The Big Breeze

The Big Breeze is Fechter’s paean to baseball. It’s the story of a pitcher whose God-given, once-in-a-generation talent is violently robbed from him and then-in time-learns to play catch in ways deeper and more meaningful than his young self could accept or understand. This novel is an eerily insightful, full-throated, honest, uncompromising story of baseball and the emotional growth of a boy-man in a hardboiled country. I kept tearing up as I read Fechter’s story. I love a well-written baseball tale. But this writer is sincere, scarily brave, loving, and committed to the greatest American team sport.-ALAN WINSON, host of Bar Crawl Radio Podcast  The Big Breeze is imaginative and magical. Fechter truly brings you into the game with thoughtful dialogue, interesting character development, and intersecting plot lines. Mix in some crime, baseball, history, and art... and you have one fast moving story that keeps you wanting more.-DIANE LAPIS: coauthor of Cocktails Across America: A Postcard View of Cocktail Culture from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s Twenty-five years after the 'Immaculate Game,' a perfect twenty-seven up, twenty-seven down, all strikeouts, legendary pitcher Joseph 'Big Breeze' Bye hides out on a small farm in upstate New York. He paints the legends he followed, the heroes he once stood beside, and keeps to a quiet routine after a hit-and-run stole his career and left him in a wheelchair. Silence is the only game he plays now. One day, his routine is interrupted when the phone rings. A young reporter wants the real story of the night that made him a ghost in the world of professional baseball.  Minutes later, he receives a second phone call, a voice from the past. The caller reveals to Joseph that the crash that killed his career wasn’t an accident, and the man who ordered the hit is still at large. As quickly as his career ended, Breeze is pulled off the sidelines and back into shadows he hoped to outrun. The trail winds through studio lofts and clubhouse tunnels, back rooms and midnight highways, into the dark underbelly of America’s pastime, where every secret comes high and inside. The Big Breeze is a lean noir thriller about obsession, guilt, loss, second chances-and a fallen ace stepping back on the mound for one more inning.