Ex-Editor’s Comic Novel of Revenge Set in Friendly Confines of Baseball

Laguna Beach author Sherwood Kiraly spent 16 years at a national newspaper syndicate, serving as comics editor and editor for Ann Landers, Erma Bombeck, Roger Ebert, Sylvia Porter, and Evans and Novak.

But in 1988, when the ownership of the syndicate changed for the third time in a decade, he decided it was time to do something different: He would write a novel.

“I went home with my year’s worth of severence pay and I told my wife, ‘I’m going to write something wonderful,’ and I kind of walked off the pier that way,” Kiraly told the audience at the Round Table West author-luncheon at the Balboa Bay Club last week.

Kiraly’s “walk off the pier” paid off: He’s making a splash with his first novel, “California Rush” (Macmillan; $17.95).

Actually, a baseball metaphor is more fitting for “California Rush,” a comic baseball novel told through the eyes of a former major league shortstop-turned-coach, Charlie Tyke. As a review in the New York Times says, Kiraly has “scored a solid hit in his first time at bat.”

Kiraly’s “wonderful idea” for a novel centers on a National League pennant race that has come down to the last game of the season between St. Louis and the California Rush, a West Coast expansion club owned by former movie cowboy Sunset Boone.

It’s a game, Kiraly said in an interview, in which “somebody can do everything wrong and still have it turn out right.”

But more than a team-to-team face-off, that wacky final game of the season is a match-up between managers.

Managing the California Rush is Jay Bates, a former major league outfielder who did not just hustle on the ball field but “fought for his life.” Intense? As narrator Charlie Tyke puts it: “If everybody is a rubber band, Jay would be stretched the farthest.”

And then there’s Davy Tremayne, the St. Louis team’s manager and second baseman. Tremayne is tall, graceful and as handsome as a leading man. As a player in the minor leagues, Charlie Tyke says, “Davy Tremayne went dancing over the obstacles like some guy who’s never going to die, like all of baseball was set up just for him to succeed.”

Scrappy Bates and golden boy Tremayne, who faces power pitchers by imagining he’s a fearless fictional ballplayer named Niff Naffner, have been archrivals since the minors, and it all comes together in that final game--a game for the history books.

As a first-time comic novelist, Sherwood Kiraly is the kind of guy who, beneath his book jacket photo, writes that he has to remember to “spit out the tobacco juice and swallow the sunflower seeds” and not vice versa.

A lifelong baseball fan who grew up in Illinois, Kiraly, 40, began writing plays in college where he majored in theater and performed in improvisational comedy.

During his time at the newspaper syndicate, Kiraly became friends with cartoonist Joe Martin, who draws “Mr. Boffo” and “Willy ‘n’ Ethel.”

In the ‘80s, Martin collaborated with Kiraly on a TV pilot script. The script did not sell, but it led to the pair being hired to write a free-lance script for the short-lived 1984 Elliott Gould sitcom, “E/R.” They also co-wrote a script on speculation for a Mr. Boffo movie that, Kiraly said, “didn’t go.”

An admirer of Ring Lardner and P.G. Wodehouse, Kiraly said writing a book was a longtime dream.

“I thought if I’m only going to get one chance to write a book I’ll write about something I enjoy and that I’m comfortable writing about,” said Kiraly, whose severence pay from the newspaper syndicate was supplemented by income from his wife, Patti Jo, who makes jewelry.

Kiraly, who is currently writing his second novel and working part-time doing word processing, is pleased with the critical reception “California Rush” is receiving.

But he knows what a tough sell a baseball yarn can be, even an “entertaining tall tale” like his.

As the droll Kiraly told the Round Table West crowd:

“I don’t want to say the book is about baseball--you tend to lose half the house,” he said. “I would like to say it’s really more of a comedy than a baseball story and it’s more about people than it is about ballplayers.

“And if you’re still resistant to it, it’s less about baseball than it is about envy, obsession and revenge”--he paused--”but it’s told in a sunny, lighthearted way.”

Romance Writers: Author Lou Kaku will discuss scene analysis during the pre-meeting workshop of the Orange County chapter of Romance Writers of America, at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Fullerton Public Library, 353 W. Commonwealth Ave. Author Maralys Wills will discuss how to market a book to an editor during the regular session at 1 p.m.