Boise-based author Patterson pens Minor League thriller
By Tyler Maun / MiLB.com
Growing up in South Carolina, Jack Patterson was in one of the cradles of Minor League Baseball. Less than an hour from Columbia — then home to the Capital City Bombers of the South Atlantic League — Patterson fell in love with the sport, reared as an Atlanta fan deep in Braves country. That passion led him toward sports writing when he was just a teenager.
After starting his professional life in that vein, Patterson switched gears and set his sights on combining sports with fictional investigative thrillers. One of the latest results is Dead Man’s Land, a novel in his Cal Murphy series that centers around the protagonist, a Seattle-based journalist, and a Minor Leaguer from Cuba named Vicente Prado who holds a secret in his past.
To craft Prado’s story, Patterson spent much of the 2015 season immersing himself in the Boise Hawks, getting to know the ins and outs of the Rockies’ Class A Short Season affiliate. He focused on the experience of Latin American players and their adjustment to life in the Minors as a foundation for building Prado’s character. Patterson talked with MiLB.com about the book and what went into writing it.
MiLB.com: What was your inspiration for setting this book specifically around the Minor Leagues?
Jack Patterson: The series is about a sportswriter who investigates different mysteries surrounding sports. I used to cover the Braves in Atlanta, and being so close to baseball, it was something I wanted to make sure I got right. I wanted to take my time because I was so very familiar with it. I didn’t want to take it for granted with readers who maybe hadn’t been around the game as closely as I have. I wanted to make sure I really captured the essence of it.
It had been a while since I’d been around Minor League Baseball on a regular basis, so when I moved to Boise, there’s not a lot of Major League Baseball around here. You have to go quite a ways, a lot farther than three hours to go find a team. I’d been going to Boise Hawks games, so I really wanted to get in that mind-set again of what it’s like to be a Minor League player, what’s around this whole world these guys live in.
The plot centers around a Cuban baseball player who defects. He sees a murder right before he is whisked away on a cigarette boat to Mexico in order to make his great escape. If you follow baseball , you hear about the big stars who make it out of Cuba, the Yasiel Puigs, some of these guys who make it really, really big and get the big contracts, but there are a lot of guys who get out but don’t get big contracts.
I wanted to expose people who like the game and wanted to learn something about it to find out that, yeah, there are a lot of guys coming from Cuba who get a $50,000 deal. They don’t get the $8 million deal with everybody bidding for them. I wanted to capture that within the story but also learn more about what it’s like for these guys.
MiLB.com: What were some of the angles you wanted to illuminate about Minor League Baseball in this novel?
Patterson: I was trying to learn more about what it’s like for these guys, and that was probably the trickiest part because the guys from Cuba don’t want to talk about Cuba at all. I put in numerous requests with Major League teams, Minor League teams, and none of the players wanted to talk about it. But aside from doing research and reading about it, I was able to talk with some of the Dominican players who are closer to some of the Cuban players and know what those guys’ life is like. In some ways, it’s similar to what they experience, but in other ways, it’s very different.
As I was crafting the story, I was able to kind of pull the curtain back, go behind the scenes with these players and talk to them about their lives back home and what it’s like to adjust here in the States, which is where the story gets moving.
MiLB.com: What were some of the things you learned from Rockies players during your time around them in Boise?
Patterson: Hamlet Marte was one of the guys I talked to for the Rockies, an up-and-coming guy. He had some funny stories talking to me, and I kind of tweaked this a little bit and used it for the book. He told me his host family has iguanas, and he said he was scared of them because I think the lizards they have are a little bit bigger than in the Dominican. He said, ‘My brother and I hated these things. We used to shoot them. They were kind of like rats.’
He’s here in a host family, and they have one of these iguanas as a pet. There are younger kids in this family, and they put it on his shoulder, and he’s freaking out. He said, “That was something I had to get used to. These are pets. It’s OK. I don’t have to freak out every time I see one.” Little things like that I thought were interesting aside from the stuff guys are adjusting to. You’re trying to break out and become a Major League player or at least continue to progress as a player and ascend through the organization. These guys have all kinds of extracurricular stuff they’re dealing with.
MiLB.com: What stood out to you most about what Latin American players deal with differently from American-born players in the Minors?
Patterson: The part that really struck me, specifically the guys from overseas, is how little they get to talk with their families and how big of a deal that is. Hearing them talk about “just getting to see or talk to my mom, it’s a big deal. It doesn’t happen that often, or to talk to my dad who’s encouraging me but can’t come watch me. He used to watch all my games growing up. Now here I am hundreds and hundreds of miles away, and I get to talk to him once every two or three weeks.”
It struck me just how isolated these guys feel and how they throw themselves into the game, but also how their team really becomes their family in a lot of ways because they don’t have that. I think that’s why, as I was talking to some of the guys from the Caribbean, just how important that is for them to bond together and why they stick together because that’s kind of all they have, this emotional connection to back home. Nobody else can really share that with them. That really struck me, and I tried to put that in the book.
MiLB.com: What is it about the Minor Leagues that made you want to use it as a setting for this novel, rather than making it about a Major Leaguer?
Patterson: There are so many quirky things around the Minor Leagues that make for interesting characters. The people associated with Minor League Baseball, they’re people who really love the game. Not only the players but the front office, everybody I feel like, loves baseball. The Minor Leagues are so far removed from the confines of what you see when you go to a Major League game.
I felt like to really do a book like this, I had to capture the passion of baseball and the love for the game in the midst of all this, in the midst of this crazy thing that this character from Cuba, this baseball player, is going through. He’s also got this drive to play the game of baseball and one day succeed. If you don’t have the love for the game, you’re not going to make it out of there.
MiLB.com: What kind of perspective did researching for this novel provide you on the Minor Leagues or its players?
Patterson: After spending time with these guys and hearing more of their personal stories, I think there’s a little more grace toward these guys that I have. When a catcher has four passed balls and it leads to three runs, I’m not the kind of fan — I’ve never been the kind of fan — who will boo and yell and scream at a guy. I look at him differently. My heart kind of hurts for the guy because I know he’s probably not going to be around long. He fought, did everything he could, sacrificed to get to this level, this point, and it’s clear this guy is not cut out to move on.
You slowly are watching a death of a dream, and in some ways it’s hard to watch. There’s a little bit more that you feel for somebody.
When I spent some time with these guys, it was a sharp reminder for me that these guys, what they go through, they’re still dudes at the end of the day playing a kids’ game, but they have feelings, too. It’s a business, and they’re trying to make it, but they’ve all dreamed about this.
