LONG GONE

A mildly raunchy and loosely plotted first novel about a 1950s Southern baseball team, Grade D, on the Atlanta-Florida circuit--their lost games, their girls, and their sudden rise from the basement to a real shot at the pennant. They're the Graceville Oilers, and their player-manager is Cecil ""Stud"" Cantrell, a wenchlng, guzzling, foul-mouthed has-been who was a coming star with the New York Yankees, almost lost his leg with the Marines in World War II, and then plummeted to the bottom of the bush leagues. He's now 39 and his world is full of young girls who play The Platters and listen to Elvis Presley and Fats Domino (""Ah foun' mah threeal/ Awn Blueberry Heeal. . ."")--the novel enjoys a heavy drench of early Fifties' aural artifacts. But Stud's domestic problems (mostly a live-in, nymphomaniacal teenager named Dixie ""Hot"" Box who wants to marry him) and those of the rest of the team (pregnant girlfriends, lost innocence) become unimportant when the team lucks into a fantastic recovery: they've acquired a powerhouse black catcher who, because the league is lily-white, is renamed Jos‚ Brown and called a Venezuelan. So it's suddenly onward and upward--till the crunch comes when a banker backing the Oilers tells Stud that he has to throw the crucial doubleheader and let the opposing team win. Stud loves baseball above all else, but it's throw the game or lose the last job available, and any sense of choice is ""long gone."" No surprises and no depth--but Hemphill (The Good Ol' Boys) has the local colors just right, and the mix of sass and sentiment is moderately appealing.