Barrie’s Glenn Wilkins typically spends his days writing about stocks, bonds and other financial goings on around the county.
Every now and then, however, the local author enjoys stretching his creative muscles and focusing topics that are completely out of that wheelhouse. Wilkins recently released his fourth novel, Sultan and Billy Hops, a story he says was inspired by his love of baseball.
“You can’t really afford to be too creative when you’re talking about stocks and bonds and the ups and downs of the market,” he admitted.
Being a baseball fan, Wilkins says he was glued to the Ken Burns baseball series a few years ago, which examines not only the game, but also the social implications behind it.
“Baseball has fared best when it’s led the county as opposed to following it. This has to do with players' salaries, letting certain portions of the population into the game without putting up barriers,” he told BarrieToday. “The part about Babe Ruth is that his biographer was quoted at some length… and what got my attention was the guy had all the smarts and all the skills and was as visible a figure as there was in the game.
"So why then was he not able to manage a big-league ball club? The more I thought, I wondered if there was something in his moral fibre that upset the baseball establishment and put up barriers against him," Wilkins added.
Wilkins says the story looks at what happens when someone becomes so famous they become somewhat entitled and figures they can get away with breaking social norms like the sanctity of marriage.
“There’s a part about the role of women that I touch on and serial cheating, I touch on themes like baseball’s refusal to change and (not) making him a manager even though many other great stars of the game were allowed to manage,” he said.
The story intertwines Ruth’s story with that of a young man named Billy Hops, who Wilkins described as a “have” compared to the Sultan of Swat’s “have not.”
“(The story) talks about how the sultan winds his way through what should be his golden years, but he’s unhappy because he can’t be a manager and stay in the game, and Billy on the other hand goes through his own crisis… and then ultimately an epiphany," he said. "Billy ends up living mostly happily ever after, but Babe Ruth can only live happily ever after with his new wife but not with baseball.
"It is about life and the world around us, but it has a sports component.”
The book is also available on Amazon Kindle.
