Please welcome author Paula Messina back to the blog today…
The
Fireballer
by
Paula Messina
The Fireballer,
a novel by Mark Stevens, is the story of Baltimore Oriole rookie pitcher
Frank Ryder who can put the ball over the plate at more than 100 mph. Fueled by
Ryder’s gas, the hapless Orioles are at last truly in the pennant race. Ryder
is haunted by an accident his errant ball caused when he was twelve years old.
Ten years later, Ryder is a phenom, a pitcher who is untouchable.
He has achieved
his goal of playing in the majors, but he can’t relax and enjoy his success.
Ryder misses Maggie, his girlfriend, who is hundreds of miles away in school,
but if he’s willing, there are plenty of women lined up who are even more
willing. He has the sudden wealth that is heaped on athletes, so he can afford
a fancy condo with a fabulous view. But it’s icy, not a home. He’s been
convinced to wear expensive duds, but he feels like a fraud. Ryder is
recognized everywhere he goes, and he has no clue how to handle himself. He’s a
once-in-a-lifetime pitcher driven by his love for the game. All he wants to do
is throw strikes and win games.
And underlying
everything is that accident Frank Ryder cannot escape.
Fireballer
is about guilt and redemption. It is also about baseball, a big business that
eats its own.
Ryder’s pitching
prowess makes him a freak. His success makes the baseball union and the
commission decidedly uncomfortable. They want to ban those 105 mph pitches.
After all, how can the bigwigs watch baseball’s best hitters stand helplessly
at the plate while their batting averages wallow in the toilet. Not to mention
the possibility fans will become bored with all that Frank Ryder winning.
Before the union
and commission can impose a speed limit, Ryder’s teammate is beaned and out for
the rest of the season. The unwritten rule in baseball is that the pitcher
retaliates. Tit for tat. We lose one. You lose one. His teammates on the field,
in the dugout, and in the bullpen expect Ryder to do the right thing, seek
revenge. Only Ryder is having none of it. He shakes off his irate catcher’s
signals to bean the batter.
The next pitch has
a mind of its own and hits the batter in his torso. He’s down, definitely out,
and not moving.
Nobody believes it
was an accident. Ryder is suspended.
But far worse,
Ryder’s arm goes AWOL. He’s a pitching phenomenon who cannot pitch.
The reader roots
for Frank Ryder to overcome his past and find happiness because he is a normal
Joe, a good person overwhelmed by circumstances. His pitching is freakish. He
is not. We know Frank Ryder. He’s your next-door neighbor, the kid you went to
high school with, or your first cousin lucky enough to make it to the majors.
He’s normal in every way except when he picks up a baseball and steps onto the
mound.
Can Frank Ryder
revive his arm, or is he a flash in the pan whose time has already come and
gone?
At times, it’s painful to read Ryder’s story.
I mean this in the best way possible. His agony is so real, so visceral the
reader can’t help but be moved. Most of us never come close to that kind of
fame and success, but we all experience guilt and the need for redemption. We
know what it’s like to struggle to recapture a part of ourselves that was lost.
It’s man’s fate.
The novel’s tension dips when Ryder turns his energy to philanthropy by
visiting a school. This isn’t a surprise. Ryder’s humanity spends most of the
novel hovering around the edges waiting to surface, but Ryder and the students
struggle to communicate. The chapter would have benefited from a bit of
judicious pruning. It’s the pressure Ryder puts on himself and inflicted by the
Orioles staff, the union, and the baseball commission that fuels the novel. The
Orioles’ race for the American League Pennant and the biggest prize of all, the
World Series, keeps the reader turning pages. We want Frank Ryder to prevail
because he is one of us.
Despite the
philanthropy dip, the writing is solid. Stevens creates characters that readers
identify with and care about. He’s a master of description. Ryder’s twin
brother “broods on problems. Ryder only played chess with Josh if they used a
timer.”
Stevens lets the
reader hear the ball as it smacks into the pitcher’s glove and the sound of the
fans in the bleachers. “The crowd buzzes. It’s the hum of humanity. It’s
restlessness. It’s wonder. It’s 37,700 squirming fans who have agreed through
some sort of telepathic communion to react as one.”
Fireballer reminds us that baseball
once was America’s favorite pastime, and within its pages, Frank Ryder, is our
favorite player.
Mark Stevens, a Massachusetts native, lives in Colorado and writes The
Flynn Martin Thriller and The Allison Coil Mystery Series. In
2016 and 2023, Stevens was recognized as
the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Writer of the Year. Stevens knows his
baseball, and he is a wise man. He does not like the designated hitter, neither
does Frank Ryder.
The Fireballer is a
grand slam that should be designated to the top of your to-be-read pile.
Amazon
Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4g4y1ct
Paula
Messina ©2026
Paula Messina writes the
Donatello Laguardia stories, which are set in Boston’s North End during the
1940s. They appeared in the Best New England Crime Stories 2024 and
2025 and another Donatello Laguardia short story is scheduled to
appear in Black Cat Weekly. She lives near America’s first public beach.
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