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History, Mystery, Deception, Intrigue
A New Kind of Baseball Novel
ANNOUNCING
The Federal Case
A Legal Thriller for Baseball Fans.
A Baseball Book for Lovers of Legal Drama.
To Be Published By Sunbury Press in June 2023.
For a Quick Peek CLICK HERE.
Big Changes Are Underway! The Cooperstown Trilogy Is No More... And More
A trilogy is comprised of three books. So what happens when you have more than three, and they are all related to one another in some way?
You have a series.
ANNOUNCING: The Deadball Files
I am excited to announce that The Cooperstown Trilogy has a new publishing home -- Sunbury Press. The books will appear under the press's Milford House imprint. Sunbury has 600 authors and 1000 titles, so this is a significant move up in reach and marketing. PLUS, there will now be four titles available, all from Sunbury, with a fifth in progress. So not only have I outgrown my first publisher, but I have also outgrown the trilogy label. From now on, my baseball thrillers will constitute a series we are calling The Deadball Files.
It's a perfect name. All of my novels are contremporary mysteries and thrillers, but each one has its origins in some event or personality of baseball's Deadball Era -- essentially the years between about 1900 and 1920. It was an important time for baseball and for society in general, and one that gave rise to issues that are still with us. We'll be exploring those together in The Deadball Files.
TEMPORARY PAUSE: The books of the original trilogy are no longer available from Summer Game Books, and are temporarily unavailable for sale at Amazon or elsewhere. All four titles should be back on the market by the end of June 2023.
The Deadball Files: Redefining Baseball Fiction
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"If you like baseball and history, read this [series]."
-- Readers' Favorite
Baseball... America's National Pastime for going on two centuries.
It all seems so simple, so pure. But behind the green grass and iconic heroes, professional baseball has always been driven by greed, ambition, a thirst for fame, a lust for power, and a ceaseless conflict of motives that goes far beyond winning and losing. The hope is that no one notices. Arguably, no American institution outside of politics has replicated so well and for so long the seething social cauldron that bubbles just below the surface of American life, and none has hidden it so effectively. Perhaps in that sense as well, baseball truly is our National Pastime.
Take the many real and known missteps, mysteries, scandals, lies and coverups that have characterized the history of the sport. Mix in a few more that can seem just as real. Add a dash of realism that might be fiction, a dash of fiction that might be more real than you imagine, and you have the recipe for three baseball thrillers that take you to the secret heart and soul of baseball. That is The Deadball Files.
JB Manheim brings to life his decades of expertise in persuasion and strategic communication through these fictional stories of baseball behind the scenes. The Deadball Files will lead you to question whether what you think you know about the game and about the powers who control it is real, or whether it is just a carefully nurtured product of deception, misdirection, and propaganda.
It all seems so simple, so pure. But behind the green grass and iconic heroes, professional baseball has always been driven by greed, ambition, a thirst for fame, a lust for power, and a ceaseless conflict of motives that goes far beyond winning and losing. The hope is that no one notices. Arguably, no American institution outside of politics has replicated so well and for so long the seething social cauldron that bubbles just below the surface of American life, and none has hidden it so effectively. Perhaps in that sense as well, baseball truly is our National Pastime.
Take the many real and known missteps, mysteries, scandals, lies and coverups that have characterized the history of the sport. Mix in a few more that can seem just as real. Add a dash of realism that might be fiction, a dash of fiction that might be more real than you imagine, and you have the recipe for three baseball thrillers that take you to the secret heart and soul of baseball. That is The Deadball Files.
JB Manheim brings to life his decades of expertise in persuasion and strategic communication through these fictional stories of baseball behind the scenes. The Deadball Files will lead you to question whether what you think you know about the game and about the powers who control it is real, or whether it is just a carefully nurtured product of deception, misdirection, and propaganda.
The Books
Book One
What is the REAL story behind the death of baseball icon Christy Mathewson? Why has it remained a secret all these years? This twisty-turny tale, featuring Ty Cobb and several other future Hall of Famers, starts from some genuine but little-known WWI documents that call into question the traditional account of Mathewson's exposure to poison gas in France and his subsequent early death. Was the poison gas incident merely a myth? If so, what darker reality was it designed to cover up? And what uncomfortable truths might lie behind this "official" history, truths that the government, the Army, and Baseball have kept hidden to this day?
A dead reporter's buried notes. A lost journal. A secret code. Award-winning writer Adam Wallace and his friend Jason Drumm are on the trail, and you won't believe what they discover.
But maybe you should.
But maybe you should.
Book Two
What if there was a secret society of Baseball elders, who in the wake of the Black Sox scandal, decided that to preserve the sanctity of The Game they would create a secret repository where they could bury forever its most explosive secrets? And what if these “GameKeepers” formed an underground organization to guard any evidence of these dangerous scandals, a mysterious organization with a failsafe security structure, an inviolable oath of silence for its members, and an ironclad hierarchy of succession to perpetuate its mission across the generations? And what if it all worked perfectly for nearly a century. Until it didn't. Suddenly new questions arose: Who would control these secrets, and to what end? Would The Game itself survive?
Enter Liz Fairchild, the innocent bystander who literally holds the key to the entire mystery. Liz enlists the help of baseball sleuth Adam Wallace, fresh from uncovering the secret behind Christy Mathewson's death. Together they break through Baseball’s most impenetrable wall, only for Adam to be faced with an excruciating choice: Which sacred oath would he break?
Enter Liz Fairchild, the innocent bystander who literally holds the key to the entire mystery. Liz enlists the help of baseball sleuth Adam Wallace, fresh from uncovering the secret behind Christy Mathewson's death. Together they break through Baseball’s most impenetrable wall, only for Adam to be faced with an excruciating choice: Which sacred oath would he break?
Book Three
For a century or more, Civil War hero Abner Doubleday was credited with inventing the modern game of baseball in Cooperstown in 1839. His name is on historical markers, playing fields, and for a time, even a professional baseball team. The Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown on the hundredth anniversary of his invention.
More recently, however, baseball historians have taken a more nuanced view of the game's inception, and have discounted Doubleday's role altogether. Some have gone so far as to speculate that, being long dead when the myth was created around 1905, Doubleday was a convenient foil for a conspiracy led by Albert Spalding, an adherent of a prominent philosophical and religious movement of the day, to set in stone the American roots of the game.
What if the historians are right? And wrong? At the same time? What if we have only begun to grasp the true dimensions of the mystery surrounding Abner Doubleday and the origins of baseball?
Tech entrepreneur Paul Chi Mannington is after a still deeper truth, and Doubleday may point the way. Paul calls on baseball sleuth Adam Wallace to put the Doubleday myth to the test. But he's not the only one on Abner's trail!
More recently, however, baseball historians have taken a more nuanced view of the game's inception, and have discounted Doubleday's role altogether. Some have gone so far as to speculate that, being long dead when the myth was created around 1905, Doubleday was a convenient foil for a conspiracy led by Albert Spalding, an adherent of a prominent philosophical and religious movement of the day, to set in stone the American roots of the game.
What if the historians are right? And wrong? At the same time? What if we have only begun to grasp the true dimensions of the mystery surrounding Abner Doubleday and the origins of baseball?
Tech entrepreneur Paul Chi Mannington is after a still deeper truth, and Doubleday may point the way. Paul calls on baseball sleuth Adam Wallace to put the Doubleday myth to the test. But he's not the only one on Abner's trail!