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According to Robert Flournoy’s book description,
“A nostalgic pause in middle-aged baby boomers lives, Just a Little Rain is a collection of the reflections of several
men and a one remarkable woman who played on the sandlots of the 1950s and early 1960s, traveled the world in the face of
the Cold War, many as military brats, and got down to the grim task of the Vietnam War before they realized that their childhoods
had ended. Chronicled by a first person narration that speaks for a generation, these old friends consider the quick ride
that they were on and its impact on who they are now, both pragmatically and spiritually, and how different their children’s
lives are from their own. Regardless of your age or station in life, you will find a little bit of yourself in these pages,
as these participants, older now, revisit their childhood dreams and a few nightmares with the magic of that big hit that
they all got at least once in their lives, still sweet in their minds. Grandparents, hometowns, childhood and military friends,
gone or gone their own way, but never forgotten, like the crack of a bat and the smack of a mitt which were the pipers call
to a game for generations of boys who were caught up in the sirens song of baseball. We have been trying to recapture the
definitive moments of our past ever since it became the past and we began looking back wistfully, wondering where it went.
Was it Fitzgerald who told us that we do not look back, searching for events, we merely search for our youth? If you didn’t
cry, or at least get choked up when a son and his dead father played catch in Field of Dreams, then you have lost the magic.
But, I bet you had it once, just like all the rest of us did. We may have filed the unpleasant things in our lives off in
some corner of our minds, but not baseball. We are still waiting for that perfect pitch. And just when the curtain is falling,
well be wanting one more at bat, one more race down the base path, one more real game.”
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