Interview with Paul Mullen | Sound Authors Radio

December 4, 2008

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Today is Halloween and my next guest has been here before. Dr. Paul Mullen, he wrote a book called The Day I Hit a Home Run and his website is thedayihitahomerun.com. He’s had some great success getting that book out at baseball parks and he wants to talk with us about Halloween and read us some spooky stuff. So, welcome to the show Paul.

Dr. Mullen: Thank you very much for having me on your show Dr. Kent and happy Halloween to you.

Dr. Kent: Happy Halloween. Now tell me a little about the success your book has had before we get into some reading of it.

Dr. Mullen: Yeah, sure. We are going around not just in Ohio but we’re going to go to Iowa and we created another book and it’s called The Day I Hit a Home Run at Principle Park. What’s happened there is the Iowa Cubs are going to give away this book in 2009 and its written specifically for the Iowa market. This book has more of that Field of Dreams type of scenery. It’s that kind of a makeup but it still has the same kind of principle elements as the Great American Ballparks book had.

Dr. Kent: What got you into writing about baseball? Were you a baseball player as a kid?

Dr. Mullen: I loved baseball and I still love it. I liked seeing the Phillies seeing the World Series, probably the same as you’re area and neck of the woods also. My daughter also plays. She played hardball for a lot of years and in fact she just came home, she just got her masters degree and the first thing we did was go out and hit fly balls.

Dr. Kent: You’re a national speaker and you teach educators how to engage students better in reading and it’s such an important cause because literacy in this country is not where it should be.

Dr. Mullen: Exactly and the problem based on my research is and we talked a little bit about it, brushed it, is this inner voice and what we know is because so many children are getting hooked on television and video games that they don’t have this inner conscious, this thing when we were kids that if you get your hand caught in the cookie jar you knew that you did something wrong. With so many of these video games going on and the violence in them, children only know what they want to be rewarded by, they don’t have that feeling of hard work to get it. That’s why I’ve written these series of books is to teach them that yes you can have your dream but to get that dream to come true, these are the series of steps of what you have to do to get there.

Dr. Kent: So let me hear, I’ve heard that you’d like to read for us a spooky section from your book and now, which book is this from? Creeper and his Fake Eye, which book does this come from?

Dr. Mullen: This is from The Great American Ballpark and because it does so well with the children, we also included it into the Principle Park book. Let me first kind of describe why we called it Creeper if you don’t mind?

Dr. Kent: Sure.

Dr. Mullen: What happened was creeper, who was an older man, rumor had it he got in a fire and the right side of his face was very scarred and as a result, he lost his right eye and he had a glass eye. So at Tricks or Treat, that’s what we call it in the Midwest, we don’t call it Halloween, we call it tricks or treat night and on tricks or treat night what we used to do as kids is if we were brave enough and strong enough, we’d knock on creepers door. If we were able to hold his fake eye for 15 seconds, he’d give us a dollar treat, which was usually one of those big Hershey’s bars.

Dr. Kent: Wow.

Dr. Mullen: Yeah. So that wasn’t the only prize and this is where I’ll read. It’s about a page long in this series of books. The prize was back behind creepers house. Creeper lived in a mansion and his house was the biggest house on the block but he also had farmland behind his house and he had overgrown bushes. But he had a pond back there and that’s what we called Creeper’s Pond. That’s what this story talks about is when Foogie and his brothers and the gang went out camping out and rumor had it that if creeper caught you fishing in his pond, you were never seen again, so that’s the basis of the story. Now I’ll go ahead and begin reading, it’s about a page in length.

The moon was full and a gentle breeze rattling the swaying oak kept us from completely enjoying the tranquil moment. Larry and Elvin were serious fishermen. They had already hiked to the other side of the lake and were busy casting glow worms just along the edge of the lime green slurry. Butch dug through the barkers tackle boxes searching for additional fake bait when he stumbled across Larry’s midnight snack. He sniffed the cellophane and growled, “Mmm, peanut butter!” He tore at the wrapper like a kid opening his first Christmas present, and his bite was so deep that he nearly split the sandwich in two. His smile soured as he spit out, “Cucumbers? Too weird!” It was a cucumber and peanut butter sandwich. What if he had bit into Elvin’s sandwich? “Nice,” he countered. “Nice,” Butch hacked out, “what’s yours?” “Peanut butter and green olives.” “You’re sick,” was all he said as he flicked out his line with a nice juicy fat crawler on it just barely hiding the bar. “Don’t knock it ‘till you try it,” Lucky added. “Shh,” we dropped to the muddy bank. “What did you hear, Bill?” Bill was my older brother, I asked, my breathing beginning to labor. “Made you look,” Bill joked. Bills maneuver was cruel considering it was the bewitching hour. But he did cut down on the wisecracks. I was feeling rather peculiar. We were the hunters, baiting our prey with creepy crawlers and yet we were also the hunted, with Creeper’s Pond serving as our trap. I was feeling particularly bold. “Got one!” We could hear Elvin’s dragline screaming from the pool in which he had landed. “I’m going over there,” I commented. “Why do you think we suggested Larry and Elvin fish over there?” Butch asked. “I don’t know.” Then I thought about it, really thought about it. Creeper’s first move would be out the back porch and the Barkers would be his first victims. I plopped down next to Butch and cast out my line. Fishing this late at night wasn’t exactly relaxing. The ground was damp and when I closed my eyes for what I thought was a split second, it really seemed like an eternity. For all I knew, I was still on the back porch dreaming this whole episode. Creeper’s porch light doused us. “I’m going to get you kids once and for all!” Creeper shouted. The bright spotlight blinded us. We huddled together like a flock of chickens believing there was a safety in numbers. It was Bill that finally came to his senses, “Run!” he screamed. We dropped our poles. I took one step and slammed into Lucky. Fortunately he was kind enough to help me to my feet. Elvin circled to the other side of the lake. He reeled his line in at a furious pace but it was of no use. The fish was just too big. Creeper closed in on both of the Barkers. The final image I saw before turning and hightailing it out of there was Larry cowering to his knees. “Save yourselves,” were Larry’s final chilling words. And that was the last that we saw of Larry and Elvin.

Dr. Kent: Bravo! Love the story and we don’t have any more time but that will send me into Halloween with good thoughts.

Dr. Mullen: Well you make sure you dress up and give those kids the kind of candy they need, those dollar ones – the dollar size Hershey bars.

Dr. Kent: Exactly, I might just have to get a nasty glass eye to give them.

Dr. Mullen: There you go.

Dr. Kent: Well it’s been an honor speaking with Paul Mullen. We can visit is website on the Day I Hit a Home Run enterprise on thedayihitahomerun.com. We’re going to follow along with what you’re doing.

Dr. Mullen: All right, thanks Dr. Kent for having me on your show.

Dr. Kent: We should all think about children’s literacy as an issue in this upcoming new presidency. My next guest on the show is a musician. Her name is Marybeth D’Amico. I think I’m saying that correctly. She lives in Germany but she’s an American singer/songwriter. I’m going to play a song from her latest album, and that’s called Ohio. After that song is done, we’ll chat with her about that album and it’s called Heaven, Hell, Sin and Redemption. A great title for Halloween. So come on back after this tune.

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