Tim Neverett signs a copy of his book "Covid Curveball" for fellow Nashuan Sue Smith during the L.A. Dodgers broadcaster's appearance in downtown Nashua on Thursday. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – The curveball thrown Tim Neverett’s way after he wrote his book about the 2020 Los Angeles Dodgers World Series Championship season was all the promotional work he’d have to do afterward.

And he’s hit it out of the park.

Neverett spent his off days this past season promoting his book “Covid Curveball: An Inside View of the 2020 Los Angeles Dodgers World Championship Season.”

Book signings galore, plus social media work and appearances, including his book signing/discussion at Peddler’s Daughter downtown. Neverett answered questions by moderator Ed Lecius and signed copies for several who were on hand.

“It’s been pretty wild,” said Neverett, the current L.A. Dodgers broadcaster who has also called games for the Boston Red Sox and Pittsburg Pirates and enjoyed a broad, eventful career. “You know that in order to promote the book you have to do signings but a lot of times you don’t know what to expect.

“I never really gave it a thought. It never was a thought; it was after I started dealing with the publisher … I can’t tell you the great number of people I met.”

Most of the bookstores, however, won’t do signings due to COVID, so Neverett would do them on social media and ship the books. “We’ve done a ton of them that way,” he said. “I don’t know, maybe a thousand (books) that I’ve personally taken to the post office.”

This summer and fall, Neverett did book signings in Las Vegas, at the MLB All-Star Game in Denver, “and the people you know come up, and there’s people you don’t know. It’s great being here because I know most of the people, there are a few I don’t know, but it’s good to see family, good to see friends, former teammates from Little League are here, friends from high school, friends of my parents.

“I never thought I’d be on the other side of a table signing books in my life. I really didn’t. But it’s been kind of a rewarding experience, something I don’t take for granted, honestly.”

Neverett got the idea for his book when he came back to Nashua and then rented a cabin with his wife Jess in the mountains after spring training was shut down in March of 2020 due to the virus that is still dominating the world, COVID-19.

“I said ‘Why don’t I chronicle what’s going to happen in this baseball season, because we don’t know what’s going to happen,'” Neverett told the crowd. “We’re not going to play 162 games. We might play 100, we might play 50, we might play 9. I didn’t know if anybody else was going to chronicle it, so I went back and remembered from spring training, and once we started up again, I started writing every day in real time, in diary form.

“So by the time the (2020) World Series was ended, I had it in manuscript form.”

Within a week he had something that could be shopped around by a literary agent, and within a few days, a book deal was done. It including having to record an audio version of the book, which he recorded out in Burbank, Cal., taking about a week to do it.

Since Neverett didn’t have to travel on the road for Dodger games due to COVID – he called games from watching on a monitor, something that was done by most teams the last two seasons – he had time to do appearances once the book came out this past summer.

“A lot of stuff happened in a short period of time,” Neverett said.

Neverett also teaches a broadcasting class at Emerson College, and the book is required reading. He’ll do an event there as well, then a couple via zoom and likely one more in spring training.

This year, with vaccinations, there were still precautions taken and some restrictions, and again no travel. “It was more normal, not 100 percent normal, but we’ve been told it’s going to be more normal in 2022. We’re all hoping.”

Meanwhile, during his Q&A with Lecius, Neverett was asked to recount a couple of things that were the most bizarre about the season.

The thing that struck Neverett the most during the World Series was that Dodger Justin Turner had to be removed an inning after Tampa took Blake Snell out of the deciding game after he had been dominant, a move Rays manager Kevin Cash made thanks in part to analytics. Turner had tested positive, and that test turned up as the game was going on.

“He lasted an inning longer than Blake Snell. That to me,”Neverett said, “was the most 2020 thing.”

Still, all of this has stunned Neverett. The Dodgers Triple-A team in Oklahoma City wants to fly him out there in mid-December to do a charity event centered around the book.

And next season, if broadcasters are allowed to go on the road, he’ll be prepared.

“I’ll probably,” he said with a grin, “have to carry a couple of copies with me. You never know.”