end of the 2005 season.
Sadly the son of Bangor West head coach Dave Mansfield, Shawn aged only 14, ‘died after a
long fight with cerebral palsy before he had a chance to play America’s pastime’ 82. The Kings
donated the $1.2 million with which the City of Bangor built the Shawn T. Mansfield Stadium on
Thirteenth Street (effectively a street away from the King’s Bangor home). The Stadium, opened in
1991, is ‘one of the finest baseball fields in Maine’, home field for Bangor West, and has hosted
tournaments right up to the Senior League World Series.
The New Yorker is an iconic publication and many libraries will archive it in some form.
Original copies of this edition appear irregularly at King resellers and other used magazine and
Internet sources. Both The Best American Sports Writing, 1991 and Baseball: A Literary Anthology
appear regularly at used book sources.
Red Sox Head for Home; One Team’s Baseball Psychology (September 12, 1990)
This guest column first appeared in the Bangor Daily News for September 12, 1990. In
considering what makes one team succeed in the last weeks of a baseball season (particularly those
driving for a pennant or a playoff spot) and others simply fade, King believes the key factor is ‘team
will’, itself ‘inextricably bound up’ with ‘home team psyche’. He uses a recent series in Toronto,
which he attended and where the Red Sox won three of a four game set, as example. Toronto was the
major challenger to the Red Sox in the AL. East in these last weeks of the season and King (after
waxing lyrically about Toronto’s Skydome and analyzing the upcoming stretch games) correctly
predicted Boston would win the pennant (maintaining his prediction the previous April in A Fan’s
Thoughts on the Red Sox, reviewed above).
Perfect Games, Shared Memories (Fall 1991)
This piece first appeared in the Official World Series Souvenir Scorebook—1991 Fall Classic.
Perhaps the easiest access point for fans is its reprint as Epilogue: Perfect Games, Shared Memories
i n World Series: An Opinionated Chronicle of the Fall Classic—100 Years, by Joseph Wallace
(2003), an oversized hardcover.
King tells the very personal story of ‘two boys, both nine years old, and two baseball games—
World Series games.’ The first, ‘Stevie, was nine in 1956. He and his brother were raised by a
mother who never had the benefit of a support group, a day care center, or an Equal Rights Law, yet
managed to raise Stevie and his older brother pretty well. / In the mid-1950s Stevie was a Dodgers
fan because his mother was...(King mentions his mother ran ‘the mangler’ on a laundry crew in
Stratford, Connecticut).../ Children inherit their parents’ sports and political affiliations, so Stevie
rooted for the Dodgers and the Republicans, and hated the Yankees and the Democrats. Then, one
magic day in the fall of 1956, all that changed.’
King relates how ‘Stevie’ came home to watch his Dodgers play in the World Series, and found
himself rooting for the Yankees’ pitcher, Don Larsen, who threw a perfect game! He watched alone
(‘There is no Dad in this picture, although it’s Dad’s who are the keepers of this particular tradition;
Dad stepped out when Stevie was two’) but discussed the magic with his mother, and brother David,
that evening.
‘Now let 30 years pass in a flash. It is 1986, and this time the nine-year-old’s name is Owen. He
has come to Fenway Park to see his first-ever World Series game...There is a Dad in this picture, and
although Owen’s no little kid anymore he holds his father’s hand very tightly. As pointed out, kids get
their baseball and political allegiances from their parents. This makes Owen a passionate Democrat
and an even more passionate Red Sox fan.’ The Sox lose and, as they leave, Owen ‘begins to cry. /
The father puts an arm around him and thinks: That’s all right. If you’re going to be a Red Sox fan,
they won’t be the last tears you’ll cry...and there are worse things to cry over than baseball heroes
who are toppled for only an evening. Caring enough to cry...that’s not such a bad thing, even if
it’s just a baseball game you’re crying over. ’
King closes, ‘It’s that giving—that passing on—I love most about baseball in general and the
World Series in particular. I really believe that any World Series game a man or woman can watch
with their nine-year-old sons or daughters is a perfect game.’
Here we see that King, the one who takes us directly to the great memories of our lives in a
flash; this essay clearly deserves broader circulation, particularly to King fans. Copies of both
appearances are fairly easy to obtain through eBay, baseball collectable sources and other
secondhand dealers.
Diamonds are Forever (May 1994)
This photo-essay first appeared in the ‘Camera at Work’ segment of Life magazine for May 1994
(photo-essays are a rare King foray—another notable example is the book Nightmares in the Sky,
covered in our Miscellany chapter). Of the pictures King writes, ‘Harry Connolly’s photographs
reflect this world [Little League baseball] beautifully, achieving their own balance between clarity
and mystery, and holding our eye through an entire cycle of images.’
This relatively short piece (the text is spread over five pages, among eight photographs) is
typical King—an elegy to childhood, in this case childhood sports, and its simpler worldview. In
lines that recall one of King’s great fictional strengths, thrusting us back instantly to our own
childhood he writes, ‘These are the faces of children who have not yet been told the dream is usually
just on loan, there to be looked at and lived in and enjoyed only for a short, dust-golden time—the
years when you come back from the field, sit on the back step and pour the sand out of your sneakers
before going in barefoot to eat your supper.’
King mentions that he coached Little League in 1989 (see Head Down above); and writes with
insight of the ‘Darwinian creed of natural selection’ that operates in American sport so that the base
of ‘the rawest amateurs—the kids in other words’ supports a rapidly declining number of players as
age increases until only the pros remain.
Life magazine itself is collectable and copies may be found at the usual used magazine sources.
This piece was revised for its appearance as Introduction to Heading Home: Growing Up in
Baseball published in 1995. Copies of the book can be found at the usual secondhand bookseller
sources.
Curses! (September 1998)
This article appeared in Yankees Magazine for September 1998 and deals with the Yankees-
Red Sox rivalry (King would briefly return to this matter six years later in his Faithful April 18th
entry). The piece contains more specific detail than many of King’s baseball pieces, and is also a
touch more balanced (probably as a result of its intended publication venue). For instance, “Against
the Yankees...the Red Sox usually play badly when the chips are down....’ King’s version of the 1978
cancelled classes tale here reads, ‘I was teaching creative writing at the University of Maine, and I’ll
never forget the date. If Harry Frazee sold his team’s soul on December 26, 1919—the day the Babe
Ruth deal was finalized—then on October 2, 1978, Satan came riding into Fenway Park to reclaim his
own. / I couldn’t get down to the Fens in person, but I cancelled all my classes—the only time in my
career as a teacher I ever did such a thing—and hunkered down in front of the TV in my living room
to watch.’ And, after describing the loss that broke New Englanders’ hearts (again): ‘The following
day I posted a note on my office door in the University of Maine English Department. OFFICE
HOURS CANCELLED DUE TO DEPRESSION is what I wrote on it, and it was true.’
Mostly dealing with that 1978 one-game playoff King ends the piece by stating the 1998 version
of the longtime Sox-Yankees rivalry is ‘for real.’ The magazine is not easy to find but does appear
from time to time on eBay. As it is also a baseball collectable readers should be able to find copies
at used magazine resellers and baseball memorabilia sources.
Stephen King (1999)
This piece appeared in Fenway: A Biography in Words and Pictures, edited by Dan
Shaughnessy and Stan Grossfeld (1999, 2000). Recalling his first time at Fenway King writes: ‘I was
twelve years old. We went down from Maine with my cousin, who had his driver’s license...The Red
Sox were playing the Tigers. It was either 1959 or ’60. 83 Ted Williams was still playing...The game
was an official game, but it was called after six innings because of rain...What I remember was
coming up the runway and out into the park and just being flattened by the beauty of it, by the green.
And the day was gray, but the grass was the greenest green I’d ever seen—and I was a country boy.’
He also says his uncle ‘hated’ Ted Williams and was therefore ‘a real Red Sox fan’ (heavy irony).
Copies of the book are easily secured from secondhand sources.
This article gives valuable insight to King’s early fandom—he never saw the Sox lose live after
that first game for many years; he would travel down to Fenway from UMO regularly; and again
mentions cancelling classes after the 1978 playoff game—‘It’s the only time I ever did that. Through
hangovers, sexual obsessions, and everything else, that was the one time I cancelled anything.’
Finally, the piece is a short appreciation of Fenway Park itself and for that well worth the trouble of
tracking down.
Fenway and the Great White Whale (1999)
This essay appeared in the 1999 MLB All-Star Program, commemorating that year’s All-Star
game, played at the Boston Red Sox home ground, Fenway Park. King’s contribution was included in
a section titled ‘Baseball in Boston’. The initial heading reads, ‘The author, a dyed-in-the-wool Red
Sox fan, has spent a lifetime hoping for a Boston World Series title.’ At the end of this slightly over
two-page piece King thanks ‘Dan Shaughnessy, whose book At Fenway was invaluable in the
preparation of this article.’
King’s opening line is a minor classic: ‘I’ve got a theory about Herman Melville’s classic novel
Moby-Dick that you’ll never come across in a college lit text. I believe that Captain Ahab, the crazed
New Englander in charge of the Pequod, was doomed to spend his life chasing a white whale
because the Red Sox hadn’t been invented yet.’ He continues, arguing Ahab could have sat in the
bleachers, ‘looking, as Red Sox fans have looked all my life, for a World Series flag rippling proudly
in the breeze.’
He says he’s been a fan of the team since the late 50’s and early 60’s, a member of what Dan
Shaughnessy calls the ‘Red Sox Nation’. King talks of that group’s ‘Zeitgeist’, which cannot be
understood by fans of other clubs that do not have a ‘welter of gruesome memories’ (he then proceeds
to list many, in gory detail) to live with. In recounting Dent’s heartbreaking 1978 homer in the one-
game playoff at Fenway King says, ‘I was teaching at the University of Maine at that time, and
cancelled my classes—a thing I’d not done even when suffering a case of double bronchitis—so I
could stay home and watch the game.’ Later, as King sat stunned in front of a turned off TV with son
Owen sleeping in his arms, wife Tabitha looked in and asked, “Why are you just sitting there?”—‘I
remembering thinking Owen was the lucky one; Owen had slept through the whole damned thing.’ He
also tells us he was listening to his car radio after midnight on the 1986 night when Buckner famously
fumbled the routine grounder that has gone down in legend.
He closes, ‘Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Microsoft. At Fenway, we come to chase
the whale. / The big one. / The white one.’
This program surfaces regularly, as it is a baseball collectable. Keep an eye on eBay, or contact
secondhand King dealers and baseball memorabilia sources to secure a copy.
Stephen King (2003)
This short piece (five paragraphs) appeared in Spring Training: Baseball’s Early Season,
edited by Dan Shaughnessy and Stan Grossfeld (2003). While short it will be of interest to King fans
as he talks about the intimate atmosphere of spring training for the Red Sox in Florida and relates a
few anecdotes, such as with Sox catcher Jason Varitek in 2001: ‘“Hey, Mr. King, how are you
feeling?” And that meant a lot. He knew who I was, but even more, he knew that I had been through a
hard time.’ Just one year before Stuart O’Nan would talk King into Faithful he writes: ‘I’d like to do
a book about the Red Sox after I retire. I’d like to take a year, from the beginning of spring training,
and just sort of follow them for the whole year and write a book about it.’
This book is widely available from the usual secondhand bookseller sources.
It’s Weird But True: The Gloom is Gone in Mudville (April 3, 2005)
This piece first appeared in The New York Times for April 3, 2005 and was reprinted in the
Scribner paperback edition of Faithful published in August 2005. Written from the March 16, 2005
spring training ‘World Series rematch’ between the Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals the article is
mostly a rear-vision celebration of the season before. King says Sox supporters have not come to
gloat over their opponent’s fans but more to celebrate ‘the dreamlike, four-game spurt that got their
team to the Series in the first place.’ (Of course that was over the hated Yankees—see Faithful at the
beginning of this chapter). He finds the spontaneous good cheer at the game to be most unlike normal
Sox fans: ‘All that happiness eventually gets on my nerves. Weird but true.’
He tells us that despite being asked ‘The Question’ by reporters he has ‘cunningly’ decided to
‘answer it here and get paid for it. The Question...is whether the Red Sox, having finally won the
World Series after eighty-six years of trying, are now “just another team.” If they have, by winning,
ceased to matter.’ His answers: to fans who can only root for underdog teams ‘I bequeath the Chicago
Cubs’; but for long-term New England Sox tragics, ‘we’re just hoping that 2004 isn’t an aberration, a
once-in-a-lifetime blink. We’re hoping it’s the start of a dynasty.’ Yet, according to some: ‘…
whatever will we do now that Lucy has finally relented and let us kick the football? Now that we
have lost our identity as the Great American Almost, we are surely condemned to wander in an
existential wilderness....’ King describes this view as ‘horsefeathers...People who see nobility in
rooting for the Team That Never Wins have never understood most of us have no choice; we were
just born under a bad sign and got what we got.’
Meeting a couple of Yankee fans after the game who bait King with claims he should enjoy it
while he can, as it will never happen again in his lifetime, he thinks: ‘So this is how Yankee fans
sound when they start the season feeling nervous. And I also reflect on the fact that, in the twenty-first
century, the New York Yankees have yet to win a World Series. This cannot be said of the Boston
Red Sox.’
And that, surely, is the perfect way to end our tour of King’s baseball writing, with the Red Sox
tragic content in supporting ‘just another team.’
OPINION—
THE CRAFT OF WRITING
Being a brand name is all right. Trying to be a writer, trying to fill the blank sheet in an
honorable and truthful way, is better.
—From On Becoming A Brand Name
King has been writing about writing for over thirty years—the first piece covered in this chapter
appeared in 1973, before his first novel. A large number of his non-fiction articles (and a notable
amount of his fiction itself) relates to writers, writing and related matters, which is not surprising if
we consider that in many ways writing (or at least storytelling) is Stephen King. His major
contribution to this subject is, of course, On Writing, which is covered in a separate chapter. Here
we address shorter pieces that deal specifically with the craft of writing.
The Horror Market Writer and the Ten Bears (November 1973)
This article first appeared in Writer’s Digest for November 1973 (six months before Carrie
was published!) It is most easily accessed via its reprint as The Horror Market Writer and the Ten
Bears: A True Story in Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing (2000), a
Book-of-the-Month compilation of King writings. 84 This book can generally be obtained from King
dealers and the secondhand book market.
King answers the question he would be asked thousands of times in coming years—‘Where do
you get your ideas?’ with the answer his ‘ salable ideas’ come from his nightmares, not dreams but
‘the ones that hide just beyond the doorway that separates the conscious from the unconscious.’ In
other words, ‘a good assumption to begin with is what scares you will scare someone else.’ Rather
than calling these fears ‘phobias’ King prefers Joseph Stefano’s 85 term ‘bears’ and proceeds to list
them as: fear of ‘the dark...squishy things...deformity...snakes...rats...closed-in places...insects
(especially spiders, flies, beetles)...death...others (paranoia)’ and ‘fear for someone else’.
He provides examples of how he’s used these fears in his tales (combining fear of the dark and
fear for someone in The Boogeyman; fear of rats in a tale he describes but does not name
— Graveyard Shift); and how others had done the same (for instance George Langelaan86 with The
Fly, the basis of a movie franchise). King also argues that horror writers should take the effect (the
fear) and work the plot out from there. He says to the likely criticism that there are no werewolves,
vampires or even mummies on the list that his ‘humble advice is to leave these bears to their well-
deserved rest. They’ve been done to death.’ A much more successful King (remember his first novel
has been accepted but not yet released at this point) would of course deliver the first two of these
monsters later in his career.
The balance of the article largely describes the market for horror (at the time)—‘it’s mainly in
the men’s magazines’, and also gives advice for selling horror to these and other outlets.
In addition to Secret Windows the piece has been reprinted as Horror Stories and the Ten
Bears in Fiction Writers Market, edited by John Brady and Jean M. Fredette (1981); as The Horror
Writer and the Ten Bears: Foreword in Kingdom of Fear: The World of Stephen King, edited by
Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller (1986); under the original title in both The Writer’s Digest Guide
to Good Writing, edited by Thomas Clark, Bruce Woods, Peter Blocksom, & Angela Terez (1994);
and Popular Fiction: An Anthology, edited by Gary Hoppenstand (1998).
Writing a First Novel (June 1975)
This piece first appeared in The Writer for June 1975, as part of a ‘Special Feature’— Writing a
First Novel (Part IV). That month five writers provided their contributions for the overall article. It
was excerpted as In the Beginning… in the same magazine for April 1987.
The article’s importance comes as much from the time at which it was written (only a year after
Carrie was published, before the film of that novel began to turn King into a household name, and
probably just before the paperback was released) as for its content. King notes that the hardcover
edition of his first novel ‘didn’t get within hailing distance of anyone’s best-seller list’ and as far as
major magazines and newspapers were concerned ‘it didn’t exist at all.’
His advice for first time novelists is to write not with the bestseller lists or even publication in
mind: ‘Write it for yourself. It’s the only way you can come out of one of the world’s most grueling
projects still able to face rejection with your equanimity still intact.’ King says writers need to
understand what they are getting into when attempting a novel, which will ‘call for tremendous
expenditures of mental and spiritual energy on your part, and you will never have a good perspective
on what you’ve done; it’s impossible to be objective about your own creative work.’ On the subject
of rejections he advises, ‘If you still think the novel is good but you can’t get it published as it stands,
you must rewrite...And if you decide a novel is beyond repair, you must put it away in a desk
drawer.’
Of his own early attempts: ‘ Carrie was my first published novel, but not really my first novel;
my first three books were stillborn. I tried to tell myself some radical rewriting would bring them
back to life. It’s not true, and cold sober I recognize that fact and abide by it. And even a dead novel
can provide a writer with valuable experience to take on to the next one.’ He continues with other
practical advice, such as ‘Read everything that interests you even remotely’; and ‘Other than writing
to please yourself, I’d advocate only one [rule]: write every day.’
As many writers retain this magazine, copies tend to surface with King resellers fairly regularly,
although the 1987 issue is much less available than the original appearance.
Booze and the Writer (October 1978)
This piece appeared in Writer’s Digest for October 1978 as part of a broader article in which
many writers ‘speak candidly on Drinking and the Writing Life’, including Michael Crichton, Daphne
DuMaurier, John Jakes, Norman Mailer, James A. Michener, Irving Wallace, Joseph Wambaugh and
Herman Wouk.
The magazine presented each writer with four formula areas for response. King’s, early in his
career and well before he ‘got sober’, are of some interest. Drinking habits: ‘Somewhere in the
middle ground between medium and heavy. Beer. A lot of beer.’ Hangouts: ‘I drink mostly at home.’
Drinking companions: ‘I like to drink alone...Otherwise, I like to go drinking with my editor, Bill
Thompson.’ On Writing and Drinking: ‘Yes, there’s an affinity between drinking and writing. You can
see the connection in the lives of Hemingway, Dylan Thomas and...Faulkner...I like to write when I’m
drunk. I’ve never had any particular problem writing that way, although I never wrote anything that
was worth a dime while under the influence of pot or any of the hallucinogenics...Writers who drink
constantly do not last long, but a writer who drinks carefully is probably a better writer.’ (After
becoming sober King would have the different view of a reformed alcoholic, as noted in On
Writing. 87)
As many writers retain this magazine, copies tend to surface with King resellers fairly regularly.
The Writing Life: An Interview with Myself (January 1979)
This piece appeared in Writer’s Digest for January 1979. The Writing Life was a section of the
magazine and King’s entry, sub-titled An Interview With Myself was the lead sub-section that month.
This is an important work, with King writing about himself, his fears and his work relatively early in
his stellar career, yet is often missed by King researchers.
In the article King answers these self-posed questions, ‘Why do you write about such horrible
things?’: ‘I’m promising to make you a child again...the best I can hope for is a temporary suspension
of belief’. ‘But aren’t horror writers traditionally psychologically unpleasant people?’: the answer,
using famous examples, is yes but ‘I myself am the nicest sort of fellow you’d ever want to meet’. ‘Do
you draw situations from real life?’: ‘Obviously not. I’ve not met...a vampire, and I’ve never
spent...an evening in a haunted hotel’; but ‘…the plots and situations themselves are drawn from the
deep well of personal terror...my greatest fear is one that’s awfully common: fear of what I might do
in a given situation. What I might do to myself, my loved ones, my friends, possibly even to society.’
‘Are you ever going to stop doing commercial fiction and write something serious?’: here King
argues that commercial fiction is about ‘normal people in abnormal situations’ and so-called
experimental or intellectual fiction is about ‘abnormal people in normal situations’; that while
commercial writers respect intellectual writers, the latter ‘have nothing but contempt’ for commercial
writers; and ‘My own idea of the novel—literature in general—is that it should be able to reach the
widest spectrum of people. Any other idea seems to be elitism....’
As many writers retain this magazine, copies tend to surface with King resellers fairly regularly.
A Pilgrim’s Progress (January 1980)
This article appeared in American Bookseller for January 1980. An interesting and important
piece, it is mostly overlooked by fans and researchers. King is able to reflect on how difficult it was
early in his career to secure publicity and sales, and presents valuable advice to those novelists who
have recently been published for the first time. He also relates some of his own dismal experiences
(such as only selling five books at one bookshop signing session). Much of the article is about
exposure in bookshops and how to get it but he concludes (as he often does) that the story, in this case
‘the book’ is ‘the ultimate promotional tool’. If people read and like a book they will recommend it,
place it in more prominent positions in bookshops and so on. He suggests ‘that a good story is always
a rare thing...These books seem to stand forth with their own lovely light....’
Copies of this magazine are difficult to find and are best accessed via King resellers or eBay.
On Becoming a Brand Name (February 1980)
This essay first appeared in Adelina for February 198088. It is most easily accessed via its
reprint in Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing (2000), a Book-of-the-Month
compilation of King writings. This book can generally be obtained from King dealers and the
secondhand book market. Copies of Adelina appear on the reseller market only rarely.
This is a lengthy and important article, which should be read by every King fan and every
putative author. King begins, ‘What follows is an attempt to relate...how a young man who knew no
one in the publishing world and had no literary agent became what is known in that same publishing
world as a “brand name author.”’
The early bulk of the piece deals with King’s experience in writing early, unpublished novels
and the series of events that lead to the publication of Carrie— his picking up of a book he didn’t
mean to read at the library and being prompted to query the publisher (Doubleday); the query being
read by Bill Thompson (the man, other than King, most responsible for King’s early career); Tabitha
King’s now mythical removal of the early pages of Carrie from a rubbish bin and encouraging her
husband to continue; the author’s continuation of a novel he disliked and felt was a certain bomb;
Thompson’s inspired editing advice; and so on.
He then moves on to discuss his next efforts—the genesis of ‘Salem’s Lot (crediting Tabitha and
school friend Chris Chesley, with whom King wrote his first, self-published ‘book’ People, Places
and Things, for a dinner-table conversation that lead to the novel); his not-inevitable typecasting as a
‘brand-name’ writer—of ‘horror’; the background to The Shining (and the reason for its name change
from The Shine, and the origin of that title in the lyrics of John Lennon’s Instant Karma).
King concludes that brand name or no, ‘the writer’s job is to write, and there are no brand names
in the little room where the typewriter or the pen or the notebook sit waiting. There are no stars or
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