The impetus to write Game Seven hit award-winning Newsday sportswriter Tom Rock more than a decade ago, when the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox were both in the postseason vying for a World Series title. The two franchises at the time hadn’t won a championship in 80-plus years (Boston has won three since 2004).
“I was thinking ‘wouldn’t it be interesting if they both made it [to the World Series],’” Rock said. “I was talking to my father and he came up with the idea thinking ‘wouldn’t be interesting if they got to a Game 7 and they just couldn’t play it?’”
Fast-forward eight years and Rock, a Levittown native and 1991 Division Avenue High School graduate, was leaning more towards a short-story than a novel. After Boston won three titles, the idea lost steam, he said. But, still, those close to Rock in the sports-writing profession didn’t think twice when picking the mecca of all matchups when it comes to a baseball finale in November. These two franchises, that have “bumbled around for more than a century,” would make the biggest World Series ever, Rock feels.
“I was talking to some friends in the television business and they were discussing what would be the biggest draw for a World Series match-up and they said the Red Sox and the Cubs,” Rock stated.
In the book, Boston and Chicago meet in the postseason and reach a stalemate at 3-3 in a best of seven series. Through what Rock, 42, calls extraordinary and obtuse, almost comical circumstances, the game can’t be played. Caught in the middle of the fray is local sportswriter, Scott Findle, who’s juggling the reemergence of his ex-wife that’s working as a consultant for a presidential candidate in the last days of the campaign.
A myriad number of events, both outrageous and quite possible, effectively put the series in jeopardy.
“They have to find a stadium to play it in,” Rock said. “They travel around the country and even try to play it in Cuba. And there’s this poor sap of a sportswriter that has to follow it all.”
Findle, Rock says, is a man that loves baseball and struggles with that appreciation because he’s so close to the game. His job is pummeled by the political nature of the sport. But he wants to focus on what made baseball America’s pastime.
“He has to see all the warts and all the pimples,” he said. “[Scott] got into [sports-writing] to write about the beauty of baseball but finds himself focusing on pitch counts, steroids and all the garbage that gets in the way that clouds that love for sports.”
The linchpin between the two White House-vying candidates is one hails from Illinois, while the other represents Massachusetts and each unofficially stumping for the Cubs and Red Sox, respectively.
“They want to debate on the issues and the subject but they can’t, because everything has to be in a sound-bite,” Rock said. “The candidates have trouble going through this minefield of connecting with the public.”
The series is so inextricably linked to the campaign trail, that each candidate saw bumps in approval polls when their favorite team beat its opponent.
“They’re very invested in their teams, sometimes to the distraction of the campaign,” Rock said.
Rock is known for his extensive coverage of the New York Giants for Newsday, but he picked baseball as the crutch of his first novel because he still believes the game is at America’s heart.
Rock himself is connected to the game, albeit a sobering bond. He was at LIU Post (then CW Post) when the 1994 baseball strike shuttered the series.
Like many fans, Rock was disheartened.
“I was completely lost,” he said. “I think a lot of people my age, that was a big turning point for their relationship with baseball.”
To Rock, baseball became all the things Findle hates about it in Game Seven.
“It’s still that memory of the sport we grew up on,” Rock said. “I know football is the biggest sport and the Super Bowl draws all the ratings. But baseball is still the country’s first love.”
And while the professions may mirror and the motives may align with the love of sport, Rock affirms the comparisons with the main character and Findle’s creator end there.
“A lot of his experiences are similar to mine in terms of the things he observed,” Rock said. “He comes from a smaller paper and worked his way up to the Red Sox beat and has relationship issues I don’t have.”
