Cheap Screwball (Book) (David Ferrell) Price

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Customer Reviews of Screwball

Satire or farce?
SCREWBALL is based on an intriguing situation: The general manager of the Boston Red Sox, suffering from the Curse of the Babe, is confronted by a video showing Ron Kane, his superstar pitcher (who may be the greatest who ever lived) disposing of a decapitated body.
From there the focus moves to the general manager, Neville Wulfmeyer, and the niece of the owner of the BoSox who are being blackmailed by the sender of the video.
This is where the book begins to go haywire. Wulfmeyer has no scruples. At one point he suggests they kill someone else to throw the police off the trail. In another instance, he kidnaps the manager's wife to avoid paying a bonus.
Certainly hyperbole is a tried and true method in satire, but Ferrell has about as much subtlety as a gangsta rapper. Kane throws the baseball 111 mph on a consistent basis. Every single member of the Red Sox is a ding-a-ling. One of them tosses a teargas cannister into a carload full of nuns. Another holds up a liquor store. About the only stabilizing influence is the manager, Augie "Big Fish" Sharkey. He's developing a king-sized ulcer, guzzling Pepto Bismol like water, but he tries to do the right thing, investigating the murders on his own. Ferrell does him an injustice in the end with a completely unrealistic resolution, the implication of which would destroy Major League Baseball if it were true.
Something else that bothered me throughout the book was an Honus Wagner snuff can Sharkey carries as a good luck piece (until it's stolen). One of the reasons Wagner's baseball cards are worth over a half million a piece is because he objected to his image being used to sell tobacco to children, a hypocritical stand to take if he actually chewed the stuff (which I doubt).

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A well done debut effort
So much of today's sports are based on economics. The team that can afford the expensive players can dominate. Hence, in baseball the Yankees with a 130 million dollar salary should and usually do crush a team such as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays with their paltry 30 million dollar salary. They really shouldn't even be in the same league. It is actually quite ludicrous. David Ferrell, in his debut novel, SCREWBALL notes how vital dollars and cents are to the business of baseball and reveals just how crazy this has become in this biting satire.
The greatest baseball player of all time, Ron Kane, a rookie pitcher who could also field and hit, is acquired by the Boston Red Sox. He is a problem difficult to control causing much heartburn to manager Augie Sharkey. The team is capable of making it to the series but the players must remain under some kind of control. Devisive elements on the team are causing chaos. To top it off, in every city the Red Sox are visiting, men are being killed-- their heads cut off and cuts made in the scalp in an unusual pattern- actually like the seams of a baseball. Is it a fan? Not according to a videotape the owners are sent. It appears to be a player and an important one at that. The owners must pay a ransom to prevent the tape from getting into the hands of the law. The owners placing victory over everything else decide to cover up the tape and the murders. The question is- can they stop the killings?
SCREWBALL is a searing indictment of the state of economy driven sports. The story is, at times, over the top. However, it is also very very funny. Characters are in many ways caricatures, yet, they are quite a charming crew. There is little in the way of suspense or surprise except to see whether the Red Sox can break their curse of not winning a World Series. A problem with the book is the inability of the author to keep the plot concise. There is a bit too much rambling and repetition. However, SCREWBALL is a very well done debut and worthy of a reader's attention especially if a fan of baseball.

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More downs than ups...nothing to get excited about.
I don't do fiction. I haven't read a novel in more than 20 years. So there wasn't a snowballs chance in hell that I would have ever read "Screwball" had it not been for one of our fellow reviewers who noted that I was a fellow New Englander and a big Red Sox fan. She sent me the book for my perusal and I must say while I appreciated her kind gesture I rediscovered why I dislike fiction so much.
Let's just say that I found "Screwball" to be rather far fetched to say the least. David Ferrell seemed to be on the right track in the early going and it looked to me like the story might develop into a pretty good "Whodonit". After all, the Red Sox were still trying to "reverse the curse" and they had the best young pitcher in the game. It seemed all was right in Red Sox Nation until a series of disturbing murders began to upset the proverbial apple cart. A preponderance of the evidence ssemed to suggest that someone connected with the ballclub was involved.
It was at this point that the author began to lose me by introducing a myriad of charactors I found difficult to follow and a whole bunch of bizarre subplots that I felt detracted from what was a potentially interesting main story line. Add to that the frequent use of unnecessary vulgarities and explicit language and this one went down the chute in a big hurry. I felt the same way as another reviewer who "could not wait for the book to end".
In the end this was a great idea that got messed up somewhere along the way. Not recommended.