A Little Background on Swoon '64
The Writing in Time Mysteries feature modern-day amateur detective Tracy Shaw looking into unsolved crimes from the past. I started the Writing in Time Mysteries because of a desire to record the times I grew up in. I might have called them Writing inMy Time Mysteries. Maybe I should have. I wanted to set them in the city Igrew up in and to tell the story against the backdrop of events—good orbad—that are part of Philadelphia’s social history. Picking the first topicwasn’t hard. Few events united the city like the saga of the 1964 Phillies.
I hoped to create a parallel between the story and theevent. If the Phillies had a swoon, the characters needed to experience a swoonas well. Swoon ’64 is not a baseball novel but the action takes place duringthe fall of 1964, the end of the baseball season, the time of arecord-breaking September swoon of the Philadelphia Phillies.
Why swoon and not slump?From what I can gather, sports teams recover from a slump. But a swoon isterminal. The tournament, the competition, the season is coming to an end and thereis no time for recovery. Such was the situation for the 1964 Phillies. Thus, ithad to be the same for the characters.
No need for details but at the end of the season with twelvegames to play, the Phillies needed one win to clinch the National LeaguePennant. (There were no playoffs back then.) They lost ten in a row and tiedfor second place.
Why did I pick this background event?
I grew up in a family that loved baseball ina city that loved the Phillies. Or,maybe Philadelphians loved to hate them. I don’t really know. I was too youngto understand the intricacies of the relationship between a city and its teamthat, for several years in the late 1950s, had a lock on the basement spot inthe National League. And, not only did they clinch last place for four years ina row, they did so in a spectacular fashion. In 1961 their record was 47-107-1and, yes, that is the right order. Win-Loss-Tie.
The memory of the excitement of 1950’s Whiz Kids’ first-place finish was just that, a memory. The hope of revenge for their 4-0 WorldSeries loss to the New York Yankees was fading.
So, I imagine that expectations started to rise when in1962, after four straight years of finishing 8th in an eight-teamleague, they climbed into seventh position—in the expanded ten-team league. Theirwin percentage climbed over 500. Okay, it was 503 but for the first time since1953, the team posted more results in the win column than in the loss column. Ican’t imagine that hope wasn’t high when in 1963, they finished the year infourth place. For two years in a row their win percentage was over 500 and trendingin the right direction.
And then came 1964. A year when it all went wrong. After a season of high hopes, sadnessfell over the city. In Swoon ’64, the heartbreak of losing a pennantpales in comparison to the pain felt by the four local families affected by themurder of a twelve-year-old boy on the night of Game 10. The arc is the samefor the characters and the Phillies. Swoon ’64 is a murder mystery.
Ilike to write traditional mysteries with a puzzle to solve. The answer in thisnovel is found in the characters who have made critical mistakes, not on theball-field but in life, and found themselves in a swoon.
Who might like to read Swoon '64? Fans of traditional mysteries anywhere. Philadelphians who like to read books set in their city. Folks from all over who might like to read about the town. Readers interested in life in the mid-1960s. People who like characters who add a little humor to a story. A narrator can entertain without ever forgetting the underlying tragedy.
Who won't want to read Swoon '64? Anyone looking for blood and guts and violence.
If you think you’d like to read Swoon ’64, it is availableon Amazon both in paperback and ebook format. Here is a shortcut: www.tinyurl.com/Swoon64
