When I started CallItFive, I knew that I wanted it to take place on Cape Cod. For one thing, I live on Cape Cod so I didn't have to travel anywhere for research. I have lived other places. I have visited other places. But Cape Cod is a unique sort of place. There are mansions here for people who only stop by for a few weeks in the summer. There are regular working people here. There are retired people here. There are poor people here. And there are lots of cultural stresses between locals and those from away and the gentry and the help. So Cape Cod is a great setting for a story. And there is a market for stories about Cape Cod and there are bookstores in the "Quaint little villages here and there!"

So I needed to have a reason to move the primary character from 'away' to the Cape. If he just lived on the Cape, grew up on the Cape, that would have been a completely different story. Luckily, there is the Cape Cod Baseball League which is one of the premier summer leagues, a feeder for the major leagues. Drafting him into the Cape Cod Baseball League meant that I could bring him here for months, have him live and work here, but still be an outsider and a star.

But why 1979?