The main theme of this manuscript is disillusionment. In order for this theme to hit home, I needed the character called Greg Larson, along with the reader, and (for the most part) the narrator, to discover this world of minor league baseball at the same time. This would allow me to tease the illusion—to set up baseball as this grand nostalgic enterprise in the beginning in a way that all three of us could believe it (with the exception of some expository asides from the narrator). I could describe my character’s boyish relationship with baseball so that it naturally lent itself to future heartache. That way, all of us together—Greg Larson, the reader, and the narrator—could hop in my beat-down gold Cadillac Deville and drive up to Maryland to lose our youth together, for better and for worse
