From Publishers Weekly
On July 22, 2007, minor league baseball player Tino Sanchez Jr. hit a foul ball that struck his team's recently hired first base coach, Mike Coolbaugh, at the precise point on the back of his neck to cut off blood to his brain, killing him instantly. Price (
Far Afield) builds upon the article he wrote for
Sports Illustrated to flesh out the lives of Sanchez and Coolbaugh, two lifers who devoted everything to the sport and got only fleeting glimpses of the major leagues in return. Price leans a bit too hard on the melodrama at first, but this story doesn't need a hard sell. As he gets into the ordinary, working-class struggles of his two subjects, the men become real, vibrant personalities—and the tragedy, when it finally comes, takes on all too human dimensions; Sanchez's despair over the accident is as heartbreaking to read about as the anguish of Coolbaugh's family. Price isn't the first to argue that minor league baseball, bracketed off from the glitz and scandals of the big leagues, is where the game's true emotional core can be found. But he's found a story that makes a powerful case for that argument.
(June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“A superb storyteller. . . . S. L. Price has done a masterful job.” (Chicago Tribune )
“I was reminded, as I read HEART OF THE GAME, what baseball has meant to me. The story of Mike Coolbaugh’s life and death will break your heart – and you won’t ever look at the game in quite the same way.” (Darryl Strawberry )
“Hear the heartbeat of America and feel its breath in this beautifully-told tale of love, fate, and forgiveness. The best sports book I’ve read in many seasons.” (Robert Lipsyte, former New York Times sports columnist )
“It’s a story of hard luck in a hard game but, in the lives of two minor leaguers, Scott Price reveals the code of baseball. This is one of the baseball books that will endure as long as the game is played.” (Richard Ben Cramer, author of "Joe Dimaggio: The Hero's Life" )
“The best baseball book I have ever read...Dazzling...a welcome antidote to the poisonous steroid sleaze that hogs the headlines and crams the bookshelves...If you read only one baseball book this year, make it ‘Heart of the Game.’” (Stan Hochman, Philadelphia Daily News )
“[V]eteran Sports Illustrated writer S.L. Price weaves his magic. Genuine and raw, Heart of the Game is a heartfelt work of despair, triumph, and redemption.” (Boston Globe )
“S.L. Price’s work, “Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in Minor League America” is more than just another baseball book being released. It’s a legacy, an heirloom that can be handed from a father no longer here to his children.” (MLB.com )
“[A] superbly written book . . . a story that’s both heartbreaking and uplifting, much like baseball itself.” (Dave Barry )
“Price brilliantly takes the reader through life in the minors, and as such it is also a portrait of small-town America. . . .
Heart of the Game is a piece of literary excellence.” (Trenton NJ Times )
“S.L. Price has become a powerful force in giving readers a front-row seat to the spectacular. Through his unique gifts of observation and prose, the veteran journalist has painted compelling portraits of the special people, places and moments that define the games we play and watch.” (San Antonio Express-News )
