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Greg Larson
179 Plays5 years ago
Greg Larson was a starry-eyed fan when he hurtled headfirst into professional baseball. As the new clubhouse attendant for the Aberdeen IronBirds, a Minor League affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles, Larson assumed he’d entered a familiar world. He thought wrong. He quickly discovered the bizarre rituals of life in the Minors: fights between players, teammates quitting in the middle of the games, doomed relationships, and a negligent parent organization. All the while, Larson, fresh out of college, harbored a secret wish. Despite the team’s struggles and his own lack of baseball talent, he yearned to join the exclusive fraternity of professional ballplayers.
Instead, Larson fell deeper into his madcap venture as the scheming clubbie. He moved into the clubhouse equipment closet, his headquarters to swing deals involving memorabilia, booze, and loads of cash. By his second season, Larson had transformed into a deceptive, dip-spitting veteran, now fully part of a system that exploited players he considered friends. Like most Minor Leaguers, the gravitational pull of baseball was still too strong for Larson—even if chasing his private dream might cost him his girlfriend, his future, and, ultimately, his love of the game. That is, until an unlikely shot at a championship gives Larson and the IronBirds one final swing at redemption.
Clubbie is a hilarious behind-the-scenes tale of two seasons in the mysterious world of Minor League Baseball. With cinematic detail and a colorful cast of characters, Larson spins an unforgettable true story for baseball fans and nonfans alike. An unflinching look at the harsh experience of professional sports, Clubbie will be a touchstone in baseball literature for years to come.
https://www.clubbiebook.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Volante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer. This is Ken Volante with something rather than nothing and today it's towards the end of the month of February 2021 and
00:00:27
Speaker
I'm thinking baseball and I know some of the some of my listeners are thinking baseball as well and I'm pleased this episode to have Greg Larson who wrote a book that's actually gonna be released pretty darn soon around the time of First pitch April 1st called clubby Memoir of the minor leagues a Greg Larson author Baseball lover welcome to the show Thanks for having me Ken
00:00:58
Speaker
Yeah, so I I mentioned to you, I really enjoyed your book and I think that there's something about baseball that, you know, people connect to culturally and done a couple of baseball episodes, one with Rachel Balkovic, hidden instructor, instructor for the Yankees and Brad Voluxian, who did a fantastic book, a wax pack.
Greg's Early Life and Comedy
00:01:27
Speaker
And so we're back at baseball and writing, but prior to get into your memoir and your exploration and experience in baseball, why don't you tell me about when you were younger and what was important to you in sports or writing, anything like that? Yeah, when I was younger, I'm the youngest of five boys, so my family role was
00:01:54
Speaker
the comic relief, the mascots, I would memorize episodes of The Simpsons. And my brother would just tell me like, if there's a lull in the conversation, he would say, Hey, do the lemon tree episode. And I would just launch off into the dialogue of the episode, explaining the scenes. That was the sort of storytelling that I was obsessed with was comic books, and comedy. I was obsessed with Conan O'Brien. I was an outdoors kid, I would go out, you know, I grew up in
00:02:24
Speaker
rural Minnesota. And so I would go biking around the lake, water skiing. I was a very quiet, very shy, cerebral kid. And I would, my early writing was really writing jokes. Like that was my obsession. I do standup comedy now as an amateur. And that was the beginning of my love of writing was my joke book.
00:02:51
Speaker
I, uh, and thanks for sharing that. Hey, just out of curiosity, if, if I can just jump right in on the, I had read that you've done some, some comedy work.
Comedy During the Pandemic
00:03:01
Speaker
Um, um, I, I love, I love standup comedy. What, what just out of curiosity, what, you know, with the pandemic and everything, uh, right now, and I know there's been a lot of online things. I mean, what, uh, how does a, how does a comedian get through the pandemic?
00:03:22
Speaker
Yeah, the Zoom shows, it's such a comedy. You need an audience in order for comedy to be comedy. More so, writing a book is not changed with the pandemic, but comedy is completely transformed. At first, last summer, I was doing a lot of Zoom shows and it felt a little bit
00:03:45
Speaker
I felt like a crazy person doing these Zoom shows, just like telling jokes to my screen. Everyone has themselves muted. There's like five other people on the Zoom comedy club. I moved back to Texas, and Texas is quite a bit more open than a lot of other states. And I've been doing socially distanced, wearing a mask. I've been doing open mics here up until I started the book marketing process.
00:04:15
Speaker
I was going up maybe five times a week. I don't know how reckless that is or what I did catch. Right. I got covered a couple of weeks ago. I was sick for a couple of days and I'm back now and I haven't been I don't plan on going to do stand up anytime soon while I'm doing the book launch, but it's completely transformed. Oddly enough, a lot of people from the West Coast have moved to Texas, Austin specifically, where I live to do stand up comedy. There's kind of a
00:04:46
Speaker
There's a, I can't even think of the word, but migration of people coming from the West Coast here. I don't know, do Texans laugh easier, Greg? What's the deal? They can actually get on stage. That's the best, that's the best sales pitch. You can actually get stage time here. Yeah, I was actually, I guess I was being a bit deaf there. I just thought there was a good market of laughter.
00:05:11
Speaker
All right.
Nostalgia in Minor League Baseball
00:05:12
Speaker
So I mentioned to you, Greg, I grew up Tuckett, Rhode Island, former AAA, the Boston Red Sox, and I think moved over to Wista, Wista, Massachusetts for the AAA now. But so I grew up going to baseball games, almost sounds nostalgic, you know, cheaper working class access, cheaper concessions.
00:05:37
Speaker
you know, senior heroes go up through, you know, through the minors, things like that. So I had that background. I spent some time in the Midwest and every area of the country I look, I kind of think about it in terms of baseball, being in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and of course, the West Coast. But what was your, what was your, what was your, what was your dream related to baseball? I mean, you wanted to be a,
00:06:05
Speaker
I saw in the book, you wanted to be a star. Inside your heart, what do you want to do when it came to baseball? My biggest dream was to be a light-hitting second baseman who was an exceptional defender on the Minnesota Twins. That was my dream.
00:06:24
Speaker
From the time I was in eighth grade, I just was obsessed with the Minnesota twins, the contraction kids. They were on the brink of being contracted along with the Montreal expos. And the twins came back to relevancy around the same time I started high school. And I was like, you know what? I want to be one of those guys. And I would watch those guys in the Metrodome. I mean, did you ever see any games? Did you ever go to the Metrodome?
00:06:50
Speaker
I did, and I'm going to tell you my Metrodome story after you continue this. Yes, so Metrodome, twins, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, so you know the Metrodome, no matter how much you love the team, the Metrodome was one of the most depressing places to watch a baseball game. They had the AstroTurf, it's indoors, and I get it, Minnesota April and Minnesota October can be really cold.
00:07:19
Speaker
being indoors is an asset in those months, but when it's 85 degrees and sunny and one of the only warm days of the year in the middle of the summer in Minnesota and you're indoors watching baseball, it does taint this experience a little bit, but I was still obsessed with those guys. Tori Hunter
00:07:38
Speaker
Jock Jones, Brad Radtke, Kory Koski, Dugman Kavich. I was just obsessed with those Minnesota Twins. And I wanted to be them to the point where I would go down to Fort Myers to watch their, not even their spring training. I would go to watch their spring training pre-workouts. So when pitchers and catchers report, this is back before the Minnesota Twins were a sexy team either. And nobody would be at workouts but me and a couple of newspaper guys. And I'd watch them and I'd say, I want to be one of those guys.
00:08:10
Speaker
Yeah, I had. So I mean, this is going to connect interestingly enough on the twins Red Sox bit. So I had two strange experiences at a twins game. And you're probably going to love both of them. The first one is I'm in the stands. And speaking of Doug Mankiewicz, he was at first base for the twins warming up.
00:08:40
Speaker
During the warm up, something happens on the field. Some players are cleared out and there's some things on the internet. I mean, this is, this is a while ago. Some, some, some people have cell phones. So you're able to look up maybe a website on your phone. Right. And Nomar Garcia Parra had been traded. Um, and the trade involved must've been Minnesota, Boston, and I think it involved the third team.
00:09:08
Speaker
Mankie Garcia Parra was gone from the Red Sox. So he never played that game so like a famous players like never came into the lineup and Mankiewicz Changed uniforms and played first base for the Red Sox that game Wow, he's he during the course in warm-ups He came out as a twin. He started first piece for the Red Sox. He was traded during that sequence and
00:09:32
Speaker
Um, just so a wild, a wild piece. The other story was there was a tornado speaking memory was saying inside there in the Metro dome. There was a tornado in August and the pressure differential outside of the dome compared to the pressure inside the dome. When people started to leave, um, the facility, the, um, the glass doors smashed.
00:09:56
Speaker
All around the stadium. Yeah. So first of all, I'm like, I'm in this dome watching the twins who just beat the Red Sox. So that was a good night for you. And I'm strolling out and the doors are smashing because of the pressure differential. The good we got nothing but the good old metric. I had quite the experience over there. And now, of course, it's a different kind of feel, as you alluded to, with the twins. Right.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, they got that new stadium in 2010, first of all, and I had moved I had moved since then I moved away from Minnesota in 2008. And they got that new stadium. And
00:10:39
Speaker
man, when I went and saw that place for the first time and I thought about all those years, I went as a kid to the Metro dome buying $6 cheap seats. I mean, they almost literally couldn't give their tickets away at the Metro dome when they're at the mid nineties team, when they were right. So I, you know, we'd get $6 seats and dollar hot dogs. It felt like they had dollar hot dogs, like five nights a week with the target field. When I saw that the first time I just teared up just
00:11:07
Speaker
I don't know. It was like I had accomplished something, you know, almost as though I'd had some part in them building themselves back up to relevance.
Writing 'Clubby': From Idea to Memoir
00:11:16
Speaker
And now they're back their home run smashing team. And to be quite frank, I don't watch baseball as much as I used to. I allude to that a little bit in the book about, you know, my time in the minors as a clubhouse attendant.
00:11:31
Speaker
I don't want to have a cynical view of the game, but it did paint my perception of baseball to the point where I definitely don't watch the game the same way. I don't watch it so much as a fan anymore. I watch it as a guy who used to live in the equipment closet and was down there on the field with the guys.
00:11:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And Greg, of course, you know, talking about the book clubby minor league baseball memoir. And let's let's let's let's get into that. It's about a couple of years where you worked as a clubby. And I think you it's quite clear from early on that what you're doing is stripping away the the gloss of the spectacle of the game. Right. Just kind of like
00:12:17
Speaker
There's workers, there's low wages, there's getting by, there's players with dreams and it's life, right? And so you're a writer and you appreciate writing and do some work around writing.
00:12:40
Speaker
When you started your baseball dream, was it a, was it a baseball dream? Was it a writing dream? Was it a, I want a decent job. And what, what was, what do you think the journey was going to be as you went into what the experiences of what became clubby the book? I had no idea. I was just living my life after college. I had no idea that this was the genesis of a creative work at all. I was, I graduated with an English degree in 2011 from Winthrop university.
00:13:09
Speaker
my only job experience before graduation was being an equipment manager for the division one Winthrop Eagles. And I was actually at Winthrop on a baseball scholarship for washing jock straps. And that was my only job experience when I graduated. And it was almost like I fell into professional baseball, where I didn't have
00:13:34
Speaker
I think as an artist, I still do have a lot of insecurities about, am I going to be able to maintain this financially? Am I going to be able to maintain this as far as my sanity goes? A full-time artist is a hard thing to maintain, and I definitely didn't have the confidence to dive fully into that out of college. Sure. It was a fluke timing thing where
00:13:58
Speaker
A clubhouse attendant job does not normally get listed online. Those get passed down from generation to generation usually. And I just happened to find a listing for this clubhouse attendant position with the Aberdeen Ironbirds. And I was like, I love baseball. I'm going to go into this world. And what I discovered was I never wanted this to be an expose. I didn't want this to be a
00:14:26
Speaker
you know, a cynical view of the game. I just wanted to tell a story of what happened and try to tell it as truthfully as possible. And what I found was some unsavory truths in minor league baseball. Yeah. And, and, and I, you know, I, I know money and getting by and, and, and just the intensity of that from day to day and the, yeah.
00:14:49
Speaker
the long haul of the baseball season. I mean, everybody talks about how long this this season. I mean, typical circumstances. We're talking about baseball in a pandemic where we just probably just, you know, wanted to occur in general or, you know, like, you know, in some some way that we understand it. But when you when you when you started to have the experience of being close to the game and you kind of happen upon it,
00:15:21
Speaker
You you you get into this a lot during the book as far as feeling part of the team or connecting to experiences that make you feel like, you know, you're helping the players with, you know, get by or what was that piece like? I mean, did you do you feel at the end of the day that you took it really seriously and, you know, wanted to be part of the team and part of that, you know, fabric and connection is that what happened or did you kind of feel alienated from that?
00:15:50
Speaker
you know, with your role. Yeah, it's a hard line. There's a big part of me at the time, I didn't want to care about it as much as I did. You know, I want I wanted to be more, you know, this book is a reflection of how I saw the world at that time. And I think at the time I wanted to be distanced
00:16:07
Speaker
But I also, it was like the little, like I said, I was the youngest of five boys and I felt like I was in a clubhouse full of older brothers, even though these guys were the same age as me. And I desperately wanted their approval, the players, the coaches, whoever, without letting them know that I wanted their approval. And while at the same time, I had a position of, you know, in some ways, significant power, like I held some
00:16:31
Speaker
When it comes to baseball, the little stuff matters a lot like food and equipment is a huge commodity. Some guys don't care about what happens in the game. All they care about is the post game spread. And that was my duty. And I would hear. Yeah. I mean, I would hear about transactions before other guys out here, conversations in the coach's office about who was going to get fired and who was going to get moved up. And I would.
00:17:00
Speaker
I don't know. I feel like I would wield that information to try and gain some sort of status in the clubhouse. But looking back on it now, I think it's real obvious that I wanted so badly to be a part of the team that I just wasn't willing to admit it to myself at the time, even to the point where when I wrote the first draft, this is my college or my graduate school thesis, club is. And when I was workshopping it in grad school, I was writing it as though it was an expose. So I was it was a completely
00:17:30
Speaker
journalistic view, research heavy, not my, I wasn't a character in it whatsoever. I was trying to be completely a face narrator. And one of my best friends in the workshop, she said, it's shocking how much this person wants to be a part of this world, and they're not allowing themselves to be a character in it. And we're talking about me.
00:17:55
Speaker
And just feeling the tension, just feeling the tension in the story, probably around that? Exactly. Yeah.
Why Writers Love Baseball
00:18:01
Speaker
Yes. And she was, you know, she's one of my closest friends and she had that insight to know me as a person as well. And as the author. And once I realized that I was the main character of the story, it completely opened up what I was what I was able and willing to explore narratively, including like these uncomfortable little brother feelings that I had as a clubhouse attendant.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah. And there's, there's a lot of that. I mean, there's a lot of psychology in life, uh, in the book and everybody was talking to Greg Larson, uh, new book, uh, clubby coming out, uh, April, April one, right? Right in time for, or right around the time we get a first pitch in baseball. Um, Greg, what, what is it about baseball that attracts writers and thinkers? I mentioned this question, you know, like what, what is it about good old
00:18:51
Speaker
Baseball and I know you I know you did it in the book too, right? Because you're thinking about life you got relationships What am I doing on this planet? What what is it about baseball that that? Proves to be pretty darn fertile ground for that question. I think More than anything. It's a byproduct of the fact that the game moves slower than other popular games. I think Baseball is a game of
00:19:16
Speaker
Absence more than it is. It's a game of nothing more than is a game of something You know the absence of a clock a baseball game in theory could start today and last until the end of mankind It would just keep going on and on and you know about that with the pot tuck it Red Sox the 33 and he came long. Just came in baseball. It's right. Yeah. I know that more than anybody I
00:19:43
Speaker
Well, somebody once mentioned to me, I'm going to ask you to explain a little bit more of the writer's connection to baseball. But a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, Eddie, said to me, isn't it strange in baseball how the defense controls the ball? Right. Name another sport like that. I'm like, whoa, man, the defense controls the ball. But let you go on a bit more about
00:20:12
Speaker
Writers in in baseball and the big theme you're saying there's space for it you think space space Yes, that is an interesting word too because space is a huge theme in this book and I think that's tied into it like Baseball is so tied to nostalgia and it's so tied to childhood and it's so tied to our relationships with our parents and our relationships with our community that
00:20:39
Speaker
I think we project this cosmic level of perfection onto the game that goes all the way down to 60 feet and 6 inches from home plate to pitcher's mound, 90 feet between base paths.
00:20:57
Speaker
I don't know. The same way we project a sort of perfection onto our childhood at times, I think we project that same level of perfection onto the game of baseball. And that just naturally lends itself to poetic contemplation. And then the fact that the game is so spacious, that it is so literally timeless, there's no clocks in the game, allows us to sit down and think deeply about it. And I think those factors all attract writers.
00:21:26
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you so much for your thoughts on that. I mean, there's a, there's a lot there and I, and actually agree in an approach of why some of those, um, you know, some of those conditions might, might be there for it.
00:21:38
Speaker
And I like reading your writing and you do a great job. One of the things that I connected to personally was that sense of place or what the concessions smelled like, it felt like, or what the
00:21:58
Speaker
kind of run down in this industrial area you were driving, you know, like whatever the conditions were, I could really feel them in a lot of those small baseball pounds. You did a good job conveying. I could hear the racket and feel the place. Was that something you were really trying to get at, maybe the grittiness of minor league baseball?
00:22:21
Speaker
Interesting. I had never thought of it in that way. You know, those kinds of things, they happened on a subconscious level creatively, you know, like, if I think of a detail, like the smell of the cinnamon pecans dancing around the concourse, and I think of it in the writing process, I try to trust my instincts without thinking, oh, I'm trying to convey a sense of play, or I'm trying to convince convey a sense of grittiness.
00:22:46
Speaker
I just try to trust that instinct. More than anything, I just want to create scenes. You know, I think about a book like this, like a movie. I mean, people have been telling me that they have been binge reading it. People tell me that it's it puts you right there in the clubhouse and in the stadium. And I think that's a byproduct of my my writing process where I think about it like I'm painting a picture. I think about it like I'm filming a movie scene.
00:23:15
Speaker
And I try not to think about like the, the what I try not to think about what it is that it's conveying. I just try to paint as accurate a picture as I possibly can. Yeah. I, uh, and, and, and I appreciate that too. And I, I, I liked, or I guess I could connect with, uh, your, your use of dialogue. And I think people who will be reading the book and know the book or have an advanced, you know, knowledge of it.
00:23:44
Speaker
connect with kind of the banter and the dialogue as you do it. I think that's why they see it in a cinematic forms. And of course, you know, what we're talking about is the iron birds here. We're talking about, you know, for baseball folks and even outside of baseball, you know, Cal Ripken, the Baltimore Orioles, you know, the Mid-Atlantic. I mean, you can connect with a lot of those.
00:24:04
Speaker
Um, you know, a lot of those pieces, but I, here's a question I wanted to ask you, Gray. Sure. And of course, I know that your press and, uh, Brad Baluchian of former guests, something rather than nothing, uh, University of Nebraska, uh, press, putting out some nice, nice books here, obviously. Brad's book is, is, is fascinating and it's fascinating for very, very different reasons than yours, right? You know, the, uh,
00:24:29
Speaker
Interviews a variety, you know 11 12 baseball players from a randomized pack system, right a randomized pack, right? And these are guys who went through the game They're out of the game. Some of them don't want to talk about the game Most of them want to talk about the game or where the good wings are or how golfing is going, right? It's after it's after after the game wax pack and you're you get the the minor league memoir
00:24:59
Speaker
Did you did you make did you make any connections about some of the stuff you ran it to and maybe some of the Some of the the problematic pieces of minor league baseball Did you connect to some of those themes to the story with the bookend being a pollution with yeah Oh, absolutely, especially with the coaching staff at the low minor league level particularly in the iron birds a lot of the coaches were former major leaguers and
00:25:28
Speaker
And, you know, in minor league baseball, an organization will have what's called roving coaches that are roving around from one, they're not associated with any particular minor league team. They just coach the entire minor league system for the Orioles in this case. And they're just rove around from team to team. And a lot of those examples, Al Bumbry example in the book was Al Bumbry, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um, and those guys.
00:25:55
Speaker
Those guys are very similar. I saw a lot of similarities between those guys and the guys that Brad interviewed. And a lot of them stayed with it because they loved baseball. Absolutely. But a lot of them, I believe, stayed with it. They stayed in the game after they had retired because they had no other choice. And maybe for similar reasons as why I got into baseball, because that was the only job experience I had. And I just wonder.
00:26:24
Speaker
I don't know if I could put, I don't know if I could put a percentage on it, but I just wonder what percentage of those guys are really. Recapturing trying to recapture some past glory. If they just think of it as like, this is a cool summer job to continue as I'm in my post playing days. Maybe I still get a pension from major league baseball. Uh, and I wonder how many of them are willing to be honest with themselves about what the true answer to that question is. Yeah. I am.
Overcoming Writing Challenges
00:26:53
Speaker
Gary Allenson, right? Yes. In the book. I connected with that as well. In 1978, Gary Allenson was the MVP of the International League for the Pawtucket Red Sox. And I remember him, he was supposed to come up after Carlton Fisk, who is a character in Brad Bullock's book, the one he couldn't get to talk to, Carl. Right.
00:27:21
Speaker
I, Gary, I mean, you reached out to me, our story, once we put it together, it makes the rest of everything. But Gary Allison, I didn't know this. I remember, you know, I'm going to all the Pawtucket Red Sox games and, and Carlton Fisk, of course, you know, he leaves the Red Sox now, whoever's a catcher in the minor league system is going to be
00:27:41
Speaker
A very you know, somebody's gonna be scrutinized and yeah, Gary Allenson was the 1978 MVP for AAA internationally for the for the Pawtucket Red Sox and He's also was was he the coach manager with the average? 2012 and yeah, he also showed up in Brad's book Gary Allenson has been around the block quite a bit he shows up and and
00:28:07
Speaker
in different places, including in Colombia, including in the waxback, and including, apparently, the International League MVP ceremony. I had no idea. That's no joke. Winning the MVP of AAA is no joke. Well, that's no joke. Yeah, it was 1978. He had 20 bombs, 78 RBIs. He had a big BOP in the year in 1978.
00:28:29
Speaker
stern guy, he's a he's a hell of a character. But he would everything he did was on a line. He was short, like very much catcher stature. But he had these really intimidating blue eyes. And he would just stare you down and he marched everywhere like a drill sergeant. I was terrified of that guy. Love he was adorable to at the same time.
00:28:51
Speaker
I love seeing some of the characters. I think what's interesting about your book is that you do open up and not in an exposing type of way or not an exploitative type of way, but just how a system is going to work. That there's a major league club that kind of runs the shots. Their interests are more important than everybody. And just hearing about in a big system when it comes to players, travel, rehab assignments,
00:29:18
Speaker
how it all works, you know, how how, you know, through the different levels, a minor league system works. And I believe there's a larger minor league shake up going on, I think, economic affiliation. Yeah. Hey, do you know anything about that? You want to mention anything just in general about what you see going on with the minor leagues as we, you know, as baseball moves ahead? Oh, for sure. I mean,
00:29:44
Speaker
What I'm seeing in the minor league system is a bunch of, uh, about 40 teams are being taken. They've lost affiliation with the major leagues, meaning that they're no longer associated with any major league team. And that means they probably just won't exist anymore. I frankly think it's a good thing. I think major league baseball was trying to take care of too many children, so to speak. And a lot of their house wasn't an order facility. Now granted Ripken stadium where the iron birds.
00:30:10
Speaker
play in where I was posted. That is a gorgeous stadium. It's quite an anomaly for that level though. There are plenty of stadiums at that level that just aren't equipped to take care of future major leaguers and players are getting paid more, which I think is important. Still not a lot. They got, you know, they get, for example, $500 a week instead of $290 a week, for example, in single A.
00:30:35
Speaker
I think they're good changes. They're going to be painful for towns that are losing their teams. But in time, in a couple of years, people will forget just like anything else. Yeah.
00:30:49
Speaker
Tell us about, I was interested in given the unique point where you are, you know, you're promoting this book and of course, you know, things obviously change with the pandemic and your ability to connect and get this out there. What's the experience as you're looking to, you know, with the book release tied to baseball? Is this a very, you know,
00:31:17
Speaker
you know, hopeful, exciting experience for you as you know, this, this is your book. This, this baby is coming out this spring. So what's going on with that? I'm doing everything I possibly can to get the word out. I'm, I'm doing podcasts. I'm doing interviews with newspapers. I'm open to live events. Ideally, I think it would be great to go into minor league stadiums and do book signings there and maybe even do readings. I don't know how realistic that's going to be over the summer. I don't know, you know, how open or safe that's going to be.
00:31:46
Speaker
But right now I'm just at a point where I'm trying to get it in the hands of as many people in minor league clubhouses and as many fans as possible. Like that's all I care about right now is just sharing this story with as many people as possible.
00:32:03
Speaker
Yeah, we got some baseball out where I am. Baseball is, you know, as you know, I mentioned, I'm from the East Coast sometime in the Midwest, but I'm out here. I'm fascinated by West Coast baseball culture because in California, it's different than Oregon. On the western side of Oregon, it rains too much. But on the the eastern side, baseball is pretty darn big in the high desert down south, like Klamath Falls.
00:32:29
Speaker
Of course the Oregon State the beavers have won the national championship before in Jacobi, Ellsbury Play for the Red Sox and the Yankees came out of Madras, Oregon. There's Salem Kaiser Volcanoes, I think they're a single a Yeah for the Giants. So yeah, even just driving around right here. Yeah as part of the culture and in these small towns, but
00:32:54
Speaker
This realignment and this change is certainly going to be something that we see, you know, shake out or something that you expect. Haven't seen what's going on. And I just read some of the news recently about how affiliations is going to be a pretty much a pretty darn noticeable realignment is best way to sum it up. Do you say? Yeah, absolutely. What I wanted to know is
00:33:24
Speaker
about your process in creating this book, this novel, right? As you know, the podcast gets into the creative process. Writers have it hard. It's not easy to write a book. It's not easy to get it done, get it reviewed, get it edited, get it promoted, get in people's hands. So you're connected with that right now. What is the process for you in creation and in creating this book? What was it like for you to say, hey,
00:33:53
Speaker
This is the story as I have it and you talk to folks They say you got to put yourself as a character in there and you put yourself as a character in there And now you've got this this this piece of art. It's yours. You created it How do you feel? What's that like? It feels up until the point
00:34:14
Speaker
It's just a manuscript at first. It's a file on my computer. And it feels like a process of insanity. Because me writing this book was such an insular process. I'm sitting in a library in Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia on Saturday afternoon trying to type my 2,000 words for the day.
00:34:36
Speaker
And I'm on words, 33,527 of an eventual 97,000 word first draft. And I'm wondering, why am I wasting my time with it? Nobody's going to care about this. This is self-indulgent. All of that self-loathing. Yeah. Why? Why? Why? I don't know if that's a necessary part of the creative process. It seems to drive me. I think my therapist would be happier if I actually got rid of that self-loathing inner monologue.
00:35:06
Speaker
But that, it just seems like an exercise in insanity for so long. I had the finished manuscript, sent it out to editors and publishers and agents, got rejected from more than a hundred over the course of a couple of years, gave up on the book. I started going into ghostwriting actually. And so like, I was given my creative juice for about two years. I was given my creative juice to other people's books.
00:35:32
Speaker
And Clubby I thought was just something fun that I tried in grad school and I thought it might never see the world. And then, I don't know, it was summer 2019 and I decided to give it another shot. I don't remember exactly what triggered me to get back into it, but I sent out another hundred plus. I got rejected from 221 agents, editors, and publishers, including the University of Nebraska Press. They, my eventual publisher, they rejected me the first time I queried them.
00:36:03
Speaker
I cut out about 20,000 words, a lot of really deep research-heavy backstory that just bogged down the story. I have to correct you on one thing, Ken. It's a flattering choice, but you keep referring to it as a novel. I think that's a beautiful way to describe it, but a novel is necessarily fiction.
00:36:28
Speaker
And as a memoir is nonfiction, but I tried to write it with the same tenants characters scene dialogue plot as a good novel. So the fact that you refer to it as a novel is like the greatest compliment that I could get. Like people telling me that it's a binge worthy book is incredible. I was so scared. I thought nobody's going to care about this book. Look at all of these agents and publishers who are rejecting it. Why would any readers care about it? And now I'm starting to get the early feedback and it's like,
00:36:58
Speaker
Wow, I feel like a punk rock badass for going against all of these people who said I couldn't do it and now here we are and people are enjoying it.
00:37:09
Speaker
Well, and I appreciate
Philosophical Aspects of Baseball
00:37:10
Speaker
your comments, and I too, yeah, that actually was a slip because the way that, having read it, it hangs on my head in novelistic form, right? Yes. But one of the things you said there, and I think, you know, within the podcast, I mean, heading towards
00:37:29
Speaker
episodes on the podcast. And as you know, I talk to writers and sculptors, painters, musicians, et cetera. And it is really just
00:37:44
Speaker
unimaginable process of acceptance, rejection, where do I fit in? Is it worthy? Does this speak to anybody? Does it only speak to me? It's such a difficult process. It's commonly referred to as the imposter syndrome or am I the person who's supposed to create? Aren't other people supposed to write baseball books and things like that?
00:38:08
Speaker
So, um, you know, I've always felt I think there's differences between the arts and I've always had a soft heart for the Having writing shorter writings myself. I think writing is so magnificently Difficult that I always kind of am a bit more into how do you see it through right because it's such a long process it is I mean it literally feels like a
00:38:36
Speaker
It feels like something that only a crazy person would do. And because it's you're so biased, you can get so stuck in your own head. You know, like, do you ever feel that way when you're writing something where you you're so in your own head, you just wonder why do it at all? Yeah, yeah, that's the kind of fundamental question behind it. So, Greg, something rather than nothing. Yeah.
00:39:02
Speaker
I'm asking you both. Why is there something rather than nothing? But in baseball, and I know you talked about this something and nothing the space in this in the game is baseball game Is there a lot of something there is there a lot of nothing there a lot of nothing? I think a lot more nothing than something and that's what makes it beautiful is the absences the absences of clock the absences of You know most sports
00:39:28
Speaker
Like basketball, hockey, football, they have a uniform size of a field. Baseball, you go to any different stadium, they have a different outfield fence. Each one has its own personality. So there's an absence of structure in a certain way. Yeah, I think there's so much space in the game that that's what makes it beautiful.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
Personal Stories and Book Promotion
00:39:53
Speaker
Before we connect the listeners here, how to make sure they get that book and learn some more info about the book, I had another kind of bigger question for you about the experiences that you relay in the book, in the memoir.
00:40:15
Speaker
Did you struggle a whole bunch with as far as what to tell, right? I mean, cause it's a screwy story, right? I mean, you're in the minor leagues, you're sleeping in the, you're sleeping in the clubhouse. You got relationship issues. You know, you're trying to get money in your pocket. You have a little more than others. You go through conundrums of, should they have more? Should I have like telling the personal components of that personal story? How did that feel for you to, to, to get into all that stuff?
00:40:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's the question with the memoir, isn't it? When I wrote the first draft, I had to think about it solely as... I had to almost think about it like a sociopath. These aren't people, these are characters. I'll think about them as people in the edits.
00:41:00
Speaker
Otherwise, that that question can be crippling for a nonfiction writer of, oh, am I exposing too much? Is this going to be embarrassing for me? Is somebody going to sue me for this? All those questions can completely choke a nonfiction project. And I've seen it happen with some of my fellow classmates in grad school.
00:41:21
Speaker
And I just thought, you know what? I'm just going to tell everything, like the way I see it. And I'm still nervous to send this copy to characters. You know, Alan Mills is the pitching coach on the Iron Birds in this book, and he's still in baseball. And I was nervous to send him a copy. He felt like he was the villain in the book. And I thought, no way, you're not the villain. You're my foil, if anything. We exaggerate each other. But you're not the villain. You're one of my favorite characters.
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah. So going through that, that, that process and, um, no, and I, I wanted to, I wanted to thank you for it because I believe there's a very, uh, human element in, I think getting into, you know, sorry, I'm a labor guy, right? I work for work for union. So I was thinking about the terms of, you know, when we think about wages or we think everybody's a superstar, we think that everybody hasn't made.
00:42:09
Speaker
A lot of times we're not taking proper attention to say, Hey, do we know what's going on? You know, is it, is it like it seems? And I think like anything else in life, baseball is not everything that it looks like. Um, and.
00:42:22
Speaker
You know, I know from your comments, as far as your connection to the story that you're going, still moving through that and figuring out what it all means for you as a fan, as a viewer, right? A hundred percent. I have a very complicated relationship with baseball and having this book out in the world only complicated. It's more complicated, more, but it's also. It's also an opportunity for me to understand like. Yeah, what is my relationship to the game? What is my relationship to seeing those guys not making all of that make not making enough money?
00:42:52
Speaker
Guilt associated with it. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and well again it's just it's it's We got I got beautiful weather out here in Oregon and in and the book clubby and talking to you and baseball I think it's a year to year thing that we think about but prior to letting you go Greg. Um, can you let can you let the listeners know how to Connect to the book. I know you got a website for it or or also if you want
00:43:21
Speaker
people to kind of connect you, connect to you directly distribution. I don't know any of that stuff at your time. Absolutely. Uh, the easiest way to connect with me to pre-order the book, to get extra content is on clubbybook.com. That's C L U B B I E book.com. And I'll have access to, uh, social media, everything else that you want to associate with clubby is found there. Easy enough, right? Yes, sir.
00:43:52
Speaker
All right. Greg, thank you so much for joining something rather than nothing. I know that there's even more to talk about, and I think it might be kind of fun as we get into the baseball season, the book gets out there. Maybe we can check back in during the summer and just see how things are developing and using the
00:44:19
Speaker
baseball season is kind of the connective tissue here, so. I would love to. All right. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Everybody, Greg Larson, author of Club E. Great time with you, Greg, and great success with the book. We'll talk soon, all right? Thank you, sir. Take care. This is something rather than nothing.