When the 1955 baseball season opened, fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers wanted to believe–but couldn’t quite get there. It’s not that the Dodgers weren’t talented. Every year, they fielded a winning team, a championship-caliber team replete with All-Stars such as Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, and Gil Hodges. The thing was, the Dodgers were the ultimate tease. Since 1941, Brooklyn’s beloved baseball team had made the World Series five times, and each time they lost to the cross-town rival New York Yankees.
Heading in to 1955, nothing seemed to be different. The Dodgers were still great, but so were the Yankees. What was worse, the Dodgers were getting older. The window was closing. Players like Robinson and Campanella were on the back end of their careers. They couldn’t last forever. No doubt, the Flatbush Faithful must have questioned that spring if their Dodgers would ever win the Series and dethrone the Yankees.
Heartbreak was a by-product of rooting for the Dodgers. At the end of every season, when their team came up just short, the fans would proclaim, “Wait till next year!” It was a rallying cry that had endured for decades. To be a Dodgers fan in the mid-twentieth century, you had to be patient, willing to stick with your team despite coming so close season after season.
And so even after the Dodgers powered their way to the National League pennant that summer of ’55, winning by a comfortable thirteen-and-a-half games, their fans remained skeptical. Sure, they were going back to the World Series. So what? That was old news. And so was their opponent–the Yankees. Another Dodgers-Yankees Subway Series was in the offing.
The Series did not start well for Brooklyn. They lost the first two games in Yankee Stadium. “Here we go again,” the Dodger faithful must have thought. “Wait till next year.” But then a funny thing happened. As the Series shifted to Ebbets Field, the Dodgers took all three home games, forcing the action back to Yankee Stadium.
The Yankees won Game 6, but in Game 7, the Dodgers shut out their arch-rivals, 2-0. Finally–after decades of coming up short, the Brooklyn Dodgers had won the World Series. This was, at along last, “next year.”
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And now, after four-plus years of writing, editing, and revising, The Singularity Wheel is available on Amazon. By no means am I equating the sequel to The Eye-Dancers with the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers! And four years is but a fraction of the decades-long dry spell the Dodgers experienced–but it is good, and rewarding–after so many delays along the way–to release the book.
The Singularity Wheel is currently available only as e-book. You can find it here . . .
The paperback version will be released in February.
Honestly, it’s an odd feeling to be done with the book. It’s been a part of me for so long. For the past half-decade, not a day has gone by where I haven’t stressed over some character’s motivation or some sticking point in the plot. But there is also relief, and a deep gratitude to all of you, who have encouraged me and supported me along the way. I can’t thank you enough. And I look forward to blogging with you throughout 2018 and beyond.
For right now, this is, indeed, “next year” for The Singularity Wheel.
Thanks so much for reading!
–Mike
Eye-Dancers 