Get Access Heart Of The Game: Life, Death, And Mercy In Minor League America Narrated By S.L. Price Presented In EText

again shows off the abilities of a strong writer for Sports Illustrated,

"Heart" alternates coverage of both of the key figures in a fatal accident, both leading up to and away from the moment,

The excerpt that was published in SI in advance of the book left me tearyeyed, and the full book did the same,

Price also does a nice job here showing what life is like for a career minor leaguer, Probably the most interesting look at that lifestyle I have read since Dick Hayhurst's "The Bullpen Gospels", though clearly these are two entirely different books.


RIP Mike Coolbaugh and prayers to your family, You might need a tissue for this book at times, but it's a good read, It's the story of Mike Coolbaugh, who was struck by a foul ball off the bat of Tito Sanchez and was instantly killed in a minor league game during theseason.
It was first an article in Sports Illustrated and then S, L. Price made it into this book, This book does a good job of doing a quick preview of what happened that July night in, then flashes back to tell the story of Coolbaugh's and Sanchez's lives up to the fateful night.
The book also details how dangerous the game can be, as it talks about Champman's death inand Tony Congalario's spelling beaning in, as well as a few others.
Shortly after this incident, it was made required for first and third base coaches to always wear helmets, This book surprised me and I actually finished it in about three days, It IS a very sad book, and be prepared for that, but if you like minor league baseball or just baseball in general, you'll probably like this one.
An important read. If you think the politics in your job are difficult to deal withtry being a minorleague baseball player, Price does a masterful job of telling the story of several minorleague lifers who come together in one lifealtering event on July,, Follow the story of two heartbreaking baseball careers that collide in the tragic sequence of events that resulted in the accidental death of Mike Coolbaugh.
The author does a wonderful job of detailing the life of a minorleague baseball player including the politics, false hope, small victories and great tragedies of life in baseball.
See how several lives are forever changed by an act that took less than a second to unfold, You will gain a whole new respect for what baseball players go through to achieve their dreams, I will definitely be thinking about this book the next time I want to boo someone at Coors Field, Warning: The last quarter of the book is a real tearjerker, Wow, what a beautifully written book, I found myself soaring through emotions as I read the story of the lives impacted by the minor leagues and the Coolbaugh family, Even if you don't like sports or baseball, this story and life will touch your heart and appreciate the ones who never want to give up on a dream and how passion can drive and shape lives.
A great read. Like baseball "it can break your heart", or it can lift you up to appreciate tenacity and belief in your fellow man, Couldn't put this harrowing book down, A little slow and I'm not loving the writing style, But I love the story, If you head to the ballpark to kick back on a summer night, you should take a hard look at the toil of "lifers" who take the field at the minor league parks all over the U.
S. An "inside the game" portrait of one lifer who met a horrible end in Little Rock, Arkansas one Sunday night, This is the story of the life and death of Mike Coolbaugh, coach for the minor league Tulsa Drillers, who was struck and killed by a foul ball.
My daughter and I were in attendance at DickeyStephens Park in North Little Rock, Arkansas for this game and witnessed this tragedy, As an avid baseball fan, this was one of the darkest days of the sport for me,
This book puts into perspective, the struggles, the ups and downs that a player in the minor leagues goes through in trying to make it to the big leagues.
It also tells of a mans love for the game and the love of his family,
This is one of the best books on the game of baseball that I have ever read, Anyone who follows the game of baseball should read this book, It gives a good example of how tough it is for a ball player to break into the major leagues, Prologue was amazing. Pick it up at the bookstore, read the first few pages, put it back on the shelf, At:PM, July,, Tino Sanchez, utilityman for the Tulsa Drillers, the Colorado Rockies' AA affiliate, sliced a ball foul down the firstbase line at Little Rock's DickeyStephens ballpark.
The ball struck neophyte batting coach Mike Coolbaugh just below his left ear, killing him instantly, This book traces the tortuous paths which brought both men, minor league "lifers", to that fatal spot,
At first, I found myself a little put off with what I perceived as special pleading in Price's account of Coolbaugh's vicissitudes there are onlyspots on MLB'sman rosters, and the minors are chockablock with men of great talent, drive and determination, who only got a cup of coffee in the

Show.
Simply put, there is no evidence that would lead one to believe that Coolbaugh, given better opportunities, would have been more than a very marginal big leaguer the inordinate number of times he was hit by balls on the hands would indicate that, while he was very good at waiting on pitches, he was not especially good at turning on them.
His first Home Run in the Show was an opposite field job at Miller Park, in Milwaukee, Where I feel he would have made his mark would have been as a minor league coach, moving up to the Show as a bench coach and, who knows maybe even a manager.

All in all, this was a very moving portrait of two lives, one cut short, the other derailed, by one freakish accident, It also paints a vivid picture of the struggles gone through by men trying hard to keep their dreams alive, Oh my gosh, I couldn't put this book down, Read it in two sittings, So well written yet sad to the bone! Minor league player turned coach, Mike Coolbaugh, was hit by a foul ball and killed instantly while coaching at first base.
Great job by the author of telling the story of Mike and his family two little boys and a baby on the way, as well as the batter who hit the ball, the pitcher and even the umpires on that fateful day.
Baseball was Mike Coolbaugh's life and sadly turned out to be his death, Death is something we do not usually associate with the playing of baseball, It usually comes up when we consider the passing of greats, like Lou Gehrig, from illness or time, or offthefield misadventure, But when a small, hard ball, whistles through the air at speeds over a hundred miles an hour the human body is at risk, Heart of the Game looks at a terrible event, the death inof minor league coach Mike Coolbaugh from a sizzling foul ball to the neck, how he got to be there on that dark day, and how it came to be that Tino Sanchez, a journeyman minor league utility player, came to be the instrument of Coolbaughs untimely passing.



Author S, L. Price from KSJC. com

Price uses the biographies of these two men to paint a portrait of what it means, in cold, hard detail, to be professional participants in the great American pasttime.
The focus is on the minor leagues, for neither Coolbaugh nor Sanchez ever achieved significant major league experience, Coolbaugh brought an athletic passion to playing that had been formed and reinforced by a very focused and very demanding father, Sanchez took longer to reach his cruising altitude, beginning as a kid with a chip on his shoulder, but developing, under the tutelage of a gifted, sensitive coach to a mature playercoach.



Mike Coolbaugh image from DickAllen, com

This is a book about how frustrating it can be to forever watch the shimmer of The Show ahead in the distance, always to see those less talented, less dedicated, less unlucky cruise past.
True to its title, the book looks at what constitutes actual heart, respect for the game, and pokes its nose here and there into the appeal of minor league ball to our public perception.


After having offered bios of Coolbaugh and Sanchez, Price veers off into another tale of pitching prospect Jon Asahina, who was creamed in the head by a line drive.
It struck me no, not intended at first that this was a diversion, that Price had exhausted his core material and was casting about for supporting filler.
But it turns out that there were many individuals involved in the game on the day that Coolbaugh died who had been touched by such events, whether as the victim of a speeding ball, or a close personal witness to a prior onfield horror.
More such connections follow.


Tino Sanchez image from MiLB, com

Once the broad background has been prepared, the back third of the book returns us to the death of Coolbaugh, the specifics of that day, and the impact of his death on both participants and relations.
Keep a box of tissues handy,

Prices is not the first, nor will it be the last book to offer a close look at minor league sports in America.
It is not the first, nor will it be the last to peer past the romantic image many of us have of baseball to glimpse some of its seamier aspects.
His picture of how harsh it can be to remain a minor league lifer is very detailed and rich, His look at the personal impact of Mike Coolbaughs death is very moving, With writing that is mostly reportorial, but with occasional bursts of poetry, Heart of the Game is a worthwhile addition to the library of anyone interested in baseball specifically, sport generally, or in life in America beyond the big cities.


EXTRA STUFF

Links to the authors sitelinkpersonal, and sitelinkTwitter pages

Price's writings for sitelinkSports Illustrated

Another set of articles from sitelinkLongform.
org I have never read a nonfiction baseball book before, despite the fact my husband has an entire bookshelf full of them, But we were on vacation recently and this one brought him to tears, and he said I had to read it because it was such a great story.
So I did. This is the story of Mike Coolbaugh, his life in the minor leagues, getting called up to the majors for one game, then back down, then back up for a month, then back down, and it's the story of the real grind that ball players go through.
The Bautistas and Aaron Judges and Cespedeses Flukes, Baseball is mostly about those guys who are so close to touching the ring, they can taste it, but they're only given a glimpse before they're sent back down.
It's also the story of Tino Sanchez, a Puerto Rican player who didn't have the money the Coolbaugh family did, but whose father similarly pushed him to get to the majors, and who also ended up chugging around the minor leagues and various bush leagues, constantly in pursuit of something that always seemed just out of his reach.
The book culminates and you know this in the opening chapter with Tino Sanchez stepping up to bat in a minor league game, shortly after Coolbaugh had quit the game as a player and had become the batting coach, and hitting a line drive straight down to first.
. . hitting Coolbaugh in the head and killing him instantly,

This is the story of what ball players go through just to get close to fame and fortune, but find other ways to love the game and play it, and it's the story of the sacrifices both they and their families make on the way.
I loved the storytelling guys make fun of "sappy romances" but honestly, the sappiest, most treacly and overwrought writing you'll find these days are usually in the sports pages, where sports writers are allowed to use hyperboles and flowery language and bring other men to tears and I say that wholeheartedly embracing that sort of unabashed writing.
There were aspects I didn't love Coolbaugh's father comes off as a jerk and is never really taken to task for it, and the very rightwing Christianity that's pervasive throughout the book can get in the way at times.
Also, as a woman reading the book, I was irked at times by the way Coolbaugh was upheld as a pinnacle of manhood and parenthood for being such a doting father, and nothing was said about the long weeks and months where his wife was the single parent to two very young boys with a third on the way.
Women are pretty much relegated to the sidelines of the story throughout the book, but perhaps that's just a hallmark of sports writing as well.
These are very minor complaints, because Price's sense of description is amazing in the scenes at the ballpark, I swear you can smell the beer and hot dogs, it was so realistic and when he describes the various family members getting the phone calls about what had just happened to Mike, I couldn't see the pages, I was crying so much.
My son dreams of being in the MLB and even though he's very young, he's already training quite seriously as a ball player, so I'm surrounded by this dream of glory every day of my life.
This book brought home the reality of what dreaming big is all about, and in the end, shows us that maybe not walking onto the field of Fenway every night.
. . is okay. I loved this book. Its a clichéd ambition to pass out of this life doing what one loves: the fisherman with his fly rod, the golfer in the tee box, the baseball lifer on the diamond.
Mike Coolbaugha survivor ofyears in the bush leaguesmet his end on a ball field in North Little Rock, Arkansas, His passion for baseball, however, provided scant consolation to those who knew and loved himand even less to the man who hit the foul ball that dropped him stone dead in the first base coachs box two years ago.


In Heart of the Game, S, L. Price does much more than tell the story of Coolbaughs death at the age of, He celebrates Coolbaughs life, which revolved around his family every bit as much as it did his long career in professional baseball, Price intertwines this with the story of Tino Sanchez, who lives with the undeserved guilt as the author of that deadly line drive,

Both men were baseball lifers, with Sanchez puttingyears into the minor leagues before bowing out after theseason, Their stories, in many ways, parallel those of hundreds of other young men who follow their dream from small town to small town, occasionally losing sight or hope of reaching the big leagues.
Coolbaugh made a couple of brief stops in the majors, hit a couple of dingers, Sanchez never did. Quite possibly his playing career would have drawn to a close anyway after theseason based on his,average inatbats at DoubleA Tulsa, Had he hit.that year, it would have made the decision to walk away more difficult, but Sanchezs passion for playing the game died on that Arkansas field when Coolbaugh hit the turf.


Coolbaughs playing career concluded the season before, after a frustrating and injuryplagued year at TripleA Omaha, He didnt get to make the call himself, It was made for him, When spring rolled around without a single contract offer, he stayed home with his expectant wife and two young sons, playing a new role as a fulltime dad.
When a rare midseason coaching opportunity arose at Tulsa, he jumped at the chance, returning to the Texas League, where he had spent parts of two seasons as a player.
His older brother Scott, who playedyears, was the hitting coach for the Frisco RoughRiders, and they looked forward to their first headtohead meeting as coaches in early August.


They never made it to that matchup, On July, in histh game as a minor league coach, Mike Coolbaugh made a rookie mistake of watching the runner instead of the hitter.
Sanchezs liner caught him behind his left ear, just above the neck, He fell without even reaching up his hands, Though he wasnt pronounced dead until later at the hospital, that was a mere formality, Coolbaughs life came to an end before the trainers rushed out of the dugouts,

As Price posits more than once, Coolbaughs death wouldnt likely have been so universally mourned had he died in a car wreck, Maybe the Texas League wouldnt have taken up a collection for his widow and kids, Maybe his sons wouldnt have thrown out the first pitch at the Rockies first home playoff game that fall, And that would have been a shame, because the Coolbaugh we meet in Heart of the Game is an everyman underdog with a twist: Hes a better person than we are, but we like him anyway.
He did things right, on and off the field, He wrote love notes to his wife and cherished his time with his children, He maximized his potential, even though he didnt spend much time in the big leagues, hittingminor league home runs and collecting nearly a thousand RBIs.
And he deserves to have been immortalized in these pages,

Credit Price for having the courage to dive headlong into this story, He steps respectfully through the aftermath, eliciting yetsmoldering heartbreak from the families of both Coolbaugh and Sanchez, This isnt theOClock News camped out on the familys doorstep, In fact, Coolbaughs widow Mandy shares such personal items as poems and letters written by her husband during theiryears together, Someday, when her children are much older, she may even be proud for them to read this book,

Here they will see their father as they never got the chance in life, While its not as personal a story to the rest of us who never met Mike Coolbaugh, its a compelling read all the same, Highly recommended, and not just for baseball fans, .