My name is Bob Weintraub, and I've been a life-long fan of the Boston Red Sox. That comes, of course, from having grown up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, just eight miles from our famous Fenway Park. I played baseball (but not too well) at Brandeis University, and followed up those college years with two years in the Army. We were not at war with anyone at that time, and being stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, gave me the opportunity to spend time in most of the European countries.
When my tour of duty ended, I returned to Boston, enrolled at Boston University School of Law, traded my "Playboys" and assorted other priceless peacetime "literature" for the books I'd need and studied law for three years. When graduation came, I decided that labor relations was my favorite subject. Starting in Washington, D.C., I practiced for about six years there and in San Francisco before returning to Boston.
When it was time to "get a life," and find a new career (or at the very least volunteer for something interesting), I chose to try my hand at fiction writing. I knew, from my years of legal practice, that I could write well and that I was proficient in both grammar and spelling. So off I went. My first short story was about Irving, a man who had survived a pogrom in Russia years earlier, and had promised God at the time that he would devote his life to prayer and being a moral and ethical person if he wasn't killed in the attacks. Irving did survive and kept his promise. The problem begins, however, when he is admitted, reluctantly (at the urging of his four children) to a Massachusetts nursing home and feels that it's incumbent upon him to persuade the other residents of the Home to live their lives as he was living his. Irving is loved by most of his fellow residents, but even love can go so far.
In any event, this first story was accepted by a distinguished literary magazine in North Carolina called "The Sun," and my wife agreed that I must have some talent in that direction. I wrote several other stories about Irving, introducing his deceased wife and his children, combining the fictional life I had created for him with some hard facts (always disguised) I could pass along about his real life and his relationships with his neighbors and friends. Eventually. I realized that I could write a book about a widower whose four children decide that he can no longer live in Florida by himself, but should be in a nursing home closer to them, and that Irving would be but one of the main characters in the book.
The story was written in epistolary form, meaning that the action is related by means of letters written by and between the book's characters. Harry Greenfield became the main character who, realizing he would never be leaving the nursing home, reveals the passions that drive him and the turning points of his life in the letters he writes to family, friends and the world at large. The things he omits, no doubt out of guilt, we learn from the conversations that take place among his four children and others who are dear to him. In time, the personal histories of other residents of the Home -- including Vilna, a man whose tragic life has frozen his face so that he will never laugh again; George Murphy, a former Catholic priest who teaches Harry that strict religious observance means little if it drives a family apart; and Irving, never relenting in seeking others who will honor God as he does -- push Harry to try and resolve the long-standing hostilities within his own family before it's too late.
It also allowed me to try and let Harry (my Dad) understand my own feelings about things he had done to me as a boy, things I could insert in a novel but could not discuss with him at his bedside. The book, called "Best Wishes, Harry Greenfield," was published in 2002. My father, who had all his marbles at the time, read the book and complimented me on it, but didn't discuss any of the issues I must have raised for him. He passed away about six months after the book was published.
PAINTING THE CORNERS
The first fictional baseball short story I wrote was "The Autograph." It gave me the opportunity to feature an event in Fenway Park that I had witnessed as an eleven or twelve-year-old Red Sox fan, and to find a way, years later, to put a twist on the story that changes the mood of what preceded it. The story was published by "Spitball" magazine in 1995 and led me to believe that I could create a significant number of baseball stories if I put my mind to it. Every so often I did just that, and the stories began to accumulate. Some had their roots in a particular baseball fact that may have come to light, others finding me totally "out of the blue," and still others from my imagining that I was totally in charge of a department within the ballpark.
When the number of stories surpassed ten, I realized that I would most certainly be making an effort to have some of them published in book form. At that point in time, I wrote to a number of baseball writers, asking them if they would be willing to submit a blurb for the book if they read the stories and liked them. I was happily surprised when a number of them agreed to the terms and told me to send the stories along. But still I was surprised at the lavish praise given to the stories by some of our most distinguished baseball writers. As you will see, for example, W.P. Kinsella, author of "Shoeless Joe," from which the movie "Field of Dreams" was made, wrote in his blurb that "Weintraub has executed a triple play: savvy baseball writing, unforgettable characters and a home run ending for each tale."
As the publication date this November for "Painting the Corners" draws closer, you'll be able to read the blurbs offered by others, including Dan Shaughnessy, a columnist for the Boston Globe and author of The Curse of the Bambino; Michael Coffey, author of; 27 Men Out: Baseball's Perfect Games; LeighMontville, author of The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth; and a front cover blurb from Ed Asner, "actor and baseball fan.
PAINTING THE CORNERS AGAIN
More good news is the fact that I have now finished and accumulated a number of new short stories, fourteen in all, stories that you have never read anywhere else, that will introduce you to baseball relationships of different kinds and that will be published in February, 2015, under the title, "Painting the Corners Again." And I guarantee you: You'll Love the Twists these stories take!
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