Tommy Bilotti was born with athletic ability that was developed during his early years at Palisades West where he earned a statewide reputation as an athlete at George Washington High School as a baseball and football star. He set school and state records and led his American Legion baseball team in all categories. College football and baseball scouts and Major league baseball representatives and scouts followed him every game he participated in. Ted Piano a former minor league star became his baseball mentor, while Carmine Longo, a swab honest businessman working for dishonest men became Tommy's friends. Palisades West was a gambler's paradise, where loan sharks obligated to pay the mob for the right to run their business were easy to find. A bet could be placed in most corner stores and young men played craps and gin rummy in social clubs, in the parks, or on deserted street corners. No one in law enforcement paid attention. Gambling was expected and it harmed no one, they concluded at police headquarters and by the cop on the beat. Tommy was part of the gambling environment that eventually led him to Frankie Pellegrino Jr. who unlike his friend Carmine Longo was one day to become his nemesis and a threat to his family and career.
About the Author: How many times have you the reader heard someone say, I could write a book on ... whatever? Well I am a first time author, who had the urge to write something, anything which might be of interest to someone who would take a chance on the work of a novice, an unknown 82-year-old with a background in Minor League baseball and 43 years in the Fire Service. The book is fiction although there is some authenticity in it because of my honor to have played with and against many of baseball's best-known players. Willie Mays and Roger Maris are among them. I had the pleasure of spending time with the Cleveland Indians when I was 19 years old as a non-roster player called to Cleveland from a minor league team. Hank Greenberg, Al Rosen, and several other players worked on my basics, and at the end of my two-week stay, I was advanced two leagues higher than the league I came from, finishing the season at Wilkes-Barre in the Eastern League. My background in baseball that took me all over the country to many cities and towns I have never returned to enabled me to recall experiences similar to those I have attempted to write about. I consider baseball to be the greatest game on earth, although it has changed dramatically since the 1950's when I had the good fortune of playing it on a professional level and in the U.S Army. On this, my first attempt at writing a novel, I never had writer's block, the words and the story just seemed to flow from my mind into my computer, thus we have Tommy Bilotti, my main character, who if you read this work, you would have found him to be a great athlete with a bad habit. It is possible. I knew someone like him in the area I grew up in which, to some degree was at one time similar to Palisades West during World War 2 and many years afterwards. Finally, if you have a story or stories in your mind write about them. Put it on paper.