At some point I started telling my brother and mother stories about the people we’d see, mundane little histories at first—he’s a big-shot doctor headed for surgery, she’s got a hot date. Whatever came into my head. We were bored, that’s all, and it was better than playing license plate bingo. My mother and Gerard seemed to enjoy it. If we’d see something even vaguely remarkable—a guy driving a pickup loaded with pinball machines, a bench full of old ladies all dolled up, a station wagon containing two nuns and a Great Dane—and if didn’t offer something, they’d start asking me questions. “Where’s he going? What are they up to? I liked that expectant pause, the space waiting to be filled. I liked them listening to me.

After a while, my stories became gradually more mysterious—shadowy characters with darker motives on more complex journeys—and finally, criminal. I must have felt as if I needed to keep upping the ante. My head was full of TV cop shows, the Hardy Boys, stuff like that. It came surprisingly easy to me—kidnappings, hostages, desperately scrawled pleas for help pressed against the glass.

“See that guy in the Caddie?” I asked. He was stopped next to us at a light on University Avenue. It was a Monday night, eleven o’clock, maybe midnight.

“Yeah?” Gerard asked.

“He’s the wheelman for a mobster,” I said. “He’s got a body in the trunk.”
And—this is the strange part, the scary part really—as soon as I said it, this guy, just a fat-faced guy with slicked-back hair gripping the wheel with black gloves, took on the coloring of menace. Right before my eyes, he became a dangerous character. Didn’t matter that I’d made him up, I was still a little afraid of him.

“A body?” Gerard said.

“Sawed up into little pieces,” I said. “Wrapped in butcher paper.”
Somehow we became a part of this story. I think it must have been my mother’s idea to follow him. Or if I suggested it, she at least played along. I wouldn’t have had to ask her twice. He headed down University into downtown St. Paul, and we tailed him.

“Not so close, Ma,” Gerard said. “Hang back a little. Keep your distance.”
The man pulled up to a drive-by box in front of the post office. He put his flashers on, leaned across the front seat, and tossed something in.

“He’s mailing a piece of the body to his next target,” I said. “Sending a message. That’s how these guys operate.”

“What piece?” Gerard said.

“Don’t ask,” I said.

—Sport

Sport

A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age.

The story of a boy's search for order and belonging in a world where the rules keep changing.

Harlan Hawkins is a kid with a passion for baseball. He plays first base on his summer league team, obsessively collects baseball cards, and avidly follows the fortunes of his beloved hometown Minnesota Twins. And then his world is suddenly, inexplicably shaken when his mother is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and his hard-drinking, explosive father abandons them. The family quickly descends into awkward suburban poverty. Sport charts the boy’s struggle for survival, for love and safety, for belonging and self-knowledge, through a series of adventures that are sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying, often both.

Sport is about the world as we wish it to be—and the world as it is: frail and broken, dangerous and doomed, terrible and beautiful. Sport is about learning to love the broken world.

 

Reviews and Praise for Sport

"Some people should never get married, and when they do, it generally makes for a good story. Mick Cochrane knows this, bless him, and the broken family he gives us in Sport, yields both familiar and fresh heartbreak in generous portions. It's also a very funny book."

—Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls

"Harlan 'Sport' Hawkins is a boy whose love for baseball and innate sense of goodness fuel an American Dream while he lives in a household that is anything but. A modern-day Huck Finn-- honest, faithful, and wise beyond his years-- Sport will steal your heart only to break and reassemble it in a way you'll never forget. Mick Cochrane is a writer of immense talent and Sport is a grand slam."

—Jill McCorkle, author of The Cheerleader and Carolina Moon

"What I can tell you about Sport is that it is damn wonderful. There isn't a line in it that doesn't shimmer with truth. Sport teaches us, broadens us, pushes our horizons back and allows us to take in what our hearts already know but won't often admit-- that there is human misery behind every door, all of it unique, all of it deserving of our care and compassion and understanding. Cochrane writes with a sympathetic but unsparing eye and in a style that is economical, energetic, and brilliantly luminous. The characters jump off the page, fully realized and unforgettable. What the hell more can a reader ask of a book."

—Duff Brenna, author of Too Cool and The Book of Mamie

"In this wise, witty story set in West St. Paul in the '60s, a kid named Harlan navigates life by focusing on the Twins baseball team, a comic metaphor for hope. Sport is fat with small pleasures. It is a homer and a gift to all of us grownup knothole-game kids. There's a lot to love in this quiet little book, most of all its subtle wisdom about establishing individuality and finding joy amid chaos-in short, about growing up."

—Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Short and sweet, though not too sweet, and blessedly free of sentimentality. Mick Cochrane's intuitive, easygoing style finds a perfect balance mediating between the child and adult points of view."

—Boston Globe

"With beautifully clean prose, Mick Cochrane has given us a novel evocative of everything from Emerson to Kerouac-nothing could be more American."

—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

 
 
 

Buy Sport
University of Minnesota Press
 
 

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