Over the Shoulder and Plant on One
An Irishman's Tribute to Willie Mays
by
Book Details
About the Book
Over the Shoulder and Plant on One: An Irishman’s Tribute to Willie Mays
In attempting to relay the feelings of joy and pride that he first knew as a baseball fan in the late 60’s and early 70’s, McDonald, as the "Irishman," deftly doffs his cap in obvious appreciation to those ballplayers he witnessed live, as well as those just before his time when there were three teams in New York, and Willie Mays was a young Giant in more ways than one.
Over the Shoulder and Plant on One: An Irishman’s Tribute to Willie Mays was preceded by An Irishman’s Tribute to the Negro Leagues, which took a breath and a sigh in the name of the men and women who participated in the old Negro Leagues. Hit Sign, Win Suit: An Irishman’s Tribute to Ebbets Field, is a future volume that will celebrate the days of Major League baseball in Brooklyn, which like the Negro Leagues and the days of Willie Mays, the player are long gone in a concrete sense, but not in a spiritual one.
About the Author
Thomas Porky McDonald of Astoria, Queens, is an Irish poet and writer who often used the world of baseball as a backdrop for his diverse verses and characters. A lifelong fan of the New York Mets, he began writing while working in Brooklyn in the mid-1980’s for New York City Transit in 1985. His first published book, An Irishman’s Tribute to the Negro Leagues explored the long lost world of all-black baseball. In this, his second effort, Over the Shoulder and Plant on One: An Irishman’s Tribute to Willie Mays, he touches on heroes that he encountered as a child, with Willie Mays serving as a linchpin between yesterday and today. A prolific writer in the 1990’s, McDonald plans on releasing much of the material he produced in those years in the course of the early 2000’s. Three poem anthologies which span the decade of the 90’s, a third "Irishman’s Tribute" (to Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field), along with a short story collection called Paradise Oval, are among the scheduled releases for the so-called "ramble poet." He still works in Brooklyn, where the writing began and continues to expand through the millennium.