Wellstone Center

From Wellstone Books

Remember Who You Are: What Pedro Gomez Showed Us About Baseball and Life

When Pedro Gomez of ESPN died suddenly, it hit a lot of people hard – including us. Pedro was a good friend. He was also someone who brought out the best in others. Steve wrote this essay for The Bold Italic on losing his best friend. Our new book, out in hardcover as of July 13, 2021, features 62 personal essays by a wide variety of writers and baseball people reflecting on ways that Pedro touched their lives. These are essays about much more than baseball. Pedro’s son, Rio Gomez, has a beautiful essay about fathers and sons that was reprinted in the Boston Globe and at ESPN. The cover art is by frequent New Yorker cover artist Mark Ulriksen, a Gomez favorite. We have essays from seven active major-league managers, including Tony La Russa, Dusty Baker and AJ Hinch, and baseball writers from Tim Kurkjian and Tim Keown to Bruce Jenkins and Peter Gammons.

Join us, here at 858 Amigo Road in Soquel, for a Saturday, July 17, book event starting at 2 p.m., featuring many of the contributors to the book. It’s free and we’ll have books for sale. You can RSVP here.

From Wellstone Books

I Wish I Was Billy Collins

In the Thanksgiving issue of the Santa Cruz weekly the Good Times, Steve writes about local poet Pete McLaughlin, whose collection, I Wish I Was Billy Collins, Wellstone Books is honored to be publishing (Pub. date: December 8). Pete was a unique talent, wickedly funny, fearless and honest, to a fault.

“Five years had passed since I first met Pete, after my wife Sarah heard him talking with friends at the Buttery about his poetry, and five years since we’d first offered to publish a book of his poems. Three years had gone by since Pete took his own life and I wrote a Good Times cover story about how Pete’s death left me ‘reeling with a sense of being alienated and distanced,’ a ‘baby step’ toward Pete’s world.

“I’m still reeling, and have been reeling all along, struggling with the awesome weight of trying to do right by as original and bracing a talent as Pete, feeling a little like Frodo with his ring (and yes, the poems do give one the power to go invisible and see the unseen).”

The WCR Interview

Emily Nemens

We talk to dynamic Paris Review editor Emily Nemens—“also an accomplished artist and illustrator and former jazz musician,” as the Times has noted—about her debut novel, The Cactus League, a baseball novel like no other, a group portrait of a diverse cast of characters in Arizona for spring training; the murder of George Floyd and the movement that has exploded afterward—”There are many ways to be a change agent,” she says; life during the first months of the pandemic, in New York and elsewhere: “I have seen people talking about literature, reading novels at home, and amplifying new books on social media, all of which is welcome. We can only watch the news so many hours a day!” Click to read the full WCR Interview No. 7 – May 2020.

Mary C. Curtis Fellowship

To help African-American journalists who have long wanted to do a book, but never get the time, we are now offering the Mary C. Curtis Fellowship: two weeks here at our small California writers’ retreat center to focus on a book proposal. Mary, an award-winning columnist for Roll Call, talks politics regularly on WCCB-TV in Charlotte, N.C., where she lives. She focuses on the intersection of politics, culture and race. During a two-week residency with us in early 2019, she was able to make dramatic progress on her book proposal – and we want to give others a chance to do the same.

Steve’s Blog: Stuck Home?

Read More Books

Was there ever a better time to go on a book-reading binge? We’re all spending more time at home out of circulation, self-quarantined or otherwise, and we’re all at risk of having the steady stream of amazing coronavirus headlines short-circuit all consideration of anything else. Movies are a help, but getting lost in a good book is the ultimate escape and the ultimate way forward.
As Bookshop Santa Cruz owner Casey Coonerty Protti emailed me (and probably a few others) this morning, as part of a general suggestion to support local businesses: “Check to see if a local store has a website or will take phone orders to ship items. Bookshop is now offering $.99 shipping of any books to a Santa Cruz County zip code with orders at www.bookshopsantacruz.com or on the phone (831-423-0900).” To continue reading.

Joseph Jonas Reading

From “The Apartment”

Here’s our former intern Joseph Jonas reading at our last OpenMic night in March from his poem, “The Apartment.”

… Every step