Check out HERE for the other stops.
Synopsis
It’s an
exclusive club. Thirty teams, 25 players each, 750 players in all. For every
new player that wins a place on the roster, another player is removed. A few talented
players have careers that cover more than two decades. Most last less than
three years. But for those who can retain a place on the roster, the money is
good – minimum wage is almost $450,000 a year. And if they’re really
superstars, they can end up with an annual eight-figure salary. But there is
more to it than money.
The men of
baseball love the game and they love the clubhouse. The game sometimes costs
them their wives and time with their kids. The clubhouse is where they bond as
a team and as a family. As with all families, it is a place of laughter and
anger, tragedy and loss, happiness and dysfunction. And what unites that family
is love. The love of a game called baseball.
This
collection of encounters with some of these men by sportswriter Larry LaRue
takes the readers inside the clubhouse and behind the scenes to share with the
reader what these men have accomplished and the price they have paid.
Newspapers
were part of his life long before Larry LaRue started working for them at age
18. His grandmother was a typesetter for a weekly in San Dimas, California, and
he sat in her lap while she’d run an old lead-type machine. He was first
published at 10, when a San Clemente newspaper ran his story on Pookie, his
dog.
He’s been
writing ever since. Five newspapers, a business journal and an entertainment
magazine wrapped around brief careers as a window washer, bouncer, and private
investigator. Always, he wrote.
There was a
book on an American Capuchin priest who performed exorcisms in New York and
Iowa, another on political cartoonists, a novel based on a news story he
followed, and a book of major league baseball anecdotes. All wound up in a
drawer or a closet.
Since 1976,
there’s been another constant in his life – George Cunningham. As co-workers,
backpackers, entrepreneurs, political opposites, writers, photographers and
friends they have pursued projects and dreams together.
Reader
Publishing Group may be the best yet for George and Carmela Cunningham, and
LaRue was one of the first to leap on their backs.
Currently a
writer with the Tacoma News Tribune covering the Seattle Mariners, LaRue’s
sports writing can be found at http://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/mariners/ and you can follow him
and see his photography on Facebook at facebook.com/kwlarue, Twitter
at (@LarryLaRue and the News Tribune
Mariners’ blog at http://blog.thenewstribune.com/mariners/.
His most
recent ambition hasn’t changed in 35 years – LaRue is writing projects he hopes
Cunningham can use to get him out of the newspaper business.
Links
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LarryLaRue
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kwlarue
Website: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/larue/
Be more willing to try things outside my comfort area, and to follow my heart and conscience with open passion.
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Things you would change about your high school years if you could go back
in time.
Be more willing to try things outside my comfort area, and to follow my heart and conscience with open passion.
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