Last modified: Saturday, October 20, 2007 12:39 AM EDT Author Dan Gordon poses with new book "Haunted Baseball" at McCoy Stadium's Jack-O-Lantern festival. (Staff photo by MARK STOCKWELL) Ghosts, goblins, curses and America's pastime BY STEPHEN PETERSON SUN CHRONICLE STAFF Seekonk - With the World Series and Halloween around the corner, a new book co-authored by a Seekonk native is timely indeed. "Haunted Baseball, Ghosts, Curses, Legends and Eerie Events," by Mickey Bradley and Dan Gordon, who grew up in Seekonk, collects spooky tales of the paranormal from America's favorite pastime. The two authors spent two years traveling to ballparks and other locations across the U.S. - even Chinatown in Los Angeles - to track down and flush out the spellbinding stories. The stories stem from interviews with more than 800 baseball players, baseball stadium employees and fans. No surprise, given the long history of the sport and its heroes that inspire myths, there is plenty of material to mine. Stories range from ghost stories at the oldest and most famous parks, such as Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field, to the more familiar "curses" that have struck the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs. Some of the yarns include nightshift workers at Fenway encountering spirits, a beloved trainer for the Cleveland Indians said to have revisited the team as a seagull for several games in 2002 just after he died and Roberto Clemente's premonition of his death in a plane crash. "The rumor is Babe Ruth walks the stadium at night. No one has ever seen him, but they hear noises, hear batting practice late at night and phantom cheers," Gordon recounts of Fenway Park. There are also mysterious stories of haunted hotels where players stay, including one told by Red Sox centerfielder Coco Crisp that he is teased about. Gordon, 42, who now lives in Providence, says former Sox and now Yankee Johnny Damon was at first reluctant to tell his story of being pinned down by a ghost at his Florida home while with the Sox, but opened up to the point of giving several interviews. Then, there is one of Gordon's favorite Red Sox spooky but humorous tales, of ex-Sox pitcher and oddball Bill Lee being convinced former Red Sox Owner Thomas Yawkey, who along with Ted Williams used to shoot pigeons that landed on the ballfield, came back as a pigeon himself. "The day he died, Lee encountered a pigeon while walking into the stadium. The bird kept blocking" his way, Gordon said. However, Gordon says his favorite Sox ghost story is of public address announcer Carl Beane believing his predecessor, the legendary Sherm Feller, haunts the broadcast booth. "He kind of plays around with the equipment during games, still makes his presence felt," Gordon said. Gordon said it was a thrill to interview "baseball gods," such as Willie Mays and Yogi Berra. Several Yankee players believe ghosts of Yankee stars at Yankee Stadium give them a boost. "Derek Jeter believes the ghosts of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and other Yankee greats haunt Yankee stadium and help the home team out. Asked if he would like to be a ghost, he said he hopes so." "Not everybody is a believer in ghost stories, but a lot are," Gordon said of players. "Players talk about them all the time. It is kind of an inside thing. Veterans even tease rookies about them." While some of the tales are famous, such as the Curse of the Bambino on the Red Sox, many never have appeared in print before. "I never heard ghost stories of the game before," Gordon said. "We just went on a hunch there had to be stories there. It turns out as we walked into clubhouses and walked up to players, they knew a bunch of stories. I found it amazing how many stories are out there." "These stories are kind of a way to learn even more about the game's history and nostalgia and traditions of the game," he said. "Baseball more than other sports is connected to its past. As the authors point out in the introduction, nothing ever dies in baseball. After all, they observe Ruth has been dead for 60 years, but remains the best-known name in baseball. "People talk about Babe Ruth as if he is still alive," Gordon said. Writing the book was a natural for the authors - college friends - since it combines two of the authors' favorite subjects: baseball and the supernatural. "I was born to love baseball," Gordon said, noting he was captivated watching Hank Aaron break Ruth's home run record in 1974. Gordon has studied global baseball culture in Japan, Cuba and Nicaragua, and has written on baseball for many publications. He recently contributed two essays for "Baseball Without Borders" on Nicaraguan and Japanese baseball. He is also author of "Cape Encounters: Contemporary Cape Cod Ghost Stories," and is coming out with a children's card game of Cape Cod ghosts with that book's co-author, Gary Joseph. Gordon is halfway done working on a sequel to "Haunted Baseball." "We came upon so many stories, I couldn't fit them all in one book. This one will have a little more international flavor, with Japanese ghosts and Latin American ghosts." Bradley, a freelance writer from New York who also dabbles in video and film, is a lifelong Yankee fan who happens to be named after Mickey Mantle. The paperback book by Lyons Press of Guilford, Conn., retails for $14.95.