You found me! I’m Rikki.
We all grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, my two younger brothers and me. As a kid, I liked softball more than soccer. By middle school, I followed box-score stats of my favorite Phillies; Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. In high school, I broke a few bats, playing hardball with the guys, a few hearts too. When it came time to choose a college, I chose nearby Penn State ‘cause it offered a Bachelor of Sports Journalism Degree.
Baseball always seemed like an ‘afghan’ of all ethnicities- a way to celebrate inclusivity, while preserving a pastime truly American.
One day in my junior year my mom called me with bad news. I could tell she’d been crying. “Your brother, Ryan, died last night.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“He went to a party last night. He passed out, I guess. His friends thought he was drunk. They finally called an ambulance. He died on the way to the hospital. I’m sorry, Honey.”
After college, I landed my first job at the Lincoln Morning Beacon and began reporting on school athletics in Nebraska. Less than a year later a bestie from high school called, asking “Remember Kyle McPherson?”
I said, “Sure.” Kyle played short on our high school team and he took me to the Junior Prom.
“He died,” she said.. “It was in the local paper. He OD’d. They found him in a motel room in Williamsport.”
The next morning I pleaded to my editor, “Please, let me fly back there and investigate this story. I know it’s connected somehow to my brother’s death.”
I found out that Kyle had been drowning his sorrows and getting’ high with a dude from Colombia. I wanted to be a sports reporter so I bought a round-trip plane ticket to Colombia. I even got my editor to pay for it. That’s where you’ll meet me if you read Len Koepsell’s novel Three Strikes, You’re Dead, in a bar called Horsehide Henry’s.
Read more in Three Strikes, You're Dead - available on Amazon, Kindle and Barnes & Noble.
More great reads:
