What would it take to become the world's greatest hitter of all time?

Baseball is as much a part of American history as any other endeavor the nation has ever undertaken. Growing up around the sport, it has been a huge part of my life as a player, fan, and student of the game. In my time, I have witnessed pitchers who have become so skilled at their trade that they seem virtually unhittable. Being a dreamer myself, I naturally had to ask, could a batsman not achieve the opposite feat and become apparently unstoppable?

Obviously his reputation was that of a thoroughbred base runner as well with as many tales to glorify his name. Yet all of these skills seemed fleeting in the wake of his mastery at the dish. For if playing baseball was Jaxsom’s chosen profession, the art of Swat was his life-long obsession. You see, Carl Jaxsom had refined his swing to perfection. His pendulum rhythm and precision timing were smooth and fluid and greasy fast like the crack of a whip. The handle of his bat was filed down to fit Carl’s custom

grip. His hand-eye exacted so completely that it seemed as though he could not miss and, what’s more, he could make a baseball do anything he wanted it to. Balls would seem to rise and drop over would-be fielders, curve into deep corners for extra bases; bunts would spin and twist away from bewildered defenses.

It was right about here that I sat up again breaking Gramps from his hypnosis.

“He never gets out? That’s impossible, Gramps,” I remitted with reasonable objection.

Without a second’s pause, he says, “That’s how everyone felt. But nuthin’ is impossible boy, just takes some fool ta do it. They told those Wright boys they’d never get off the ground.”

Pure Baseball is the story of an all-but forgotten baseball legend of epic lore who dreams of batting 1.000. Carl Jaxsom is a parallel of the classic, tragic, Greek mythological hero as a figure with a reputation for possessing baseball skills that are larger than life. He appears in the real world of baseball in 1904 Boston as a fanciful legend, seemingly manifested by folklore coming out of a closing American West. His tale is anchored deep in major moments of American history with possible ties to The Civil War, slavery, and the Indian Wars to name a few. In pursuit of his goal, Jaxsom's single-minded, adventurous nature manages to spark the imagination of an ever-industrializing nation. This fact is evidenced, in the story, in the case of the city of Boston itself, where two inevitably storied franchises are about to lock horns for the fist time in a battle for American League supremacy.

They weren’t called the Yanks yet and we still wasn’t the Sox ... but the bitter rivalry was the same. It wasn’t that we didn’t like New Yorkers; it was that we hated them. The smug way they walked around thinking that they lived in the greatest city with all the best people and all the best ball clubs. Sure they had a good team in the Highlanders with some talent no question, but after all we were still defending Champs. Though it was a few hours before the game, Boston’s home Huntington Avenue Grounds were already being converged upon from all sides as droves of people lined up to catch the city’s biggest spectacle.

It took almost a year to research all of the facts and detail presented in the story, such as little known tidbits about baseball (the Billy Owen Mystery), Boston, and American history, and I gained some extraordinary insight as to what life was like for our early twentieth century ancestors. It did not take long before I realized that there was a conspiracy story here that desperately needed to be fleshed out and tied into the tragic hero, Carl Jaxsom.

Ultimately, the question that needed to be asked was, was there more to the cancellation of the 1904 World Series than we know? Pure Baseball unapologetically plays with this idea, with the intention that this basis in history creates a deeper sense of authenticity for the reader. This, in turn, serves as a vehicle to send her or him to that time of 1904 Boston in a very real way.

From the train station Sal and I worked our way through the crowded dirt and cobblestone streets of Boston. Weaving in and out of packed sidewalks past gentlemen who rubbed shoulders in their long coats while tipping their top hats and bowlers to ladies shuffling past in the latest European fashions. We were as careful to avoid their cumbersome dresses as all the streetcars, horse-drawn wagons, and the odd, crazy, new motorized carriage. We could feel the energy surging over the series as people waved flags and sang songs touting the Americans. It was late afternoon by the time we made it to Tremont Street near Boylston. The entertainment district was marked by signs from the vaudeville houses and underground burlesque, which cropped up everywhere.

Legends and stories are something that are ingrained in our genes. We have passed them to our children verbally since before the advent of writing and undoubtably back to our beginnings. Stories are, therefore, our birthright and it is no mistake that the rhythm and structure of this story are based on Homer's classic poems Iliad and Odyssey. Like many other people, I grew up on bedtime stories and Pure Baseball is most definitely that. It is told by a grandfather to his young grandson with purpose. More than just trying to pass on his story, he is trying to convey to his young grandson some of the most important lessons in life. The life philosophy of this veteran of life is inherent in the plot and, as we discover, his perceptions of life are forever altered by this one particular boyhood experience. This is a key to any myth and any good story, in my estimation. Our personal philosophies on life, whether we are conscious of them or not, are what drive us – and consequently the characters in Pure Baseball – to act as we do.

Sal jumped down from my shoulders like an acrobat from a four-foot drop; first landing and then spinning to face me, arms raised high in exultation.

“You think Jaxsom is for real?” I asked.

Sal shrugged with a quizzical smirk. After all, who in their right mind could believe the stories were true? Maybe there was a man, I thought, but he couldn’t have done the things we were hearing.

“What were you hearing, Gramps?” came my over-excited utterance as I jumped up further from sleep now than in minutes past.

“Tuck back down boy and I’ll tell ya,” Gramps continued.

No one knew much a’ the truth about who he was or where he really come up from ’cept everyone seemed ta be hitched by blood or the Almighty ta’ ... somebody that knew someone that had heard a story about Jaxsom. And it was always the God’s honest truth or sworn over some mother’s grave, no matter if she was alive or dead.

Dozens of popular legends were going around Bean Town.