John Culea

Miner Leaguer John Culea

Pete Adamson is a 22-year-old hotshot shortstop and player-manager for the 1908 C & A Coppers of Bisbee, Arizona, one of six teams in a semi professional league. He is among a select few miners paid to play baseball for the Calumet & Arizona Copper Mining Company. While early 20th century mining barons in Arizona extracted millions of dollars worth of ore, they were obsessed to win bragging rights by beating their competition on the baseball field with company sponsored teams. "Miner Leaguer" follows Pete and his copper mining teammates whose baseball talents allow them to escape, if only on weekends, the danger and drudgery of Bisbee's mine shafts."Miner Leaguer," John Culea's latest historical novel, is a page-turning adventure that includes Bisbee's two massive floods, a horrendous downtown fire and violence from other miners who resent the town's baseball players. Compounding Pete's life is company executive and team general manager Arthur Gallagher, a tyrannical, miserly bully who resents the way Pete protects his teammates and his insistence on attending Sunday church services. Pete is convinced that Gallagher will never change, but later is left to explain a seeming miracle. Pete has his heart set on Gallagher's English secretary, Edith Thompson and for awhile believes the two are destined for a life together but is devastated when he learns more about Edith. Pete's floundering spirit is revived when Grace Collins, recently graduated from the University of Arizona comes to Bisbee for her first job at The Bisbee Daily Review. Other characters include teammate Hank Simpson who must overcome tragedy to rebuild his life and Ying Lu, the live wire, outspoken owner of a Chinese restaurant whose one-woman mission is to find a bride for Pete. Miner Leaguer is more than a baseball book, it is an epic tale of the pioneer spirit of the Arizona Territory shortly before statehood and the brutal discrimination women, minorities and the working class faced on the frontier. It also shows the unlikely story behind the 1909 construction of Warren Ballpark that today has been in use as a sports facility longer than any other ballpark in the United States.