Grinders: Baseball's Intrepid Infantry

Capps, Mike; Hartenstein, Chuck

ISBN 10: 1736839047 / ISBN 13: 9781736839041

Editore: Stoney Creek Publishing Group, 2022

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May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Codice articolo G1736839047I4N00

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Grinders: Baseball's Intrepid Infantry
• Editore: Stoney Creek Publishing Group
• Data di pubblicazione: 2022
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1736839047
• ISBN 13: 9781736839041
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Condizione: Very Good
• Condizione della sovraccoperta: No Jacket
• Peso: 1,15 libbre

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Grinders: Baseball’s Intrepid Infantry tells the tales of the game's unheralded foot soldiers who took the hard knocks road, bouncing between the Show and obscurity, never quite achieving their dreams, all for a chance to play the game they love.

On a brutally humid summer night in 1960, a nine-year-old Mike Capps was sitting with his grandfather in the rickety, mosquito-infested Burnett Field across the Trinity River from the twinkling lights of the concrete and steel towers of downtown Dallas.
 
When he glanced at his grandfather’s scoresheet, something caught his attention. His grandfather had made check marks alongside names of six or seven players for both clubs.
 
“I also want you to pay attention to the names I have checked here,” his grandfather said. “These guys will travel back and forth between Dallas and Kansas City and Minneapolis and Boston all summer. You’ll even see their names in the box scores. They aren’t stars, but they are the engine that drives baseball’s bus.”
 
“Drives baseball’s bus, drives baseball’s bus?” 
 
The comment buried itself in Capps’ psyche for decades, and, sixty years later, formed the basic idea for this book. What his grandfather called baseball’s “engine” we now call “grinders.” The back-and-forth roller coaster ride between professional baseball’s minor leagues and its nirvana, Major League Baseball, remains perplexingly difficult for a multitude of great players and their families.

Players like Deacon Jones, Brian Mazone, and Lorenzo Bundy battled their way to a chance in the big leagues and hung on as long as they could. Some shared the love of the game with their sons, who became Grinders in their own right. Grinders fill every roster at every level, plugging away year after year. Without their grit, determination, and persistence, there would be no stars. These are their stories.
 

 

Informazioni sull?autore

MIKE CAPPS has been the play-by-play voice of the AAA Round Rock Express for 21 seasons. He’s worked for the Texas Rangers, the Houston Astros and ESPN Radio. He worked in radio and television news for 22 years at ABC, CNN and stations in Dallas and Houston, covering the first Gulf War, the Branch Davidian siege and 16 Space Shuttle missions, including the Challenger disaster. Capps is also the co-author, with Red Murff, of The Scout: Searching for the Best in Baseball.
CHUCK HARTENSTEIN pitched for 15 years as a reliever for the Chicago Cubs, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Boston Red Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays. He later worked as a pitching coach and scout in both the minor and major leagues and was voted into the University of Texas Athletics Hall of Honor in 2004.