The Entitled Author:Frank Deford They were an odd couple, Howie and Jay. Howie, an aging failure at the game of baseball until he became the manager of the Cleveland Indians. And Jay Alcazar, a home run slugger with giant gifts. For Howie Traveler his career depends on only one thing: how he manages and gets along with Jay Alcazar. — No crisis on the field fazes Jay and no woman... more » off the field ever rejects him. Until, that is, one night at the hotel when Howie sees something at Jay s door he wished he hadn t.
In this page-turning story, six-time National Sportswriter of the Year and NPR commentator Frank Deford takes the reader deep inside the game of baseball and evokes the roles of the players as well as the one man who can make or break a team and a season. Plot and character driven, this is the best baseball novel since Bernard Malamud's The Natural, by a novelist who knows more about the game than almost anyone else.« less