People often ask me which is my favorite out of all the books I’ve written, and I always reply that books are like children – you love them all equally but differently.
I stand by that answer, but sometimes the characters in a book will resonate so much with you that you want to continue spending time with them. That happened to me with Mantle: The Best There Ever Was, and also with my newest book, Maris & Mantle: Two Yankees, Immortality and the Age of Camelot. I completed that manuscript two summers ago, and surprisingly Maris stays with me even as I move on as a writer.
Fortunately, the promotion of Maris & Mantle has givien me ample opportunity to keep Roger in my immediate thoughts. He was his own man, and sometimes I feel as though the book is more of a biography of Roger Maris -- a biography of an American original in which Mickey Mantle played an important part.
Of course, you, readers, are my partners in this adventure. For that, I’m so truly grateful to those of you who helped make Maris & Mantle a bestseller at Amazon -- and helped return Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son, originally published in 2002, back to the bestseller list this year as well.