Interview: Mark Stevens
Interview: Mark Stevens
By Scott Bolohan
Mark Stevens, the author of five crime fiction books, leads off his baseball fiction writing with the story of Baltimore Orioles pitcher Frank Ryder. He throws harder than anyone. Ever. And he’s dominating the league. But when his teammates pressure him into retaliating for a beanball, his traumatic past comes back to haunt him, as in, he genuinely sees a ghost.
Featuring a mix of real and fictional characters and set in a world where pitching dominates and owners are meddling with the game (if you could imagine such a thing), The Fireballer is much more than a simple baseball story, diving into mental health, forgiveness, and redemption. It puts the game into perspective in a thought-provoking way, gripping you from the first chapter and taking you to unexpected places, a worthy successor in the lineage of great baseball literature.
We talked with Stevens about writing baseball fiction, the mentality of pitchers, and beanballs.
What was your path to writing The Fireballer?
I’ve written five other novels and a bunch of short stories, all crime fiction. I thought when I started writing that crime fiction would be something I could tackle because it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. I happen to love reading crime fiction, and as a writer, it gave me a structure. Even though I don’t necessarily plot my books, it made me feel like I could tackle it from a writing perspective. I always thought literary fiction novels were a challenge because of that lack of structure. I didn’t really understand how to move a character through a beginning, a middle, and an end.
I would never have come up with this idea. It was a friend who had the idea of the 110-mile-per-hour pitch and that the pitch would ruin the game. He actually said, “You should write a book about a pitcher who ruins the game of baseball.” He explained this concept that, at that speed, the game is existentially almost over because the batter has no time left to swing. We kicked that idea around for a while, maybe half an hour over lunch one day. And that night, just out of the blue, the second half of the book came to me. What if the same pitcher had a traumatic, emotionally devastating incident when he was in Little League? Once I had those two halves, it was a book that I had to write. I talked to my agent and he used to be the CFO for the New York Yankees minor league team in Staten Island. He had a lot of baseball experience, and he gave me ideas and insights on the story. It all lined up really nicely.
How was it different writing a baseball book than a crime book?
Oh, wow, a great question. It’s really hard to explain. it’s all putting words in order, trying to capture moments, and trying to be with your characters. But I guess with crime fiction, a lot of your brain power goes to trying to sort out the crime—who did it, the protagonist, the antagonist, trying to come up with the idea of the plot. I don’t want the plot to drive the story. I want the characters to drive the story. I don’t want the bones of the plot to show, I want that to be much more organic.
But with The Fireballer, I just got into this character, and it was completely character driven. I really did not know where this story was going when I started writing it. I had some rough images, some rough scenes, but it was freeing not to be concerned with who done it. That sounds really like a simple explanation, but I just needed to figure out how this guy was going to get to know himself better and get to a place where he could sort out this horrible, horrible thing that happened to him and come to grips with it. I had no idea how that was going to happen. I just thought if I lived with him and tried to crawl inside his brain I could let the writing process hand me the answer. And I think it did.
How did Frank as a character develop throughout the writing process?
Slowly. I think sometimes you get to know a character by the people you surround them with. I knew he’d be very alone. I tried to figure out how his parents would have handled it. If you are a parent and you have a son who accidentally kills another human being, you’re going to be super protective. I think that they’re smart, upper-middle-class, well-educated folks. They work in schools and they immediately wanted to protect him so they move out of state. I really focused on his family at first. I thought, what if he’s got this twin brother who’s a catcher and was the catcher on the day this thing happened, that would add some dynamics. I just grew it out from there.
I knew I would start with him being a pitcher in the big leagues. I wanted to pick up the action right away with the question of this existential challenge to the game already on the table. I knew he’d be in his early 20s, he would have been the number one draft pick, I figured he’d probably have a girlfriend. And we just sort of start building. I think, in the way he is interacting with people like his girlfriend, that first phone call when he’s on the road in Chicago, you just see a little bit lighter side of him because he’s got a lot in his head and he’s trying to hold himself so tightly together that he doesn’t show that emotion. He’s just kind of got a hard shell, even though he’s super polite. He’s super civilized, but he’s got so much bottled up.
You mentioned Rick Ankiel in the book. Did you research pitchers to model him after? Or the Carl Mays/Ray Chapman incident?
In my mind, I did a lot of research. It was great, fun, happy research to do to read all those baseball-related books. I did read The Phenomenon by Rick Ankiel, a fantastic book. Talk about a guy who spilled his guts all over the page in terms of just opening up about what he went through, to have that meltdown on national TV in a playoff game and go through years of fighting his way back through the mental and physical struggles. A lot of people don’t remember he did come back as an outfielder. His story was really an inspiration for me. And the Ray Chapman story, I looked into that, just an incredible moment, which, frankly, I believe could still happen again. I don’t think I’ve modeled Frank on any one particular player, but I’ll tell you what, I really admire athletes like Aaron Judge. I was just watching a spring training game now and he was out in the outfield, mic’d up and being interviewed by the broadcasters. There’s a lot of value in being a polite, conversational athlete. You don’t have to be a jerk. You can be engaging and speak in complete sentences and be thoughtful. He was just talking about his dachshunds and his pets and stuff like that.
Were you writing specifically for a baseball audience?
My agent, the minute I ran this idea by him, said, “You can write that book, but it better not be only about baseball.” He was emphatic. He’s a sharp guy and he knows the market well. So that puts the pressure back on me to figure out what it really is about. One thing you know as a writer is that most readers are women. It’s just a fact. If I tried to just keep it all within baseball, the audience would have been much narrower. I can’t really think about who I’m writing it for when I’m writing it. I guess I was writing it for myself to see where it went. I did know that at some point, it blossomed from baseball into something else, which happened to be grief, mental health, and depression. I don’t try to hit those on the head with a hammer in the book, I just try to let the story relay those issues.
I always try to tell writers the best stories aren’t really about baseball—it’s a component—but it’s not the whole story.
I just reread The Natural last summer. The Natural is so much not about the actual on-the-field baseball. It’s just got a ton of guys behind the scenes talking about money. If you think the book is the movie, you’re dead wrong.
I have a feeling we are going to see people like Frank Ryder probably approaching 110 before too long. And I don’t know what’s going to happen at that point.
I would submit that even at 105, when you watch a batter, trying to get to a pitch that’s coming 105—even 100—is just ridiculous. If you had a few pitchers on every team throwing 105, you would have the same problem you’ve had got before with very little offense. It’s just insane to think about standing at the plate trying to imagine your athletic brain calculating whether you’re going to swing, how you’re going to swing, where you’re going to swing. It’s ridiculous. That’s point three seconds at 105. You know, 10-15 years ago, they would have said 105 is impossible. Now people touch it on a regular basis. Ben Joyce is coming up and you’ve got Hunter Greene in Cincinnati who’s regularly throwing 102, 103. Aroldis Chapman is way down from what he used to throw, but he was regularly right there. Jordan Hicks with St. Louis Cardinals was doing 104, 105. There’s actually a clip online of him throwing 105 and the shot cuts over to the dugout. His teammates on the edge of the dugout are laughing because they know it’s ridiculous to think about facing that heat.
I wanted to talk about beanballs. My brother broke his elbow being hit by a pitch. It happens. The beanball plot is such an interesting twist, something we don’t talk about with increased velocity. I’m curious about where this came from.
It came specifically after Ronald Acuna Jr. got hit by José Ureña. It was so barbaric. It’s the only word for it in my mind. You are talking about a bullet. It’s one thing to take a soft 70-mile-per-hour curveball off your rear end but this was a fastball that everybody knew was coming. Do you remember why? Because he had a hot start to the year. He was this incredible rookie and it was late April. He got hit because you don’t start that hot. That’s crazy. The batter can’t walk out to the mound and take a swing at your knees with a bat. That’s the same exact to me.
This is assault outside of the ballpark.
I’m going to give credit to the Baseball Tonight podcast. Buster Olney was talking about it for a long time after that happened. He is a real advocate of doing something to change the rules. They just had this landslide of rule changes and they easily could have dealt with this. Everybody knows when you’re throwing at someone and when you’re not. Umps know, the fans know, the managers know, teammates know, the batter knows. It’s pretty easy to spot an accidental hit by pitch, and it definitely happens. But to take this weapon and try to physically hurt somebody with it? You could end a career. I grew up outside Boston and I remember when Tony Conigliaro got hit and there’s no reason now that hit by pitch couldn’t end a career.
How did you get into the head of Frank Ryder and have him go through these emotions and experiences?
Bob Tewkesbury did a great book on the mental aspect of the game. I mentioned Tewkesbury in the novel because that book was really, really powerful. There’s a great biography of Sandy Koufax by Jane Leavy. I love Koufax and his story. It’s clear that when you read a bunch of baseball-related books, the mental aspect of the game is just so huge. Keeping that concentration going and not letting a little blip get you down over the course of a game, their minds are just so in tune with what they’re doing. And their body rises up to what their head is asking it to do. It’s just incredible to watch these guys do it. So the more I read, you just pick up lines and mantras they say to themselves, or the routines they go through to make sure that they’re staying on top of their game.
Would you write another baseball book?
I’m actually writing a book set in the world of rock and roll right now. I don’t think Frank is open to another chapter. Some people are disappointed when I say that, but I don’t really see where that would go. But I’m totally open to writing another baseball book.
Mark Stevens is the author of The Fireballer. You can buy the book here.
Scott Bolohan is the founder of The Twin Bill.
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