Blog Archives
The Tao of Hitting
The Tao of Hitting blends a short course in Taoist thought with a very practical guide to hitting a baseball. Author Christian Petersen walks through core ideas like yin and yang, the Uncarved Block, the Three Treasures, and wu wei, then shows how they connect to the batter’s box, from approach and timing to pitch selection and mental routine. Along the way he tells stories about players from Babe Ruth to Jeff Bagwell, shares results from his college coaching days, and finishes with concrete drills that put the philosophy into daily work.
I enjoyed how open and unpretentious the voice feels. Petersen sounds like a smart, slightly stubborn coach who has been around a lot of dugouts and classrooms, and that mix works for a book like this. The anecdotes about Bagwell, Todd Reynolds, Forrest Gump, and Winnie the Pooh give the text a human pulse and break up the teaching in a nice way. The prose circles back to the same points about simplicity and relaxation. Still, I rarely felt talked down to. The tone stays warm, curious, and humble, which kept me reading and made the more technical bits easier to swallow.
The emphasis on walks as “not doing,” the stress on a quiet mind, and the push against one size fits all mechanics all rang true. I liked how he frames the hitter as an “uncarved block” and urges coaches to help players uncover, not overwrite, their natural swing. The chapter on analytics is also thoughtful, not a rant. He admits numbers matter, then argues that they should serve the player’s instinct instead of replacing it. The drills at the end and the repeated focus on approach in real counts make the book useful, not just inspirational.
I came away liking this book a lot and feeling oddly calmer about the chaos of hitting. I would recommend The Tao of Hitting to serious high school and college hitters, to coaches who are tired of chasing the latest mechanical fad, and to parents who want to support their kids without turning every session into a lab experiment. Lifelong baseball fans who enjoy the mental side of the game will also find plenty to chew on. If you are open to mixing a little Eastern philosophy with cage work and game stories, this book is a good fit.
Pages: 199 | ASIN : B0GDMYD3QN
Life-Changing Injury
The Legend of Harry Gardner follows a Harvard student journalist, his connection with a football star, and the consequences of a life-changing injury. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
Although I’ve spent most of my writing life in the world of history and biography, I’ve always dreamed of writing a novel, especially one about college football in the 1920’s. The Legend of Harry Gardner is the result of that dream. The inspiration for the major character in the book is the celebrated sports figure, Hobey Baker, who is still considered one of the greatest American college athletes of all time – a star in football and hockey at Princeton. But it wasn’t just his sports heroics on the field that intrigued me, but his sense of character, humility, and sportsmanship, a trait I tried to instill in Harry. The “life-changing injury” incident came from a real Harvard football game in 1909, when Harvard Captain Hamilton Fish hit an opposing player so hard (not maliciously) that the player died the next day. Fish missed several games as a result, but then rejoined the team. As to “Peabo” Elliott, I guess I loosely based him on George Plimpton, the famous “participatory journalist” of modern times, who was from a well-to-do family, dabbled in sports, and was a keen observer of sports heroes.
Is there anything pulled from your own experiences included in Peabo or Harry’s storylines?
Playing high school football helped me get a sense of the sights and sounds and chaos of an actual game from ground level. Attending graduate school at Harvard (and attending several Harvard-Yale games) gave me a sense of place and the color and excitement of a college football game and the look and feel of the stadium.
What research did you do for this novel to get it right?
I read newspaper accounts – both in the Harvard Crimson and New York Times – of old college football games; read several books about Hobey Baker; re-read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (a fictional character named Allenby is based on Hobey Baker); and read everything George Plimpton ever wrote.
Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?
Yes, I am currently at work on a non-fiction book titled, Harvard Boys, about the intersecting lives of several extraordinary characters as they navigate – both personally and professionally – many of the most important events of the twentieth century: Revolutionary John Reed; columnist Walter Lippmann; World War I poet Alan Seeger; “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, Adolph Hitler’s favorite piano player; and artist Waldo Peirce. I’m also at work on a humorous collection of fictional short stories called Cat Bubbles, Roadsters, and Other Peculiar College Tales, about the adventures and misadventures of a colorful cast of college sports jocks, social gadflies, scoundrels, eccentrics, and one or two kind-hearted souls.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Life-Long Impact
The Legacy of the Twins Platoon follows a group of young Minnesotans who enlist as Marines in 1967 and find themselves facing some of the most horrific battles of the Vietnam War. Where did the inspiration for this novel come from?
It was my calling. But due to the perceived difficulty of writing a book about 150 Marines and their experiences, it took 6 years before I set out to do what seemed to me to be an overwhelming task.
What draws you to this period in US history?
I am drawn to this period in history because it is unforgettable and is forever etched into memory. To have experienced and witnessed how the Vietnam War forever changed the lives of those who served in the military, and the life-long impact it had on their families and loved ones, is something I felt compelled to write about.
Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?
My focus now is to bring awareness to the book, so that the life experiences of those I have written about can benefit other people. At a time when new books are like a “blizzard in a snowstorm,” my challenge now is to weather the storm.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | YouTube | Website | The Legacy of the Twins Platoon | Amazon
They were sworn in on television at a pregame ceremony and were guests of the Twins at the game. By the end of the fourth inning, the recruits were hustled to buses whisking them to the Wold-Chamberlain Field Airport, and they flew to San Diego. Before dawn the next day, the Twins Platoon met their drill sergeants at the receiving barracks of the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. By the end of the year, the Marines were in Vietnam sprinkled across the length and breadth of the Marine Corps operating areas of I Corps, the northernmost part of South Vietnam where they experienced some of the toughest combat of the war. Khe Sanh and Hue City were just a few of the hot spots they encountered as the 1968 TET Offensive rolled across the country. Not all members of the Twins Platoon came home in one piece. Some did not come home at all. In The Legacy of the Twins Platoon, author Christy Sauro Jr. tells their complete stories from baseball to combat and their lifelong readjustment to civilian life.
The Legend of Harry Gardner
The Legend of Harry Gardner by Michael Hill is a nostalgic sports tale wrapped in friendship and moral weight. The book follows Peabo Elliott, a shy but gifted student journalist at Harvard, and his bond with football star Harry Gardner during a high-stakes season in the 1920s. It centers on one brutal game, the fallout from a life-changing injury, and the pressure placed on young men to be heroes. The story moves from the roar of the stadium to quiet dorm rooms and ends with a deeply personal Christmas that reframes what winning really means.
What struck me first was the tone. It is earnest to the core. The writing wears its heart on its sleeve and does not apologize for it. At times, it feels old-fashioned, and that feels intentional. I liked that. The dialogue is simple and clear. But it fits the era and the mood. I found myself slowing down, which I enjoyed. The football scenes are vivid and physical. You feel the mud and the hits and the fear. I could picture the field and hear the crowd.
This is not really a sports story. It is about guilt, loyalty, and the cost of being put on a pedestal. Harry’s struggle after injuring another player felt honest and sad. I found it thought-provoking as well as emotional. I also appreciated how Peabo is not just a sidekick. His voice matters. His writing shapes events. That theme felt quietly powerful. Words have weight. Friendship has weight. Even kindness has consequences.
I would recommend The Legend of Harry Gardner to readers who enjoy character-driven stories and classic sports narratives with a moral center. It is great for fans of old college football, but also for anyone who likes stories about friendship and conscience. If you want heart, atmosphere, and a gentle reminder that decency matters, this book is worth your time. I think readers who enjoy the reflective sports writing and character-driven storytelling of Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger will find The Legend of Harry Gardner a satisfying read, especially if they like sports stories that care more about the people than the scoreboard.
Pages: 112 | ASIN : B0GCCLFVXY
Breathe and Believe
Breathe and Believe, by Arthur Wiggins, drops readers into the messy, money-soaked world of American Midwest University athletics, where one bad week blows up an entire department. Bruce McDermott, a marketing specialist on the rise, watches his mentor quit, his secret relationship implode, and his football program slide toward NCAA sanctions and budget disaster. Interim athletic director Tara Gantt battles power-hungry basketball coach Ron Hill and his boosters over gender equity, football vs. basketball priorities, and the push to build a new multi-purpose facility, while a tragic road accident involving the women’s tennis team shows the very real cost of all these decisions. By the time Bruce walks into a legislative hearing with a giant check and a campus-wide vision, the book has turned a spreadsheet crisis into a story about ambition, grief, and what it really takes to keep a university sports machine alive.
The storytelling has a slow-burning style that works overall. The early chapters around the motel incident, the surprise resignation, and then the van crash hit hard and fast, and I caught myself thinking, “OK, this is not just a sports novel, this is a whole train wreck of a weekend.” The author writes meetings, press conferences, and budget talks with the same seriousness as big games, and that gave the book a grounded, insider feel. There are passages packed with numbers, acronyms, and institutional history where the tension dips. The dialogue often carries the weight, with characters stating the stakes rather than letting subtext do more of the work. Still, when the story leans into crisis scenes or personal confrontations, the pacing snaps back, and the pages move quickly.
What really hooked me were the ideas underneath the plot. The book digs into Title IX, gender equity, and the brutal math of “too many sports, not enough money” in a way that feels honest. We see how a 53 percent female student body sits next to only 39 percent female scholarship athletes, and you can feel how wrong that is without the author giving a lecture about it. Tara Gantt’s arc, as a veteran woman administrator who built a separate women’s program only to see it merged, trimmed, and constantly second-guessed, gave the book heart.
Bruce’s role as a marketing guy caught between ideals and survival felt believable to me; he is selling walk-a-thons, naming rights, and spring game hype so the department can pay back a 1.3 million dollar overspend, and the whole thing feels both clever and a little desperate. The tennis team crash is handled with a blunt, unsentimental style that hit me in the gut; it underlines that all the talk about TV contracts and conference moves sits on top of actual young people in vans on bad roads.
I also liked how Wiggins treats politics and media as part of the same ecosystem. The scenes with the local newspaper scrambling for a “thumper” front-page story and sniffing around the athletic budget felt very true to life, and there is a sly humor in how leaks, half-truths, and spin drive the narrative around AMU more than any scoreboard does. The boosters, legislators, and campus leaders come off as flawed rather than cartoonish villains, which I appreciated. There were moments when I wished for more time inside the student-athletes’ heads and a bit less time inside meeting minutes. Even so, I came away with the strong sense that the author has lived in this world, and that authenticity carries the book.
I would recommend Breathe and Believe to readers who enjoy behind-the-scenes sports stories, campus politics, and workplace dramas where the real action happens in boardrooms, press boxes, and budget spreadsheets more than on the field. If you want a thoughtful, occasionally heavy, very human look at what modern college athletics does to the people inside it, you’ll enjoy this book. Arthur Wiggins has written a grounded, slow-burning sports novel for readers who love college athletics stories packed with messy politics, money trouble, and real emotional fallout.
Pages: 309 | ASIN : B0DFCHCWND
Racing Against Time: On Ironman, Ultramarathons and the Quest for Transformation in Mid-Life
Racing Against Time follows Jeffrey Weiss as he moves from a late start in endurance sports to an astonishing personal transformation. The book traces his path from a worn-out teenager chasing a free t-shirt in his first 10K to a fifty-six-year-old pushing himself through ultramarathons, Ironman races, and long nights of doubt and grit. The early chapters set the tone clearly. Weiss frames running, triathlon, and extreme endurance not as sports alone but as a way to reshape the aging curve and reclaim a sense of purpose. His story grows from a simple memory of walking the last miles of a teenage race to the vivid description of cramping through the Valley of a Thousand Hills in the Comrades Marathon. It is a story of stubbornness. It is a story of self-reinvention. It is a story of learning to push past what you thought your body could do.
When I read Weiss describing that first failed 10K and how it gnawed at him for thirty years, I felt that sting in my own gut. The writing is not dressed up with fancy literary tricks, and that works. His voice is honest. He talks about fear, pride, ego, and the weird little lies we tell ourselves when we are chasing a goal that scares us. I like how he lets the reader sit with his uncertainty, especially as he deals with injury, aging, and the emotional toll of training alone. The chapter where he stands in the Marine Corps Marathon start area, wrapped in old sweats while surrounded by thousands of runners, has this intimate energy. I found myself rooting for him, even when he doubted he should be out there at all.
I also enjoyed how Weiss talks about the messy parts of chasing big goals. There is no glamor here. He describes feeling awkward in his first triathlon swim. He admits he hated running at first. He talks about the grief after his father’s death and how that loss pushed him to confront his own decline. The way he connects exercise to identity hit me hardest. It’s not a lecture. It’s more like listening to a friend unpack years of mistakes and tiny wins and then laughing a little at himself. I appreciated the warmth with which he writes about the people who pushed him along, like his coaches, his brothers, and his wife leaving encouraging notes during races. That tenderness snuck up on me, and it made the whole story feel fuller and more relatable.
This book would hit home for anyone in mid-life who feels stuck or who worries that their best years are gone. It would be great for new runners who want a companion who admits every fear they are feeling. It would be even better for people who have always wondered what it might feel like to chase a ridiculous dream just to see if you can do it. Weiss makes the case that it is never too late to change your curve, and he does it with heart.
Pages: 279 | ASIN: B0FC5MVLRM
A Long Cast: Reflections on 50 Years of Visiting the Martha’s Vineyard Surf
The book is part memoir, part meditation, and part fishing journal. Mike Carotta takes us through five decades of surfcasting on Martha’s Vineyard, but fishing is only the surface. Beneath the striped bass and bluefish lies a deeper story about fathers and sons, the friendships that form in salt spray, and the way a place can wrap itself around your heart. He writes about the rhythms of the tide, the cast of characters who gather every spring, and the sense of the sacred that can sneak up on you when you’re standing waist-deep in the Atlantic. It’s not a manual on how to catch more fish. It’s a love letter to memory, ritual, and the Island itself.
Carotta admits, again and again, that he’s not all that great at fishing, and that humility makes the book sing. The style is conversational and warm, the kind of voice you want around a campfire after a long day outside. I found myself laughing at his stubbornness about new techniques, nodding along when he described how old hurts can fester, and tearing up when he spoke of his father. He isn’t afraid to mix the mundane with the profound. One page has him fumbling with tackle, the next has him brushing up against something eternal.
I loved how he wove in the idea of “liminal space,” that thin place where heaven and earth feel closer. His way of describing the Vineyard at night, with stars overhead and saltwater in his boots, made me feel like I was right there beside him. By the end, I wasn’t thinking about fishing at all. I was thinking about family traditions, about the way landscapes hold onto us, about how we carry certain people with us long after they’re gone.
A Long Cast is not only for fishermen, though anglers will find plenty to savor. It’s for anyone who knows what it feels like to return year after year to a place that heals you. It’s for readers who like stories told straight from the heart, without polish or pretense. If you’ve ever stood in your own version of the surf, whether that’s a kitchen, a church, or a backyard garden, you’ll find yourself in these pages.
Pages: 182 | ISBN : 978-1611535334
The Reclusive Chimp
Monkey Flip follows a pair of precocious kids whose father is accused of murder, so they call in a reclusive and grumpy, yet brilliant, talking chimpanzee detective to find the real killer and clear their father’s name. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The book is set in the world of professional wrestling, and many wrestling personalities and storylines inspired the central mystery. Originally, the father was going to be a firefighter, but I love wrestling, almost as much as I love monkeys, so making him a wrestler felt natural. However, it wasn’t until CM Punk held a now-infamous press conference that the mystery truly came together. For the other themes, such as grief and overcoming loss, I drew on my own experiences, as I can be quite the reclusive chimp.
I enjoyed your characters, especially Sebastian Winthrop. What was your favorite character to write for and why?
I actually created Sebastian, the book’s chimp detective, when I was a teenager. Back then, he was Sebastian Winthrop, Millionaire Chimp, and I intended to turn him into a comic strip. Nothing came of it, but I never forgot about him. Writing Sebastian is easy because he’s just an exaggerated version of myself. I also really enjoyed writing Addie, the little girl. I tried to make her like a character in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. Her interactions with Sebastian were always fun to write, and their love/hate relationship is the heart of the story.
How did the mystery develop for this story? Did you plan it before writing, or did it develop organically?
When I earned my MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, one of my mentors was Victoria Thompson, who wrote the Gaslight Mystery Series. Vicki was the best and taught me everything I know about plotting a mystery. Monkey Flip is my third novel, and I always start with the victim, the suspects, the suspects’ motives and secrets, and the key clues. From there, I structure a loose plot outline, where I know the beginning, the end, and about five “tent pole” scenes that have to be there. That provides the backbone, and then I still have the freedom to discover things along the way. I do a more detailed outline before each chapter, noting the characters’ motivations, obstacles, and goals.
I find a problem in well-written stories, in that I always want there to be another book to continue the story. Is there a second book planned?
Yes, a second book is in the works. This time, the story will take place at a comic book convention. Still ironing out the details, but the actual writing will commence soon. With luck, it should be out next summer.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
When Addie and Bennett Pajakowski learn that their father, the fearsome Bonecrusher Brannigan, is accused of murdering one of his fellow professional wrestlers, they seek the help of Sebastian Winthrop, the world’s greatest detective. So, imagine their surprise when they discover that the reclusive Sebastian is a talking chimp!
Monkey Flip chronicles Sebastian’s investigation into the death of Mitch Mayhem, the heavyweight champion of a local independent wrestling federation. Along the way, Sebastian teaches Addie and Bennett what it takes to be good detectives while they show him that life should be lived and not mourned. The book takes a comedic, satirical look at the fanatical world of professional wrestling and touches on such themes as grief, acceptance, and the importance of family.
Some are already calling Sebastian one of the best detectives in fiction. Others call him the best. Just don’t call him a monkey.
