Try to Get Published!

Hey everyone, before I write on Fiction Friday, I hope that some of you are speed writers. I just found out about this today, and luckily I already had a story written to enter. ESPN the Magazine is running a contest until June 1 requesting entries of sports fiction for potential publication in either ESPN the Magazine or Stymie, a journal of sports and literature. Here's the link to the flyer, and happy writing if you want to enter it with me! Now, on to my own writing today.

Joe Oken stood on the top step of the dugout watching his pitcher warm-up and infield take some grounders. He thought they looked pretty good, but it was hard to tell with baseball. Baseball is by far the most fickle sport. Some days you could throw a no-hitter, and some days you couldn't get anybody out. That was part of the reason he loved it, but there was more than that. How many other jobs give you an excuse to sit outside in the warm Georgia spring and watch a game being played that you were too old to play but still loved. He was 65 and recently retired from his job at the plant, but he could not retire from baseball. He had been coaching this team for 40 years at St. John's High School, he was now coaching kids of the kids he had started coaching in the 70s. That was kind of weird, he thought, but he really didn't worry too much about it. If you have something you love and the relationship is mutually beneficial, why bother leaving? He had taken the team to the state tournament 15 times and even had two state championships from the late 80s and early 90s. He would never forget that team; they could do everything well. Now, at the start of a new season, he was hoping to rekindle this magic that he hadn't felt on the field for a long time.
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