Customer Reviews

Screwball: A Novel

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A solid debut for former reporter David Ferrell, who recently left the L.A. Times to pursue a career as a novelist full-time. When his next novel comes out it'll definitely be on my "must read" list.

In Screwbell, Mr. Ferrell uses a flowing writing style and a formidable knowledge of baseball to take a dark, humorous, insightful look at what the sport has become. The zany baseball world brought to life by Ferrell's prose begins with rookie phenon Ron Kane, whose blazing fastball has given the sad sack Boston Red Sox a chance to win a World Series.

"Kane emerged from the showers, his red hair hanging in wet arcs on his forehead. His freckled torso rose up from gray boxer shorts like a genie from a lamp, a V-shaped fuselage of sinew and steel, lean but hard."

Ferrell uses Kane's twisted off-field activities to construct a world where every ball player has a laughable quirk and the Red Sox management will go to any lengths to achieve a World Series championship.

The writing shines.

David Witty

Taiwan

Red Sox fans, and fans of any team that has consistently failed to win The Big One, will identify with the emotional and ethical dilemma in this black-humored novel about the lengths to which Red Sox management will go to protect their players so they can win the World Series. It's late in the season, and it looks as if this will finally be the Big Year, the year in which the Red Sox will overcome the Curse of the Bambino and bring home a World Series championship--if they can only keep the world from discovering that one of their players has a few unusual problems with his control--he is a serial murderer! Desperate to win, the front office is willing to rationalize and cover up even multiple murders ("Those murders, they're over and done with. Nothing we can do to change that") to end the agony of watching the team go down to defeat yet again.

Ferrell writes a fast-paced baseball thriller filled with absurdities and told from a wryly casual point of view. In the opening pages, Ferrell offers a few red herrings about who the murderer might be from the large collection of dysfunctional players on the team, but the suspense disappears almost immediately as the killer is identified in the first third of the book. This is not a novel in which characters are individualized or undergo any major epiphanies. We know only a few characteristics about each one, and we don't identify with manager "Fish" Sharkey as much as we empathize with the frustration he's experienced--the same frustration fans have experienced with all the Red Sox "almost" teams over the years. The action and the murders both proceed in relatively straightforward and uncomplicated fashion, and as the bloody season progresses, management never seriously questions whether there are any values more important than winning.

The author is clearly a Red Sox fan of long duration who recognizes the symptoms of Boston's communal frustration and understands the lengths to which some rabid fans and supporters might be willing to go for the first World Series victory since 1918. He pokes good-humored fun at management, the press, agents, players, and desperate fans, and his clear inclusion of himself among the fans makes the book less a hard-edged satire than an amusing meditation on "what if." Screwball will probably not win any prizes for its mystery or its complexity, but in its depiction of the excitement of baseball and the lure of October's biggest baseball prize, it is a delightful way to spend a warm summer afternoon--if one can't get out to the ballpark. 3 stars for mystery and style, 4 stars for fun. Mary Whipple

SCREWBALL is based on an intriguing situation: The general manager of the Boston Red Sox, suffering from the Curse of the Babe, is confronted by a video showing Ron Kane, his superstar pitcher (who may be the greatest who ever lived) disposing of a decapitated body.
From there the focus moves to the general manager, Neville Wulfmeyer, and the niece of the owner of the BoSox who are being blackmailed by the sender of the video.
This is where the book begins to go haywire. Wulfmeyer has no scruples. At one point he suggests they kill someone else to throw the police off the trail. In another instance, he kidnaps the manager's wife to avoid paying a bonus.
Certainly hyperbole is a tried and true method in satire, but Ferrell has about as much subtlety as a gangsta rapper. Kane throws the baseball 111 mph on a consistent basis. Every single member of the Red Sox is a ding-a-ling. One of them tosses a teargas cannister into a carload full of nuns. Another holds up a liquor store. About the only stabilizing influence is the manager, Augie "Big Fish" Sharkey. He's developing a king-sized ulcer, guzzling Pepto Bismol like water, but he tries to do the right thing, investigating the murders on his own. Ferrell does him an injustice in the end with a completely unrealistic resolution, the implication of which would destroy Major League Baseball if it were true.
Something else that bothered me throughout the book was an Honus Wagner snuff can Sharkey carries as a good luck piece (until it's stolen). One of the reasons Wagner's baseball cards are worth over a half million a piece is because he objected to his image being used to sell tobacco to children, a hypocritical stand to take if he actually chewed the stuff (which I doubt).

In attempting to write the Great American baseball novel, David Ferrell starts out with two strikes against him.

For one thing, he's a journalist - worse yet, a sports journalist. That means that he talks more and knows less about the world - especially the world of sports - than anyone else.

As if that weren't bad enough, he writes for the Los Angeles Times, the worst newspaper in the country. Actually, it's tied with about 1500 other newspapers for that honor.

And there are holes in this story. Some of them are fairly minor. I've only been a baseball fan for about 35 years or so, but I was under the impression that if first base is empty and a batter is hit by a pitch, the ball is dead and the runner on second base doesn't go to third.

David Ferrell sees other things that I haven't seen in my 35 years of following the game. He sees a professional sport dominated by career criminals and anti-social elements. He might be confusing baseball with boxing. Baseball does have its share of ne'er-do-wells, and if self-centeredness was a capital crime, the feds would have used the Organized Crime and Racketeering Act to shut down the game long ago. But it's hardly populated by prison inmates.

To be honest, his book is at least partially meant as a satire, and it may be that Ferrell meant to satirize the occasional baseball felon by creating a world filled with them. Ferrell himself may not be sure whether he meant to write a serious work or a dark comedy. The team in this novel, the Boston Red Sox, of course, is genuine baseball team, and the Sox's opponents are genuine baseball teams. The names of players on the Sox and their opponents are a mixture of fact and fiction.

But I doubt that we're supposed to take seriously a parent corporation known as "Amalgamated Ball Cocks, the world's largest producer of toilet valves, floats and rubberized accessories".

The premise in this book is simple: Despite several very close calls, the Boston Red Sox have not won a World Series in the memory of any living person and are widely regarded as a team cursed by destiny with the inability to ever win one. Giants fans can relate to this frustration very well, but then again so can Cubs fans, White Sox fans, Indians fans, etc.

In the book, the Red Sox have put together a team that, in spite of a complete absence of chemistry (the 1919 White Sox were a fraternal brotherhood, by comparison), has the chance to win the gold ring and end that curse - but a rash of serial murders connected with the team threatens to blow away their championship dreams.

This story is largely about a corrupt front office that seeks to obstruct and even mislead justice in order to win a baseball championship, but I found the notion interesting as a personal challenge, rather than as an attack on corporate malfeasance. The book made me look into my soul to find out how far I would go to bring the Giants a world championship if such a thing were possible on planet Earth and if I had such power. I was startled by what I found.

"Screwball" is an attack on a baseball world that doesn't really exist, in spite of the kudos given on the back cover by would-be renegades such as Jim Bouton. Ferrell imagines an ultra-competitive world of sports where winning is everything and subsumes all considerations, moral and otherwise.

But anyone who really believes this has never witnessed any of the numerous occasions where an overpriced superstar received considerably more playing time than a minimum-wage youngster with superior ability. Baseball history is also replete with occasions where management tried to force a successful player with an unorthodox style into conforming with a textbook form that didn't suit him.

And there was a time when major league owners, spending ungodly sums of money on "name" players, were insanely trying to appear penny-wise by reducing their rosters from 25 to 24 - often depriving themselves of talented low-cost substitutes who can often make a difference in a close pennant race.

Winning ISN'T necessarily a priority in baseball; it often takes a back seat to other factors such as egotism, corporate arrogance, budgetary constraints (real and contrived), and, of course, political correctness. Ferrell is wrong to distort and oversimplify the picture by suggesting otherwise.

He should know better because journalists like him, who never would have dared to physically confront John Rocker, an immensely talented pitcher, destroyed Rocker's career for a few intemperate and politically-incorrect public remarks of the nature that most people would chuckle at in private - and perhaps even echo.

The idea that a talented baseball player could be protected from accountability for serial murder - when his livelihood can be endangered for complaining about spiked hair on New York subways - is sheer whimsy.

But for all of its faults, "Screwball" is a very readable story, with a rip-roaring climax that will provide more than enough thrills for any baseball fan or crime novel aficionado.

And Ferrell also gets grand-slam credit for his creation of the awesome and surrealistic Ron Kane: a 110 mile-per hour fastball (!!!!) packed into six feet four inches of impervious and supremely masculine athleticism and ultra-charismatic menace: a combination of Richard III, The Major (from Stephen King's "The Long Walk"), and Sidd Finch.

I worship every foot of ground that Ron Kane walks on and pray that a merciful God will breathe life into David Ferrell's fictitious character and bring him to the Giants. I pray that a vengeful God will clone him, and put one in every neighborhood where a journalist resides. Where ANY pompous authority figure resides.

To borrow again from Stephen King - this time from "Cain Rose Up" - eat the world, Ron Kane! You gulp that sucker right down!

Let me just say, that for at least the first half of the book, I thought this was going to be one of the better sports fiction books I had ever read, but then it started going downhill at the end. The story was set up magnificently, but there were just a few things I didn't get. During the middle of the book I thought it may have been a mystery, turns out it wasn't. Then I thought we'd find a reason for everything at the end, but instead, it just kind of ended. Don't get my wrong, I enjoyed it, but I stayed up late one night to get to the end, and felt like I stayed up for no reason. (I tried not to give any real spoilers, that's why I was so general with my comments.)

David Ferrell hits a home run with Screwball. It is a fast paced 'tour de farce' in the Carl Hiassen genre. We follow the Boston Red Sox through an improbable season and watch as their management struggle to balance winning with murder and deception. Screwball also provides insight into the insanity of the demands of today's players and their agents. It is a laugh-out-loud gem, and perfect summer read. I highly recommend this book, and look forward to future efforts from this author.

Wow. I'm not even a baseball fan, but I was glued to this book. Very entertaining and unpredictable. The book came recommended to me and I thought "how can a book about baseball and murder be funny?" Well, Ferrell pulls it off. You'll laugh, be shocked, and feel like you're right there with the team. Ferrell raises moral questions such as how far we'll go when we want something bad enough. I found myself sympathizing with the team managers who have a very bad situation on their hands, but maybe not the best judgment. Good entertainment.

Who knew serial murder could be laugh out loud funny? Ferrell has captured the desperation of Red Sox Nation in this sharp satire.

A phenomanal rookie pitcher, who can hit like hell and play a mean right field, might just be what will push the also-ran Red Sox into the Championship, but ritualized murder follows the team like a rabid fan. The ownership, the management, the cops, everyone seems to be in on keeping what might be the ugliest secret ever in baseball to allow the Sox to reach the World Series and maybe even win it for a change.

Suspense, not mystery, is what this book is, but the red herrings were too easily tossed aside and potential red herrings fizzled out as well. Ferrell manages to keep things mixed up enough to be a set-up guy, though not a starter or closer. Still, it was an entertaining book that kept me turning the pages because, like in baseball, anything could happen, and frequently enough did.

So much of today's sports are based on economics. The team that can afford the expensive players can dominate. Hence, in baseball the Yankees with a 130 million dollar salary should and usually do crush a team such as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays with their paltry 30 million dollar salary. They really shouldn't even be in the same league. It is actually quite ludicrous. David Ferrell, in his debut novel, SCREWBALL notes how vital dollars and cents are to the business of baseball and reveals just how crazy this has become in this biting satire.
The greatest baseball player of all time, Ron Kane, a rookie pitcher who could also field and hit, is acquired by the Boston Red Sox. He is a problem difficult to control causing much heartburn to manager Augie Sharkey. The team is capable of making it to the series but the players must remain under some kind of control. Devisive elements on the team are causing chaos. To top it off, in every city the Red Sox are visiting, men are being killed-- their heads cut off and cuts made in the scalp in an unusual pattern- actually like the seams of a baseball. Is it a fan? Not according to a videotape the owners are sent. It appears to be a player and an important one at that. The owners must pay a ransom to prevent the tape from getting into the hands of the law. The owners placing victory over everything else decide to cover up the tape and the murders. The question is- can they stop the killings?
SCREWBALL is a searing indictment of the state of economy driven sports. The story is, at times, over the top. However, it is also very very funny. Characters are in many ways caricatures, yet, they are quite a charming crew. There is little in the way of suspense or surprise except to see whether the Red Sox can break their curse of not winning a World Series. A problem with the book is the inability of the author to keep the plot concise. There is a bit too much rambling and repetition. However, SCREWBALL is a very well done debut and worthy of a reader's attention especially if a fan of baseball.

The novel "Screwball" scores big points with me. The bases are loaded with coddled spoiled-sports whose sense of right and wrong is fuzzy as a Little Leaguer's shaved head. The writer's premise sets new standards for superhero badness: the Red Sox are winning...and just might keep winning, lifting the curse of the Bambino...if they can just downplay the fact that their phenom rookie pitcher Ron Kane also happens to be a serial killer. Think of the misbehaving high-profile athletes these days, and you'll find "Screwball" right on the mark. The characters are memorable, the dialogue zippy, and descriptions out of this world original and funny!!!! It's theater of the absurd in the tradition of Moliere. This book will warm-up family chats at the dinner table--the ethical & moral questions the writer raises make for excellent gnawing. Leave a copy around for your teenage kidsthe book cover will lure them in for a closer look. I absolutely loved it-a home run!