Dugout

The month of October brings baseball season to a close, as well as the beginning of a long winter of discontent for Yankees and Mets fans. As managers Joe Giardi and Jerry Manuel pick through the wreckage of their respective team’s collapses, both of them should be thankful that they are not Cookie Palisetti.

The year is 1960. Cookie is the manager of the Los Angeles Pioneers, an expansion franchise immediately marginalized once the Dodgers moved into town from Brooklyn. The team stinks, the owner is breathing down Cookie’s neck, and a bookie’s collector is breaking Cookie’s fingers because he was foolish enough to bet on his own team to win. Cookie’s salvation: Billy Luther, a fireball-flinging phenom that the Pioneers drafted years ago. The problem: two days after he signed up, Billy killed his parents. The solution: Go to Los Diablos State Correctional Facility, and use an exhibition game between the Pioneers and the resident Yardbirds to break Billy out.

Dugout (AiT/Planet Lar, $12.95) is an entertaining read that reads quicker than the first few innings of a World Series game. Adam Beechen manages to bring enough depth to the characters to make them interesting. Manny Bello, who collaborated with Beechen on Hench, presents somewhat scratchy art, though the cast members are distinctive, such as Irene Luther, who asks Cookie to get her brother out of prison and winds up falling for the skipper. Also in the lineup is Wilbur Miles, nicknamed “The Rev” after finding religion, a claim that some of the people in Los Diablos dismiss. He gets convinced to join Cookie’s crusade, based on his spending six years in that prison. In exchange for setting the pieces to Billy’s escape, Rev decides to pitch one last time, in order to stick it to the warden and wipe away the failure of the last game he lost.

With all of the colorful characters around, Cookie manages to stand out. Readers don’t get to see the former light-hitting shortstop manage that much, but they hear about his unique way of managing. As the warden tells Cookie, “There’s a glorious desperation to everything you do.” This is true during the exhibition; as the game progresses and Billy and Rev are pitching the games of their lives, Cookie desperately tries to ensure Billy’s freedom. He is somebody who wants to leave a mark on the game. As he tells Rev, “I can save the team, save my life, and . . . hit one out of the park, for once in my life.”

Dugout doesn’t hit one out of the park, but it gets to second base with a stand-up double. Think of it as something to keep a baseball fan warm while waiting for spring training.