Books

The Promise: A Baseball Odyssey, by John B. Parrott

Sarah, by Betty S. Gilchrist

The Promise: A Baseball Odyssey
John B. Parrott

The Promise tells the story of one of baseball's most storied franchises through the eyes of one of the game's winningest pitchers. Warren Spahn began his career with the Boston Braves in 1943. In 1952 Spahn begins to wonder if perhaps the time has come to retire. The Braves are one of the National League's worst clubs, and struggle to a seventh place finish. In September, as the season is winding down, Ernest Hemingway publishes The Old Man and the Sea. 

The theme of Hemingway's story is that, as fisherman Santiago says, "man is not intended to lose". Before the 1953 season the Braves move to Milwaukee, which is more a homespun town than a city. Ordinary Milwaukeeans turn out in droves, and with their enthusiastic backing the Braves begin to win. Warren Spahn wins too, and rejuvenates his career. In 1957 Spahn leads the Braves to the National League pennant and a triumphal upset of the powerful New York Yankees in the World Series. The Braves repeat in 1958, but this time lose a World Series they should have won. Spahn pitches magnificently but loses a crucial game in a heartbreaker. The defeat devastates Spahn, his teammates and the city. Milwaukeeans stop attending games and players, including Spahn, watch as their talents decline with age. The club sinks toward the bottom of the National League. In 1966 the team vacates Milwaukee for Atlanta, where it becomes a perennial cellar-dweller. In 1991 the Braves rise, Cinderella-like, from last place to the World Series. Their foe is the Minnesota Twins, also a last-place finisher in 1990. Warren Spahn, 68 years old and still full of zest, watches the World Series and thinks it the best he’s ever seen. The events embody Hemingway’s never-give-up theme.

The Promise describes the joys and frustrations of young ballplayers as they engage in the competitive cycle’s highs and lows. Hall of Fame's Eddie Mathews and Henry Aaron figure prominently, and other players of the game’s classical era are also illuminated. Ernie Allen, President of the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children, former Indians announcer Ken Coleman, former Braves General Manager John J. McHale, former Pirates General Manager Joe Brown, and venerable Atlanta baseball writer Furman Bisher all contributed to The Promise.

Nonfiction

John B. Parrott is a writer from Pennsylvania.

Proceeds from The Promise wil go to institutions that serve disadvantaged children and young adults.

240 Pages softcover

ISBN: 0-9728558-0-7

To read the preface of The Promise click here.

Sarah
Betty S. Gilchrist

Sarah Gowrie was born in Pleasanton, Pennsylvania in 1917. Pleasanton is in the heart of coal country. Her father is a coal miner and her mother a coal miner’s wife. Sarah becomes a nurse and marries a World War II Marine after a brief courtship. Her father is stricken with the coal miner’s disease, the ‘Black Lung’, and she becomes the family’s sole means of financial support. The life of a working mother and housewife in the postwar years is an amazing balancing act, and events happen to Sarah which cause her to experience life in its extremes. 

A young woman takes special comfort in pondering about the good that is in people, and she is not so much a child of the flesh as she is the promise of God. One thing Sarah never learns about is the darkness that lurks in the human heart. Sarah’s relationship with her sister becomes one of confrontation and conflict, and through it Sarah learns about place and truth, and humanity and human beings, and also about herself.

"There would be times when Sarah would recall events and she would think that prior to their occurring it was as if she had been living her life in a bubble. She had lived life, but not close up. She hadn’t experienced it. She hadn’t been so much a part of the great human city as an island outside of it. But although Sarah thought about these things, she didn’t make them a part of her. She continued to hope, and expect, that she could fulfill her destiny to be happy by living in a bubble. Life is like the weather, with its storms and its sunshine, and every human being is exposed to its torrents and its rays, and whatever happiness can be gained from it derives from no pre-ordained checklist. But Sarah chose not to dwell upon such things. Her eyes saw the complexities of the human predicament but chose not to focus upon them." - From Sarah.

Fiction

Betty S. Gilchrist is a writer from Pennsylvania.

Proceeds from Sarah will go to institutions that serve disadvantaged children and young adults.

160 Pages softcover

ISBN: 0-9728558-1-5

To read a passage from Sarah click here.