Title: The Conman
Author: Mike Murphey
Genre: Sports Fiction (Baseball)
Release Date: November 11, 2019
Summary:
Conor Nash has lived his life with a single purpose—to pitch in the Major Leagues. He’s been released from professional baseball contracts ten times over a sixteen-year career, but he’s overcome every obstacle to finally reach The Show when he’s a decade too old.
As he faces the specter of injury-forced retirement, he becomes a man neither he nor his wife recognizes. During his career, Conor avoided the trap of alcohol and drugs because his drug was baseball. And what can an addict do when he realizes he will never get that high again?
Conor climbs treacherous Camelback Mountain, drinks a bottle of Champagne, recalls people and events, and seeks an answer. Who is Conor Nash if he can’t pitch?
The Conman is based on the Life of Keith Comstock. Keith pitched professionally for sixteen years, including Major League time with The Seattle Mariners, the San Diego Padres, the San Francisco Giants and the Minnesota Twins. Following his retirement in 1992, Keith has held minor league coaching and managing positions with several organizations. For the past decade he has served as the rehabilitation instructor for the Texas Rangers.
Excerpt The Conman:
CHAPTER ONE
October 1992
Phoenix, Arizona
Failure can be an acute condition, perhaps even chronic, but quitting—quitting is fatal.
Conor Nash believed this to his marrow.
No stranger to failure, Conor had been released from professional baseball contracts ten times. He’d been released by major league teams. He’d been released by minor league affiliates. He’d been released in five countries encompassing three continents. He wasn’t sure how to count Puerto Rico. And, technically, that release occurred in an aircraft somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. He’d had a contract when the plane took off. When it landed, they told him, “Go home.”
And Venezuela, well, they weren’t satisfied with just releasing him. A pissed-off dictator banned him from the entire country.
Hope remained, though, and ultimately, he’d kept his vow. Conor Nash pitched in the major leagues. So why did this champagne bottle clutched in his left hand cast a pall that felt like death?
Fat Brad Grady could have helped him sort through these confusing emotions. Brad loved debating the nuance of words, and he and Conor argued the semantics often enough. Where Conor saw a razor-sharp line distinguishing fail and quit, Brad found a middle ground he defined as surrender to reality or honorable retreat. Brad’s intellect would help make sense of Conor’s present struggle. Brad wasn’t available, though, was he? Conor closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to slough off the guilty anger he still confronted when he thought of Brad.
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About Mike Murphey:
Mike Murphey is a native of eastern New Mexico and spent almost thirty years as an award-winning newspaper journalist in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest. Following his retirement from the newspaper business, he and his wife Nancy entered in a seventeen-year partnership with the late Dave Henderson, all-star centerfielder for the Oakland Athletics, Boston Red Sox and Seattle Mariners. Their company produced the A’s and Mariners adult baseball Fantasy Camps. They also have a partnership with the Roy Hobbs adult baseball organization in Fort Myers, Florida. Mike loves fiction, cats, baseball and sailing. He splits his time between Spokane, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona, where he enjoys life as a writer and old-man baseball player.
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