Their Glorious Summer

By Austin Gisriel

[Article] The summer of 1981 was indeed a fateful one for several young men who played collegiate summer ball in the Valley Baseball League (VBL) in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. For a trio of players on the New Market Rebels, it was the beginning of a journey that would see them enjoy lengthy major league careers. For three players on the Winchester Royals, Fate had seemingly propped open the door to legitimate dreams of future seasons in the big league sun as well, but 1981 would be the pinnacle of their baseball glory. It was a summer in which the team with Dennis Clow and Steve Peruso and Clay Daniel bested the team with Tom Browning and John Kruk and Dan Pasqua. Clow, Peruso, and Daniel together totaled 11 minor league seasons. Browning, Kruk, and Pasqua each played in the majors for 10 years or more.

Few would have predicted the degree of big league success for the Rebel trio. Browning was almost not allowed to return to the team, Pasqua was briefly dismissed from the team, and John Kruk, well "Johnny" did not fare well when he came up against a broom-stick wielding grandma after he accidentally spit tobacco juice on her carpet.

It was the Winchester Royals, founded by Keith Lupton who would go on to be named the executive of the year three times in three different minor leagues, who were the superior team. Their determination, their ability to stage improbable comebacks, and most of all their talent made the 1981 Winchester Royals one of the great summer league teams ever assembled.

Set as it was against the backdrop of the 1981 major league players’ strike, the story of the battle for the President’s Cup between the Rebels and the Royals epitomizes that mix of glory and poignancy that produces such passion in those who love the game.

An inspiring and easy read at only 7,000 words (14 pages).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Gisriel
• Release date: Jul 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465986962

Austin Gisriel

I truly enjoy “talking” to readers, although I suppose it’s more accurate in this day and age to say “messaging” with readers. After all, books are really a conversation, just one in which the author goes first and does a great deal of talking initially! But only initially. I hope that anyone who reads my books or simply comes across this author page will feel free to join the conversation. My first published works dealt with baseball—it is my first love—but I am expanding into other topics that I enjoy, and I am exploring them through fiction. Time Is A Pool (2016), a 10-story collection of flash fiction, is my first published effort in this regard, and there are two more releases planned for 2017. The first, The Secret of Their Midnight Tears, is a coming of age novel set during the early days of World War II. (Feel free to contact me for details!) The second, A Faith in the Crowd, is a “heavenly comedy” in which Sam Crawford suddenly finds himself dead and on his way to Heaven, a Heaven completely different from anything he ever read in his Sunday School books. I have degrees in psychology and theology, meaning that I now know many big words in those two fields, but for the most part, I have majored in Life and all its daily details. It is this quality which makes me a writer worth reading. Occasionally, however, I focus on the really big picture and so I have written “The History of the World” and have done it in three pdf pages. I am happy to send this to you in exchange for the privilege of adding you to my email list. Don’t worry: I don’t offer any courses and I don’t churn out a book every six weeks just to keep selling you something. I’ll send you a note to say hello, and tell you about my latest blog entry (about one every other week) as well as news about work. For your free “History of the World” email me at agisriel at yahoo dot com Please visit my blog where you can read more about me if you like. Let the conversation begin!

Book preview

Their Glorious Summer

[Article]

By

Austin Gisriel

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Other works by Austin:

Time Is A Pool

Safe at Home: A Season in the Valley

3 Tales From the Grand Old Game

Boots Poffenberger: Hurler, Hero, Hell Raiser

Follow Austin on his blog.

Follow Austin on Twitter @AustinGisriel

Copyright 2011 by Austin Gisriel

Title page, etc. revised 2016

All rights reserved

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Their Glorious Summer

The ability to play the game of baseball is a unique gift, and it develops in unique ways. The best Little Leaguer doesn’t necessarily make his high school team. The best high schooler doesn’t necessarily make his college team. And it is at this time in life—say at 18, 19, or 20 years old—that the scouts begin to engage in the art of judging whether a young man has already reached his peak ability and, therefore, is of no interest to them or, conversely, that he will continue to blossom if he is signed to play professional baseball. The great prize, of course, is to find a young man who will bloom at the major league level.

Often, there is no rhyme or reason as to why one player signed off the sandlots makes it to the majors, while another with seemingly equal talent does not. Far more often than we would like to admit, such success and failure are often the product of luck. An injury that derails the chances of one player, for example, enhances the chances of his replacement. Such events we deem Fate.

Sometimes, it is not luck, but a fatal flaw that is exposed at higher levels of play. Sometimes, Fate takes the form of a curveball and the attendant inability to hit it.

The summer of 1981 was indeed a fateful one for several such young men who played collegiate summer ball in the Valley Baseball League (VBL) in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. For a trio of