Mike Murphey - A Truly Enjoyable Fictional Retelling of a True Story

Posted on 8th of September, 2022 by Naomi Bolton

Mike Murphey is a native of New Mexico and spent almost 30 years as an award-winning newspaper journalist in the Southwest and PNW. Mike and his wife live in Spokane, Washington, and Phoenix. Mike enjoys life as a writer and old-man baseball player. As our Author of the Day, he tells us all about his book, The Conman.

Please give us a short introduction to what The Conman is about.

The Conman is the story of a lifelong baseball journey and the cost of single-minded purpose. The opening paragraph does a pretty good job of stating the heart of the story:

Failure can be an acute condition, perhaps even chronic, but quitting? Quitting is fatal. Conor Nash believed this to his marrow.

Faced with injury-induced retirement, a thirty-eight year old man must decide “Who is Conor Nash if he can’t pitch?”

More than just a story about baseball, it’s a story about remarkable relationships among Conor and three life-long friends, and Conor’s relationship with his wife and family.

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What inspired you to write this story? Was there anything in particular that made you want to tackle this?

The book is based on the true story of Keith Comstock’s amateur and professional baseball career. Keith pitched professionally for sixteen years. He has been the pitching rehabilitation coach for the Texas Rangers for the past 15 years.

For twenty years, my wife Nancy and I partnered with the late Dave Henderson—all-star center fielder for the Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox and Oakland Athletics—to produce the Mariners’ and Athletics’ adult baseball fantasy camps. I met Keith when we asked him to be one of the coaches at those camps. Keith is one of the funniest people I’ve known. For fifteen years or so, he served as judge in the kangaroo court sessions that started each day of the camp.

Reading between the lines, it became apparent to me that Keith had overcome tremendous obstacles in his baseball journey. He told a lot of funny stories about his career to entertain our campers. But it was apparent that he also suffered heartbreak, disillusionment and anger along the way. I wanted to know the whole story, and suggested to him that we do a book together. He resisted for a few years, but finally agreed. Ninety percent of the book is factual, but I wanted the flexibility of fiction to craft the story, so we made it a novel instead of a memoir.

Tell us more about Connor Nash. What makes him tick?

Conor Nash is a person who decided at the age of eight that he would be a major-league pitcher. Every aspect of his life was devoted to achieving that goal. His single-minded determination allowed him to hang on through the grinding poverty and politics of minor league baseball until he finally got there. When it ended, though, he struggled to find purpose.

Where does your fascination with baseball come from?

I’ve loved baseball all my life. I didn’t get to play much as a kid, because I wasn’t very good. As an adult, though, playing the game has been a hugely rewarding part of my life. At the age of 71, I still pitch.

Why did you title this book "The Conman"?

The book’s title has a bit of a double meaning. Nicknames are big in baseball. “The Con Man” is a natural for someone named Connor. It also applies a little to Keith. While anyone who makes the major leagues has tremendous talent, Keith’s quick wit and determination occasionally helped him to overcome the skepticism of some of the coaches, managers and general managers he dealt with along the way.

You worked as an award-winning newspaper journalist for almost 30 years. How has this influenced your writing?

My journalism career grounded me in writing. It was especially valuable in this book and a non-fiction book I wrote on the Chad Mitchell Trio and the 60s era of folk music in America. Writing pure fiction is an entirely different style, but journalistic discipline is a huge asset.

Interesting cover. Please tell us more about how it came about.

One of the fictional devices we use in the book is an angel, thus the cover. When he was very young, Connor/Keith’s father told him if he would make a wish while they were driving through a Bay-Area tunnel, it would come true. For the rest of his childhood, he faithfully made the same wish every time they traversed the tunnel. When a 90-mile-per-hour fastball showed up shortly after his senior year of high school, he decided he was the beneficiary of a baseball angel who was in the process of granting his wish. At the end of his career, we find him confronting that angel concerning all the difficulties he faced along the way.

What was your greatest challenge when writing The Conman?

The biggest challenge? When a group of people bare their souls and trust you to tell their story—Keith, his wife and family and the childhood friends who are still integral parts of Keith’s life—that becomes quite a responsibility. The challenge is to balance it in such a way that you meet their expectations and still respect your journalistic obligation not to sugar-coat the truth. The challenge that both Keith and I set for the book was to accurately present the professional baseball life and culture. Too many baseball books and movies fail to do that.

Readers say this book was hard to put down. How did you pull this off?

I’m flattered when a reader says one of my books is hard to put down. In this case, it’s because the story is built on a funny, engaging personality in Keith Comstock—a man who had a truly remarkable career. And baseball provides a wonderful stage.

What are you working on right now?

Right now, I’m grinding through the publication process for the fourth book in my humorous time-travel Physics, Lust and Greed Series. The Outlaw Gillis Kerg’s official publication date is September 22.