By MONTE DUTTON

I don’t know where I got The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. I don’t remember when. I didn’t know I had it until I rummaged through a box looking for a book to read.

I can only speculate. I may have bought it when I was interested in the World Cup, which commonly causes some fascination in international soccer. One year I was writing about a stock car race in Michigan and enjoyed watching a World Cup game in a bar, but I don’t remember now who was playing or who won.

Perhaps I wondered what happened to Joe McGinniss, the author, who wrote a number of bestsellers – The Selling of the President 1968, Fatal Vision, Blind Faith and Cruel Doubt, among them. McGinniss was atop the New York Times bestseller list for 30 weeks when he was 26. I may have bought the book on some discount table – I’ve done a lot of that – because it was the last of his books that was ever positively reviewed.

McGinniss died of prostate cancer at age 71. Near the end, he allegedly lapsed into self-parody, depression and alcoholism. Two of his latter books, The Last Brother: The Rise and Fall of Teddy Kennedy and The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, were savaged by critics.

I guess I just wanted to see what happened. I relate to unsuccessful authors.

It’s a good book about an unlikely topic for me.

The miracle seems rather tame until one realizes it’s about a soccer (il calcio) team playing at an astonishingly high level in a town about the size of Abbeville. Until one realizes this, it’s not that much of a miracle. In most European countries, soccer teams are upwardly and downwardly mobile. A tiny team can rise up to a level, and a giant team can fall. Castel di Sangro played in a stadium that held about 10,000 at home, and that stadium wasn’t even ready until a considerable portion of the season was over. The miracle was in remaining for more than the season in question in Serie B, the second highest level of Italian il calcio. The team’s record was 12-18-6, but by the standards of play, this was equivalent to the fictional Hickory Huskers (based on Milan) winning the Indiana state backetball championship in Hoosiers.

McGinniss went to the nondescript Abruzzo region without understanding how to speak Italian. He picked up a lot. I did not. I found the constant translations wearying. McGinniss became as close to the team as a 53-year-old American could be, sometimes to a fault.

A lot happened. Two players died in an automobile accident. Another was arrested because, at the very least, his wife was allegedly smuggling cocaine from her native Chile. The author squabbled with the coach, whose apartment was next door to his. At the end, having qualified for continued Serie B status, the team threw the final game, which enraged the author and ruined his relationship with many of the players, with whom, I think it’s fair to contend, he was too close for journalistic balance. Twenty years as a NASCAR writer made me well aware of this danger.

Most writers understand that most insiders can’t handle the truth. McGinniss got too close to his subject. Given the circumstances, it’s difficult not to. Insiders don’t want the truth; they want their version of it.

One of my greatest beliefs is that in order to learn how to write, one must read. I think it helps, and I’m writing a novel.

In some ways, McGinniss’s experience in Castel di Sangro reminded me of the atmosphere of high-school football in towns like Clinton and universities like Furman.

I stuck with it. It was much easier to follow than, say, Russian literature, which once upon a time, I came to appreciate.

The Miracle of Castel di Sangro can be found on Amazon, as is the case with many books of mine.

Today I started another non-fiction book on a far more familiar topic. My friend Mike Hembree has written Petty vs. Pearson: The Rivalry That Shaped NASCAR.

What can I do to get you to sample my fiction? How about a cheap sample of short stories, Longer Songs? The stories all originated in songs I’ve written. It’s been a few years since I published it. Not too long ago, I read it – before that, I merely wrote it – and, amazingly, I still thought it was pretty good. Remember, most people don’t write crap on purpose.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is about a group of people who get themselves unwittingly entangled in a conspiracy of politicians, businessmen (I didn’t write business persons because the ones in the novel are all men), law-enforcement personnel and the intelligence community.

Two of my novels, Lightning in a Bottle and Cowboys Come Home, are available in audio versions.