The Prospect by Eliot Parker (epub ebook reader .txt) 📖

a viable and profitable economic venture for the timber industry, because, according to Shea, the abundance of forests and willingness of workers to log the mountains could provide companies with the potential for large profits and low expenses. Harlan Shea was a tough and shrewd man who always got what he wanted and was a master manipulator of people. He was even quoted by The Charleston Gazette, the state’s largest newspaper, as being a person who could “sell ice cubs to Eskimos.”
Harlan’s idea was to use whatever measures were necessary to get what he wanted, and he did not care how much it cost or who he had to take advantage of to get it. His powers of persuasion came with a cost, often a hefty cost in terms of salary windfalls that many companies gladly paid him.
During Sheaville’s success as a thriving timber-logging town, the timber mills cut down over 2.8 million acres of trees from the mountainside outside of Sheaville. Day and night, families of the mill workers could hear the piercing, squealing sound of the blades dicing trees into small segments or the thunderous boom of trees smashing into the ground after being disemboweled from their stumps. The men worked 12 hour shifts, earned good wages, and Harlan encouraged the companies to provided health insurance and benefits for the workers and their families.
However non-stop logging took its toll on the community. Almost six decades of uprooting trees from their roots and hauling them off to cities near and far left the mountains around Sheaville barren. By the 1980s, an old Harlan Shea was becoming an ineffective business lobbyist following a massive stroke that left him paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Meanwhile, timber workers and their families were going elsewhere for work-many of them choosing to relocate to other countries in Latin America to cut down rainforests-in order to earn more money have more stable job security.
As the workers began to flee Sheaville, Harlan Shea decided to create a baseball team featuring workers from the mill. His goal in creating the team was to give the workers an incentive to stay in the town and continue working instead of leaving the area. He created the first organized company baseball team in the state of West Virginia in the 1970’s. They were appropriately named “the loggers.” Harlan used his connections and influence around the state to convince the chemical manufacturing company Carbide in Charleston to create a team. Soon, coal companies in southern West Virginia and around the state created teams and by the late 1970’s, there were seven company baseball teams from across the state competing in organized baseball. Each team played one another twice, with each team playing each other at home once and away once. The men on Shea’s team liked the roads trips because it gave them a chance to be away from their wives and see other cities and areas of West Virginia.
Included in Shea’s invention was a ballpark for his team. Using his own money, Shea built Clark Field. He named it after Clifton Clark, the first saw mill worker to ever approach Harlan expressing interest in playing for the team. Shea figured that since it was his money, he could name the ballpark in honor of anyone or anything he wanted.
The stadium was built on the north end of town next to Central Avenue, the street that takes travelers to Interstate-64, which eventually leads to Charleston and Huntington. The field, however, was built backwards, thanks to Shea not being able to determine which way he wanted to stadium to face-away from town or towards town. Therefore, the sunlight sets in the hitter’s eyes throughout afternoon ballgames and the 354-foot centerfield wall is very shallow. Despite these building embarrassments, the men and the community were proud of Clark Field.
It wasn’t until 1985 after Harlan Shea’s death that an official minor league baseball team was created in Sheaville, and in 1986, the Appalachian Baseball Association was established. The Cincinnati Reds team adopted The Loggers as one of their farm system teams that year.
Now, Sheaville is an economically depressed version of itself, complete with few jobs and fewer citizens calling the town home. Yet Harlan Shea brought minor league baseball to Sheaville, West Virginia. And thanks to him, baseball was the hottest extracurricular activity in town. In fact, it was the only extracurricular activity in town.


III
Shane always hated the walk to any ballpark after a loss. Today’s walk was going to be even worse. In a little less than 72 hours, the Sheaville Loggers were swept in a three game series by their rivals The Charleston Alley Cats and were in last place in the ABA division. To make matters worse, Shane felt responsible for losing the opening game of the season for the Loggers, engaging his manager in a sermon about responsibility and work ethic, and drawing the frustration of the team’s starting catcher, Biggie Rowan. If anyone could use some time alone at Clark Field, it was Shane Triplet.
Shane began the early morning 2-mile march through town to Clark Field. The path to the ballpark was a scenic and sometimes solemn journey, because the trip was a painful reminder of Sheaville’s prestigious past and its floundering future.
The walk began down the dusty dirt road alongside the winding hollow where Shane and his mother Joann lived. Their house was dilapidated yet quaint. It was a one-story rancher home with a degenerating back porch facing the mouth of the hollow. The end of the blue porch sagged forward, dragging parallel to the yard. The porch furniture was old and certain pieces, including the swing, were in desperate need of repair.
Along the exterior of the house, the white siding was encased with tangled masses of ivy and several of the siding planks were missing or had rotted away. The roof leaked in several places, forcing Shane to always be looking for buckets or jars to catch rainwater. Most of the windows were missing or broken and duck tape and plywood boards served as the alternative to glass. JoAnn Triplett worked at Ruth’s Diner in Sheaville and she would often work double shifts to earn extra money. She always promised to use the extra money to fix up the house, but Shane never saw one penny spent on improving their home. He just assumed that the house would be repaired one day, or it would fall over, whatever scenario came first.
The morning continued to move forward rapidly and Shane constantly scanned his watch to check the time. He gripped his red bag tightly against his shoulder racing towards the opening at the end of the hollow.
Sheaville was always busy during the early morning hours. Mothers were busily getting their children ready for school and droves of little people stood eagerly at several of the designated bus stops in town waiting to be picked up. Downtown Sheaville was the anchor of the community. Maple Street cut right through the center of town. Unlike the road leading to the Triplet house, the street was paved, although it was only two lanes wide. If any traffic followed Maple Street through town, the road would lead them to a 4-way stop interchange bisecting with Central Avenue. If you turned right, Central Avenue took you towards the residential areas of Sheaville and out to old man Shea’s dormant logging mill. A left turn at the stop sign would lead you past Clark Field and more importantly, to the I-64 on-ramp. Seventy miles west on the modern 4-lane highway would take you to Charleston, the state capitol and 115 miles away would take you to Huntington, the state’s second largest city. Outside of Huntington, roads leading to Kentucky and Ohio could be discovered and traveled.
As he began walking briskly towards the mouth of the hollow, he heard the sound of moving tires against the dirt. He noticed clouds of light brown dust began to wisp around him, tickling his noise and forcing him to sneeze. The oncoming noise grew louder and louder. Shane stopped and faced backwards towards the direction of his house. Approaching him was the girl on a bicycle, and suddenly Shane was drilled in the chest with a tight and heavy object. The girl sped by Shane in a cloudy haze, almost knocking him off his feet. Her bicycle wheels continued to grind against the dirt, and the only images Shane could distinguish was the girl’s red baseball cap and navy blue shorts. When the dust settled, Shane massaged his chest and looked towards the ground. Resting at his feet was a copy of The Charleston Gazette newspaper.
During the midst of another coughing and sneezing binge, Shane picked up the paper and moved it to the palm of his right hand. He reached back and threw the newspaper as hard as he could towards the direction of his house. The newspaper spun in the air end over end and landed on the back porch of the house.
“Not bad,” muttered Shane satisfactorily.
Shane briskly walked down the dirt road leading to the end of his hollow and turned right onto Central Avenue. As he progressed on Central Avenue, he admired the homes and property of some of the town’s more opulent residents. Anyone who owned or operated any type of business in Sheaville usually lived closer to town, and their homes were larger and very decadent. Since spring training in March, Shane became familiar with many of the houses. He knew that Ruth Busby, owner of Ruth’s Diner lived in the two story white home with the rose bushes in the front yard. Frank Miller, the owner of the Sheaville Drugstore lived alone in a green house with canvas awnings. His wife died ten years ago, and the awnings served as a tribute to her, primarily because she fussed at Frank for years to place awnings on the front of the house and he never did until she died.
Eight houses down from Frank’s house was the first morning destination. Shane stopped and stood in front of a one-story red-brick home nestled on a small culdesack against one of the mountainsides. This was the temporary residence of one of Shane’s closest friends on the team, Chaz Martinez. Chaz was the shortstop for the Sheaville Loggers and he was ranked as one of the top shortstops in the ABA. A native of the Dominican Republic, Chaz grew up in Louisville, Kentucky where his dad was an accountant and his mother was a native Dominican and a teacher of English as a Second Language to middle school students. Shane always assumed that is how Chaz learned to speak English so well.
Shane always enjoyed Chaz’s company even though he was boisterous, loquacious, and sometimes crude. He loved to laugh, and he loved to spend time with Shane. Finally, the young pitcher squinted and noticed the sunlight reflecting of the glass screen door as it flung open. “You ready to go or not?” Shane questioned.
“Put your piston back in your pants, I’m coming,” Chaz said. The shortstop also had the propensity to make sexual innuendoes. Actually, it was more like a habit than an unusual occurrence. Shane figured that sense he lived with the Mitchell family during the season, he was not able to talk as freely as he would like. Morton Mitchell was the mayor in town, and for some reason Shane knew he ran the house like he ran Sheaville: with an iron fist.
Chaz bounced down the porch steps with his glove and bat and out onto the street. His skin was dark, and was round with deep set brown eyes that radiated youth and vigor. Chaz gave Shane a crooked look. “Don’t worry, we have plenty of time to get to the park…we