Getaway Day

Getaway Day was selected for the permanent collection at the National Baseball Hall of Fame library in Cooperstown. That credential is on the cover. The story underneath it earns it.

Mikey Wright is thirteen and running out of time. His father has cancer. The 1962 World Series is underway. And Mikey has convinced himself, with the full logic of a boy who has nothing left to lose, that if Mickey Mantle will play catch with his father, something will shift. He sets out from Modesto with that belief and not much else.

The journey takes him to Anaheim, Chicago, and down Route 66. The people he meets along the way are ordinary and extraordinary in equal measure. A freak storm delays the Series and reroutes the Yankees and Giants to Modesto for workouts. Mikey gets closer than he should. What he finds when he gets there is not what he expected.

The San Francisco Book Review called it a fine read in the tradition of baseball as metaphor for the meaning of life. Readers Favorite praised its historical grounding. Dennis Snelling, historian of the Pacific Coast League, called the blend of fact and fiction exactly right.

Book one in the Our Days series. Brighter Day follows Mikey into 1969.