I certainly could not have predicted what would unfold over the next half-decade, especially since last April 1st, when the book was released.

I definitely developed a whole new appreciation of the power of books, in particular their ability to touch and connect people in surprising, and maybe even supernatural, ways. 

An early hint that this project had magic arrived the night I received a surprise voicemail message from Bob Costas. Yes, the Bob Costas. Or, as I said to my wife Beth at the time: “Bob f***ing Costas!” I had sent Bob a letter asking if he’d write a jacket blurb, and he ended up penning three paragraphs, which became the book’s foreword. 

The miracles continued when Chris “Mad Dog” Russo gave me a half hour on his Sirius XM show. This likely explains why “Schoolboy” briefly became the #1 new baseball book on Amazon. I’ll bet “Charlie Hustle” did not see that one coming! :)

When my publicity campaign took me to Cincinnati, where Waite had been the voice of the Reds for 24 years, the wizardry assumed an otherworldly hue. The morning after visiting Waite’s grave at the Spring Grove Cemetery, I woke up to find a penny stuck to my ankle. I peeled it off and froze when I saw the date: 1984. The year Waite died! I like to think it was a penny from heaven, Waite’s ethereal way of letting me know he approved.

“Schoolboy” received its fair share of newspaper, radio, television, podcast and blog attention. By far, the greatest honor was the invitation to a sit-down interview at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. This turned out to be a moment when baseball, books and life converged in a most unexpected way. 

A dark phase of Waite Hoyt’s life came after he and his first wife Dorothy divorced; he did not see her or their two children for 40 years. Forty years! Nobody in the family knows exactly why and Waite is no longer available for comment. 

Understandably, this astonishing lapse was cause for raw feelings within the disparate Hoyt family. Incredibly, “Schoolboy” all but erased any lingering discontent and some 24 family members decided that my Hall of Fame appearance was as good a reason as any for them to have a reunion. And that’s exactly what happened. We had a fabulous party in Cooperstown.  

When I set about corralling those eight boxes of Waite Hoyt’s papers, I thought I was just working on a book about a baseball player. Over time, I came to appreciate that Waite Hoyt’s story was more about life as he found it, and his struggles to make sense of it. 

What I never saw coming was that this book could – and would – help bring his family back together.