Writer Tom Wolfe says he would have happily put off writing to pursue a major league baseball career, but he was cut by the New York Giants in 1952 after just two days in the organization.
Still, the 73-year-old author of such novels as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Right Stuff tells Time magazine for its Nov. 8 edition that he made a good showing during a tryout with the team, which later moved to San Francisco. In three innings, Wolfe says he left three men on base with no runs scored. He had a good screwball and a nice sinker - but his fastball was weak.
"If somebody had offered me a Class D professional contract, I would have gladly put off writing for a couple of decades," he said.
Wolfe, known for his trademark white suits, has a new novel out, I Am Charlotte Simmons, about youthful hedonism on a college campus.
Wolfe said he went to campuses including Stanford University, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and the University of Florida in Gainesville and attended fraternity parties.
"Very few of the students had any idea who I was," he says. "I was so old, and I always wore a necktie - I must have seemed somewhat odd to them."
Charlotte is Wolfe's first novel since A Man in Full in 1998, about the fall of an Atlanta real estate developer.
