A Wrestler Write’s Well

Scooter, by Mick Foley

Prior to the steroid accusations, inflated salary caps, and media campaigns the size of Greek gods – and before the very image of baseball needed resuscitating – America’s favorite pastime served as an innocent bridge between the fantasies of wide-eyed fans and the sharp truisms of reality. This love of baseball, and its role within the social fabric of a changing nation, serves as a back-drop to author Mick Foley’s newest novel, Scooter.

Simplistic in its inception yet touching in its delivery, Scooter follows the twisted life of Scooter Riley, a curious child trying to survive life in tough-as-nails Bronx during the sixties. Born to a shopaholic mother and a beat cop father, Scooter – named after Phil Rizzuto, a Yankee shortstop and 1950s MVP – learns the ropes of life through baseball idioms and Yankee fanfare. His father, Patrick Riley, had the fervent desire to pass down a strict code of ethics he somehow managed to sustain during his beat as a white cop on the tense streets of Harlem. Scooter follows his father’s advice and revels in the blissful ignorance of youth before being blindsided by the weight of reality. After serving as a fireman for over thirty years, Scooter’s grandfather becomes a victim to the heated demons he so eagerly fought. The horrific scarring of his grandfather manages to kick-start a series of life-altering events for the boy, allowing him to grow beyond the fragile borders of his youth.

After a startling family revelation, and the splintering relationship between his father and grandfather, Scooter is forced to watch once more as his life unravels before him. When the New York Mets win the World Series in 1965, Patrick, under the influence of alcohol and machismo, accidentally shoots Scooter in the leg during a stunt gone haywire. This event – the clumsy finger that knocks down the first domino – as well as the registered response, launches Scooter into a life of drugs, disappointment, and perpetual self-decline. Hardened by reality, Scooter observes the downfall of his father – who trades an addiction to beer for that of medication – and the decline of his family’s once solid foundation. Like a rectangular piece of balsa wood being shoved into a circular hole, the life of Scooter Riley becomes as misplaced and awkward as Mickey Mantle strike-out. After a car crash that nearly killed his father, the death of Dago, his sister Patty’s accidental head trauma, and the desertion of his mother, Scooter finds himself on his own, limping toward a bleak future. Were it not for baseball and its welcoming embrace, Scooter might have easily been lost between the billfolds of New York’s changing ways.

Foley, a former WWE star and author of numerous books, including Tietam Brown, takes the reader to the mat in this daffy, albeit addictive look at life through the eyes of a child. In a convincing parallel that is refreshing in today’s cookie-cutter fiction, he uses baseball as a narrative shadow when guiding his characters, specifically Scooter, across the rocky terrain of life. Occasionally dropping in a few pop-culture references and historical factoids, Foley does a splendid job painting the portrait of a struggling youth during a time of racial strife and national anguish. It is the special ambience of baseball and its traditions which help set up the growth of Scooter’s narration. Foley uses the great rivalry between the Yankees and Mets as a mirror for Scooter’s struggle between adolescence and adulthood; the strike-outs, walks, and pop-fly’s serving as the metaphorical hurdles of life. The result is a well-structured plot and a free-flowing narrative that hooks you with every daunting period. While Scooter is no forerunner for the Pulitzer, it’s truly entertaining and succeeds in promoting the lost face of baseball.