111 Days to Opening Day 2008

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 111 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.

It’s X-Files week at Rattler Radio. I freely admit to you and the world that I own seven X-Files novels. These are books based on the series and were not turned into episodes. Well, six of them are like that. One is the novelization of the movie.

Today’s the novel is Skin by Ben Mezrich. A seemingly routine medical procedure – in this case skin grafts – has gone completely awry. In this passage, Mulder has one of those flashes of inspiration. If someone came up with this inspiration in real life, he would be bounced from the FBI very quickly.

“He didn’t do anything but die. Problem was his skin didn’t die with him.”

Mulder didn’t add the sudden thought that had hit him: Maybe it was his skin that was the killer. Not some microbe carried in his blood – as Scully had proposed – but his skin itself. Because that was the real common denominator. Not his blood, not a microbe, not a disease.

Skin.

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.