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Ask yourself a question. Say you're a baseball general manager of possibly the most star-crossed team in baseball history, the Boston Red Sox. Say you have a player who's a cross between Sidd Finch and Roy Hobbs. The only problem is that maybe, just maybe, he's a serial killer. He holds in his hands not only your job and the financial future of your team, but the hopes and dreams of legions of long-suffering fans. What do you do?
This is the stew first-time novelist David Ferrell cooks up in "Screwball," a black comedy about baseball and the lengths Americans will go to and price we'll pay for success. His novel takes those notions to the nth degree.
The book is a potboiler that takes the reader from the discovery of a phenom, Ron Kane, in the hinterlands of Texas to, naturally, the seventh game of the World Series at Fenway Park. Along the way, it is peopled with a list of characters both offbeat and archetypal: the long-suffering manager with a taste for Pepto-Bismal and an odd fascination with his colon; the penurious young general manager whose moral compass seems to point only to winning; the aging daughter of the owner whose prim Boston Brahminic exterior belies her inner self; and the savior who takes the Red Sox and baseball by storm, but has certain off-field, um, issues.
Kane arrives with the Boston Red Sox, a team that hasn't won a World Series since 1918, has lost in the seventh game of four Series since, and is believed to suffer the "Curse of the Bambino," for selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees after the 1919 season.
Kane brings an ungodly fastball and uncommon success to the team. This coincides with a curious string of dead bodies that start popping up wherever the Red Sox play. Is Kane the killer or someone else?
As the Red Sox and the body counts rise, the team's general manager, Neville "Wolf" Wulfmeyer, and the owner's daughter, Henrietta Pritchard, grapple with an awful truth and find hilarious solutions to their moral responsibilities.
In "Screwball," Ferrell takes many of the conventions of suspense and baseball novels and twists them into a unique blend that is engaging, funny and, ultimately, provocative.

The reporter who would be a novelist

David Ferrell remembers sitting over cocktails with newspaper friends over the years, dreaming about this.
" Wouldn't it be great if one day ... "
Sure, he was successful as a newspaperman. From part-time work while in college in the mid-'70s as a sports clerk at the Long Beach Press-Telegram, to a five-year stint working his way up at the Orange County Register, to a job in the features department at the Los Angeles Times, his journalistic career had followed a nice upward arc.
He was among the reporters who wrote about the 1992 riots in Los Angeles and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Times won Pulitzer prizes for those stories.
Although Ferrell says he played only a small part in the above efforts, he also wrote a series of stories about extreme sports. And for those he was nominated for a Pulitzer.
One of those stories, about the Badwater ultra marathon in Death Valley, was also featured in "The Best American Sports Writing of 1998."
Yet, through it all, he carried a burden. A shame. In spite of all the accolades he considered himself a failed novelist.
The thing he dreamed about, the "Mount Everest," was to be a published novelist. And that had eluded him. Until now.
" Screwball," 46-year-old Ferrell's first novel, hit local bookstores on April 1. On Tuesday at 7 p.m. the author will read from his book at Barnes and Noble in Long Beach.
" I'm just happy it's out there," Ferrell says of "Screwball," which was accepted by publisher William Morrow in June, 2001. "I think of all the years I saw myself as a failed novelist, so when it came out it created a sort of cognitive dissonance. But it was really great to go into a Barnes & Noble and see a nice display."
The book has also been optioned by Steve Wilson and Danny De Vito and a screenplay has been adapted, but Ferrell just chuckles about the Hollywood side of the project.
" I heard some people thought Jack Nicholson would be perfect for Sharky," Ferrell says, referring to the novel's Pepto Bismol-chugging baseball manager.
The book is a black comedy that combines two great American pastimes: baseball and serial killing. Imagine Ring Lardner meets Stephen King. It is an occasionally over-the-top satiric thriller with an underlying moral question that asks: How far will we go to hide reckless and even lethal behavior in the pursuit of athletic success and its financial rewards?
In "Screwball," the answer is clear: "Play ball!"
As he sits on his couch in his modest home near El Dorado Park, Ferrell talks about his book and his big break into publishing with an almost detached reporter's view. It's as if he can't believe this is his story.
" It's been a wild ride," he says. "Now I'm just trying to enjoy the moment. You only have one first novel."
And this first novel didn't come easily.
Actually, Ferrell's first novel, a "serious" thriller inspired by the old Pike's Amusement Park in Long Beach, is in a desk drawer.
" I spent 10 years on it," says Ferrell, who finally decided he didn't have enough story to carry a novel.
Then inspiration came. Ferrell remembers lying on his couch one day in 1995, watching a televised baseball game when the idea came to him. He doesn't even remember who was playing, only that a left-handed batter was at the plate.
" I started to wonder, `What if this guy was a serial killer? And as they go from town to town, dead bodies start showing up?' "
Then came six years of writing. Ferrell wrote one version that didnt sell. Then another. Still nothing.
But Ferrell persevered, because, "I always thought I had a great idea. Maybe my one great idea."
Ferrell cut back to working three days a week at the newspaper to devote more time to the novel.
" To some degree it was an act of faith," Ferrell says. "I thought, this is the type of writing I really want to do. And I was encouraged that I was having so much fun. At the same time, I didn't know if it would ever get published. That was in the back of my head."
Ferrell says he started shopping at thrift stores. He remembers his children: Scott, now 21 and in real estate, and Alina, 18, a singer/songwriter, talking about him going into his cave to write. He also remembers it being an occasional source of friction with his late wife, Linda, who died in 1997.
He dedicates the book to all three.
" The hours and hours it takes to write, it's just a tremendous commitment. Sometimes, I wondered, is life going by? Why am I doing this? Every writer faces that. It's the greatest burden to lift."
After consulting with a former colleague, Ferrell wrote a third version and found a new agent, Philip Spitzer, who sold the book in two weeks for $60,000.
Since the book's publication, Ferrell has done readings, which he describes as nerve-wracking, and has been on several radio talk shows to promote the book. As with many first-time writers, his successes and experiences have been mixed. At one of his first readings in San Mateo, one person showed up. In the first days after the book was released, Ferrell said he went in to a bookstore and found his novels stacked against a back wall.
" So I picked up a few books and put them in the new fiction category and put some others over with the sports books," Ferrell says.
Although Ferrell is enjoying his fling with fame, he's still refining his craft.
But overall, he's happy to have staked out territory as a published novelist, and shed "the great mental weight of wondering if I was just wasting time."