Brushback

The best days of Rocksburg, Pennsylvania, are behind it. The mills are closed, the mines shut down, and the townsfolk while the days away in the local bars and somehow manage to get along. Yet every once in a while something or someone strikes a spark that lifts everyone up and puts Rocksburg back on the map. Decades before, Bobby Blasco went north to pitch for the Boston Red Sox. Known as the Brushback Kid, he set records in every league he played – including most hit batmen. During spring training in 1959 he even threw square to the head of the great Ted Williams. Later a mysterious accident landed him a permanent place on the disabled list, and he came home to run an illegal gambling club in Rocksburg’s Flats. Now Detective Sergeant Rugs Carlucci, the acting chief of the Rocksburg PD, is at Conemaugh General Hospital: Mom is having either a heart or an anxiety attack. While they’re in the ER, Rugs gets the call. Someone has murdered the Brushback Kid. Running the plays in a major-league murder investigation – and trying to ensure his own domestic tranquility – Carlucci must find out why the pitching phenom went wrong. Interviews of a parade of Blasco’s ex-wives and former friends show a man out of control, a man who took domestic abuse to its farthest limits and who made an enemy of virtually everyone who crossed his line of sight. Carlucci’s question: Which of these, in an ironic fit of sportsman’s logic, was enemy enough to take a Louisville Slugger to Blasco’s head in a pitch-black, frozen alley?