Brad Smith is joining us today to talk about his novel, Billy Crawford’s Double Play. Here’s the publisher’s description:
Everything is legal – if you can get away with it.
Billy Crawford is a hero. The star of the Rose City Rounders, the baseball player has been thrilling fans of the city for years. But Billy’s not as young as he used to be and his tendency to play hard is catching up with him. A string of losses for the Rounders puts his position at risk as the team’s owner, local developer Carroll Miller, doesn’t like being associated with anything that loses. Miller’s thinking of making changes, and not just at the team. When he decides to enter politics Billy suddenly finds himself facing an offer he can’t refuse.
In this wise-cracking, fast-paced novel, Brad Smith lampoons today’s scandal-ridden politics and politicians. But among the laughter, Smith also shows us there can be hope, and even integrity, where we least expect it.
What’s Brad’s favorite bit?
What do baseball and politics have in common? On the surface, one might think that the two disciplines are far apart. Yet upon closer examination, any numbers of parallels are to be found. For instance, both can be considered games. Both can be professions. Both can be exhilarating, maddening, heart-breaking and cruel. One of them can even be downright dirty.
And it ain’t baseball.
I’ve always been both a political junkie and a baseball fanatic, so combining the two in a novel seemed like an interesting concept. Borrowing themes from novels like All The King’s Men and Bang The Drum Slowly (always borrow from the best) brought the storyline into existence.
But as fascinated as I have always been with the altruistic, scheming, fact-twisting, idealistic, slippery, noble and questionable aspects of modern-day (or any day) political discourse, my favourite bit in this book lies in the portrayal of the title character.
Billy Crawford is simple. To some, that might seem like a slight but to me, it can just as often be considered a compliment. A simple man is rarely duplicitous. One can even argue that the word simple is a synonym for honest. Billy Crawford is a simple man because he primarily cares about one thing in life—baseball. Oh, he likes to drink a beer or two, or play a game of pool or two, or enjoy the company of a beautiful woman—or two. But his first love is the game. It has been such since he was a small boy on a makeshift diamond on the prairies, all the way to his current position as outfielder for the Rose City Rounders. But Billy is pushing forty now. This book explores the dilemma an eternal adolescent faces when he realizes that—contrary to the notion in his head—he can’t play the game forever. What happens then?
And what happens if he’s suddenly presented with a way to keep playing, for a few more months or even years? What would he do to facilitate that? Would he compromise his integrity to accommodate his dreams?
Of course, compromising his integrity is where politics enters the picture. Everyone is capable of rationalization, in ways both big and small. The size of the rationalization is directly proportional to the reason for such. And there’s nothing bigger to Billy than his desire to keep playing the game. When he’s approached by the unctuous owner of the Rounders to pretend to run for office in order to sway a certain element of the vote, he agrees, but only because disagreeing is about to cost him his position on the team. And that’s what the rationalization kicks in; Billy convinces himself that the whole thing is merely a lark. But it turns out not to be a lark, and Billy is soon faced with the realization that he’s made a deal with the devil.
Which is not something a simple man would do.
LINKS:
BIO:
Award-winning author Brad Smith is a novelist/screenwriter, born and raised in southern Ontario. BILLY CRAWFORD’S DOUBLE PLAY is his fifteenth novel. His 2019 novel – THE RETURN OF KID COOPER – won the Spur Award for best western novel from the Western Writers of America. His novels ONE-EYED JACKS and COPPERHEAD ROAD were short-listed for the Dashiell Hammett Award. He adapted his book ALL HAT to feature film, starring Keith Carradine and Luke Kirby. He now lives in an 90-year-old farmhouse near the north shore of Lake Erie, where he tinkers, respectively, on his vintage cars and his golf swing.