"Horatio tries to chew his gum in a manly way. He wants desperately for the other boys to think him one of them, to count him a teammate. They do not. He doubts they ever will. It would help if he could blow a bubble – not a puny popper, but a real bubble – the kind that would leave a skein of pink gum to peel from his pasty face."

To continue reading Kenneth Weene's short story, "Horatio at the Game" check out our Spring & Summer 2011 issue (and turn to page 24!). Here's Kenneth, talking to us about baseball, childhood and writing.

Stymie: One of the most interesting aspect of "Horatio at the Game" is the exploration of what kids expect versus what adults expect of kids in sports. What attracted you to this divide?

Kenneth: As a psychologist who specialized in children and family problems, I've always been very aware that children and parents had completely different agendas. Nowhere is this clearer than in the area of athletics.

I do want to point out something else about "Horatio." The two boys, Horatio and Alex, also have totally different feelings about baseball. Horatio wishes desperately that he could be the hero, the really good player. Alex, who is put in the position of hero even though it is beyond his talents, wishes that he could perhaps stop playing altogether or at least have the relative obscurity of sitting on the bench with Horatio. They have a mutual envy. Often we forget that some of the highest achieving youngsters just wish the pressure would stop.

Stymie: Tell us a little about your experience with baseball: did you play as a kid? Did you collect baseball cards? In what ways does it work well in fiction?

Kenneth: I grew up a nerd. And, since I was a younger brother, I was usually following bigger kids who didn't want me playing in their games. So I didn't play much baseball as a kid. However at summer camp I did play some softball - usually as the extra outfielder. (Yeah, I was that bad.)

Since I was at camp in Maine during the summers, far from my home town of Boston, I only got to one professional game as a kid - Red Sox versus Indians. Ted Williams didn't his a home run, but that was okay as I was more a fan of Dom Dimaggio. After all The Little Professor was the youngest brother and the kid with glasses.

We also had the Braves in Boston in those days, and I liked to collect Braves cards so I could say I was a Brave's fan and not rooting for the Sox. In reality I didn't care much but it made me sound like I knew something about the sport.

So what did I like about Baseball? And I did, in my own way, like it a lot. Let's go back to Maine. Baseball was almost a religion there. People weren't just Red Sox fans; they were fanatics. Every town had a team. They may have been playing on converted pastures and with frayed equipment, but play they did with their entire hearts and souls. A few times one of the local teams played against our camp counselors - just for fun. It was the hicks versus the sophisticated guys from the city. The games were disasters - at least from the camp staff's perspective. I enjoyed their humiliation.

Much later I lived in New York and started going to Mets and Yankee games - mostly Mets. Strangely I had come to enjoy watching the game. Now I live in Arizona, try to get to some spring games and to a few Diamondback regular season contests as well.

Stymie: Tell us a little about your life as a writer: what are you working on now? What's the best writing advice you've ever gotten? Could that advice be applied to the game of baseball?

Kenneth: Since I'm now a retired man of leisure, I write most days but without pressure. Right now I have two finished novels waiting to get published (in addition to the two that have been). One features a softball tournament, or at least the idea of a tournament. That book is titled "Tales From the Dew Drop Inne: Because there's one in every town. The other novel is a coming of age/conspiracy novel called "Time To Try the Soul of Man."

The best pieces of advice I ever got about writing were:
Write, write, and then write some more;
Read what you write aloud preferably to others;
Be sure you have an editor look at your work.

How do these relate to baseball? First, practice, practice, and then practice some more. I guess that's a universal piece of advice. Second, be sure you're part of a team; you can't accomplish in a vacuum. Also, be sure you actually look at what you are doing and how you are playing. Don't just practice your mistakes. Third, since you are going to make mistakes, listen to the coach. If you think you know it all, you probably know nothing.

Ken Weene is both a poet and fiction writer. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications
– most recently featured in Sol and publication in Spirits, and Vox Poetica. An anthology of his writings, Songs for my Father, was published by Inkwell Productions in 2002. Ken’s short stories have appeared in many places, including Legendary, Sex and Murder Magazine, The New Flesh Magazine, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Daily Flashes of Erotica Quarterly, and Bewildering Stories. He also contributes to Basil and Spice.