We're thrilled to have Kate McMurray stop by today to talk baseball on the re-release day of her highly acclaimed novel, Out in the Field
Fantasy Baseball
By Kate McMurray
I play fantasy baseball every season. If you’re not familiar with fantasy sports, it basically works like this: at the beginning of the season, you draft actual MLB players to your fantasy team, and you earn points daily based on how those players perform. Fantasy baseball is bizarre and nerve-wracking because there are so many games per season.
It’s interesting, too, because it distills each player down to a certain set of facts: his stats (home runs, RBIs, OPS, etc.) and whether or not he’s healthy.
I suspect most fans don’t much care about much more than that when it comes to baseball players. It doesn’t matter if the players are single or married, straight or gay, as long as they put up good numbers and don’t end up on the disabled list.
Except, of course, the media cares. Athletes coming out of the closet still create headlines.
Big market teams, like those in New York City, also have players who make headlines for their personal lives. These seems less true these days—I mean, the real headline lately is how much the Yankees are stinking up the Bronx, since they’re in last place in their division as of this writing—but before Derek Jeter retired, he dated a long string of models and actresses. After his very public divorce, Alex Rodriguez briefly dated Madonna. A Yankee coming out of the closet would make the front page of the Post in a hot minute.
When I was writing Out in the Field, it was important to make the Brooklyn Eagles as realistic as possible. That included researching roughly how the stadium would be laid out, who might be working in the front office, and roughly how they would be perceived by the New York media. There was certainly a time when coming out would have been dangerous, when homophobic slurs were pretty common in major league stadiums, but I’d like to think those days are behind us. Which isn’t to say there isn’t still homophobia among players and managers—I tried to show that in the book, too—but to us fans? It really only matters if a player is earning points for my fantasy team, and his sexuality has zero to do with that.
Iggy Rodriguez remains one of my favorite characters that I’ve ever created (Matt, too) and I think he’d earn my fantasy team plenty of points.
Matt Blanco is a legend on the Brooklyn Eagles, but time and injuries have taken their toll. With his career nearing its end, he’s almost made it to retirement without anyone learning his biggest secret: he’s gay in a profession not particularly known for its tolerance.
Iggy Rodriquez is the hot new rookie in town, landing a position in the starting lineup of the team of his dreams and playing alongside his idol, Matt Blanco. Iggy doesn’t think it can get any better, until an unexpected encounter in the locker room with Matt proves him wrong.
A relationship—and everything it could reveal—has never been in the cards for Matt, but Iggy has him rethinking his priorities. They fall hard for each other, struggling to make it through trades, endorsement deals, and the threat of retirement. Ultimately they will be faced with a choice: love or baseball?
Buy link: Dreamspinner Press
BIO:
Kate McMurray is an award-winning romance author and an unabashed romance fan. When she’s not writing, she works as a nonfiction editor, dabbles in various crafts, and is maybe a tiny bit obsessed with baseball. She has served as President of Rainbow Romance Writers and is currently the president of the New York City chapter of RWA. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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