“The game’s simple, boys. All you do is hit the ball and run like hell.”
–Roy Sinquefield, Panama City Flyers
Long Gone is a baseball story. Stud Cantrell manages a Class-D Florida team in 1956. The soulful novel revolves around Stud’s dim career intersecting with his lover Dixie Lee, a young second baseman named Jamie Weeks and a black catcher named Jose Brown in this life-altering season for them all.
In the author’s note, Paul Hemphill revealed: “There really is a town in the Florida Panhandle with the name of Graceville. Once there was a Class-D league called Alabama-Florida and a team known as the Graceville Oilers. That is where the facts in this story begin and end.” Long Gone, published in 1979, was adapted by HBO Films in the mid-1980s.
Hemphill grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. He spent a lot of time “up in the bleachers of Rickwood Field”. He played five days on a Class-D club before being cut from the team. Hemphill told me how baseball forced him to pursue literature:
“This was the summer of 54 or 55. I finished my first quarter at Auburn around Christmas. I decided to hitchhike out to Oswego, and see how things were going. I just finished working with the post office for the holiday. So I hitchhike 800 miles in winter out there. I was not invited back to play with Oswego the next year. I was able to make the travel squad at Auburn where I became the batting practice pitcher. Nothing ever came of that.”
Long Gone transpires from June through August. Hemphill’s sharp detail for the game lace every page. He paints a vivid portrait of minor league ballparks, dive bars, cheap motels and long bus rides with a hilarious style. It’s a classic baseball novel.
The book’s spirit hits home when Stud Cantrell says: “Baseball’s a simple game. All you got to do is hit the ball and run like hell. It’s a democratic game. Hell, I don’t know much about politics, but I sure know about baseball. It’s just plain goddamn democratic when the best man wins. It ain’t supposed to matter who the pitcher’s daddy is or how much money the batter’s got in the bank.”
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