Sports Product Review

I have boys who dream of playing in the Major Leagues. I know, as do they, that the odds of making it all the way are astronomical. There are thousands of baseball players who we never hear about, toiling in the professional ranks trying to get there, trying to work their way up from the minors.

S.L. Price has written a provocative, heart-warming and heart-breaking story, Heart of the Game, which tells of one such man who was a baseball “lifer.” Mike Coolbaugh, a minor league coach who had only recently given up his dream of fame and fortune in the Big Leagues, was killed while coaching first base when a foul ball rocketed off Tino Sanchez's bat. He left behind a wife and two children, with a third on the way. The cruel irony? Sanchez had recently become one of Coolbaugh's best friends. The book details Tino's decent into misery, and the lives Mike touched in life and in death.

In one particularly poignant scent, Mike tells the story of how his oldest son, who had just turned six, was getting ready for his first T-ball game. Coolbaugh told him that it was probably time to get his uniform on so that they could go to the field. The boy said, “That's OK. I'll just put it on in the clubhouse.” Having grown up knowing nothing but pro baseball, he didn't know that T-ball fields didn't have clubhouses.

For a behind-the-scenes look at professional baseball and the rivalries and friendships it forges, this can't be beat.

Source: S.L. Price