Harry Caray was prone to a little hyperbole. So don’t quite believe him when he opens his interview with Michael Jordan, wearing a White Sox uniform, by saying, “It is the biggest thrill of my life.”
Still, it was a unique day. Caray interviewed Jordan prior to a Cubs-White Sox exhibition game on April 7, 1994. It was the only game Jordan played in a Major League park. As usual, Jordan rose to the occasion, going 2 for 5, including a double.
Trust me, the book business is extremely tough these days. So it’s difficult to imagine publishers getting excited for a proposal about a small-town high school baseball team from central Illinois in the 1970s.
Yeah, we haven’t had a good high school baseball book in a long time.
But that’s what exactly happened for Chris Ballard’s One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, An Unlikely Coach, and A Magical Baseball Season. The book tells the story of the Macon (Ill.) baseball team’s bid to win the state title against the big-city teams from Chicago led by its beatnik coach Lynn Sweet.
Actually, it hardly was a surprise that publishers (Hyperion in this case) wanted the book. When Ballard wrote about the team in a 10,000-word story for Sports Illustrated, the response was huge. Boom, built-in audience. The next step was to expand the magazine article into a book.
In the capable hands of Ballard, One Shot gets to the heart of what high school sports means to a small town and the lasting impact the games had on those boys more four decades later. Never thought I would get into a book about high school baseball, but I did.
Here’s my Q/A with Ballard:
Given the subject, how unlikely was it for this book to get published?
The battle I originally fought was with the magazine. When I came to them with the initial idea, one editor said, ‘Just start working on it, but it’s going to be a hard sell.’ Even after I wrote it, it sat around the system for a long time before it finally ran. Once it got into the magazine, the reaction was so positive, and the magazine received more letters than it had for a story in a long time. From there, it wasn’t that difficult to get into the book phase.
How did you find out about the story?
An e-mail came into the office from a guy named Chris Collins. He grew up in Macon and was 10-years-old at the time. He wrote a screenplay about the team and wanted to make it into a movie. He hoped if somebody wrote about it, it would be intriguing enough to generate some interest.
What made the story work for you?
When I met Sweet, I knew it could work. (The book) needed a protagonist, and he was that was that guy. There was the counter culture clash. It was pretty pronounced. He had this charisma of not giving a damn while really caring about the kids. That was an easy combination to root for.
What does this book say about the grip of high school sports that lasts a lifetime?
Had they won, it wouldn’t have been all that interesting. They would have been just another underdog team that won. Instead, it was the ability to look back 40 years later and see the power of sports memories from when you go from boy to man. A lot of people can relate to that.
What was the reaction from the Macon players when they learned you wanted to do a book on their team?
It went from being very excited to being very reticent. (For the star player), it was the one thing he couldn’t let go.
I was at a function with the team. There were 350 people, and they gave them a standing ovation. They saw how people responded to them. The guys were laughing and crying. After that, the players understood what that season meant. It reaffirmed that something happened that mattered.
On MLB Network Saturday:
Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland looks back on his 26-year career as a Major League Baseball manager in a new episode of MLB Network’s Studio 42 with Bob Costas this Saturday, June 9 at 2:00 p.m. ET.
Studio 42 with Bob Costas featuring Jim Leyland will re-air on Sunday, June 10 at 10:00 p.m. ET
And here are some excerpts:
On managing the Pittsburgh Pirates in their 1992 NLCS loss to the Atlanta Braves:
The ’92 loss was probably the toughest I’ve ever suffered and it was a very interesting scenario. I said it at the time and I still think about it today, this whole picture flashed in my mind [of] a Little League World Series. It was almost reduced to that, like a Little League game, where one side’s jumping up and down and one side’s crying. It was unbelievable.
With all due respect to the media people [and] TV people, I asked them, “Can we have a couple of extra minutes?” I said, “This is a tough one,” and they gave us that. I always appreciated that…It was pretty much what you’d expect, some guys crying, some guys just really lost…I was in a total fog. You know the old saying from Jack Buck, “I can’t believe what I just saw,” that’s kind of the way I felt.
On managing Barry Bonds while in Pittsburgh:
I saw a lot of good things in Barry…He’s not as tough as he lets on. I think he’s one of those guys that it was a motivational tool for him to upset people, to make them mad at him.
He was coachable and he was manageable. A lot of people didn’t think so, but it depended on how you coached him. Barry was one of those guys where he was very coachable, but you had to let him think it was his idea.
On managing the last inning of the 1997 World Series between the Florida Marlins and Cleveland Indians:
I thought “Devon [White] is going to hit a sacrifice fly, get a fly ball over somebody’s head, get a base hit, whatever it may be,” We were gonna win the World Series. When he hit the ground ball to second and they forced the guy at home, I said, “Oh my God, I’m almost out of pitching. I gotta look at what I’m doing.”…I was looking back down at my card and just before the pitch to Edgar [Renteria], I looked up again…Just as I looked up, Edgar hit it and I looked it and it was in center field. I’m going, “Oh my God, it’s over, and what a relief.” I was actually relieved more because I didn’t have to continue to work on my lineup card…It was an amazing feeling.
On Game Seven of the 1997 World Series being underrated:
It’s always stuck in my craw, it’s always bothered me a little bit…I really believe had that been the Yankees [and] the Dodgers, Yankees and the Mets, it might’ve gone down as the second greatest World Series game of all time. … It was truly a better game for me than the Arizona [Diamondbacks] and Yankees [Game Seven in 2001] …It’s one of the greatest games, I think, that was ever played…I think the fact that it was Cleveland and Florida, it just didn’t get the hype that it should’ve gotten.
On if he felt he was done in managing after one season in Colorado in 1999:
I didn’t think I would ever manage again. I truly did not think that I would ever manage another Major League Baseball team. I left four million dollars on the table. My wife wasn’t real happy about it. I just felt like I didn’t want to go back there and try to fake my way through it. It wasn’t the right thing to do.
On taking the managerial position in Detroit in 2006:
[Detroit] was probably really the only situation [I would go to]. I live in Pittsburgh so Philadelphia would’ve been a nice little ring. I would’ve been interested. They had a good team, a nice, new ballpark. But [Detroit] had more to it than a lot of other things. I didn’t think, at my age, I was ever going to get a chance to manage the Tigers. All of a sudden, this kind of fell in my lap. Here it was and I said, “You know what, I’m reenergized. This is what I thought I always might have a chance to do, get a shot to do. Here it is, a little late.” But, yeah, this worked out good.
On when he will retire:
When the passion’s not there. When I start getting up in the morning and not wanting to go to work, I’ll go home. Tony [La Russa] and I are a little bit different in that I had a six-year sabbatical [from 1999-2006] and that really refreshed me. That got the battery going again. I think that really helped me out. I think if I would’ve tried to do it like 33 straight years like Tony did, I probably would’ve stepped away too, maybe even before that. But that six-year sabbatical, I spent some time at home and watched the kids grow up a bit. It really refreshed me.
On what he would do if he wasn’t in baseball:
I’m embarrassed to say this, but I would’ve liked to have been in a band. I love to sing. I played the trumpet as a kid. Our family sat around the piano. I never played a piano in my life, but my brother played the piano, my two sisters played. I love it. I still like to sing. I’m not as good as I was at one time. I was ok at one time…I can’t quite hit the high ones like I used to, but I was ok. I sang weddings and I was in a choir and different things like that, and I loved it. But this worked out a little better, I think.
I love soft rock. I’m not into the rap too much, obviously. I’m a little old for that….I love the oldies. I saw “Jersey Boys” four times…I love musicals. I saw a lot of the musicals. I like those and participated in those in school, so that’s probably what I would’ve tried to do. I doubt it would have worked out, but who knows? That’s a tough business. That’s probably tougher than our business to be successful in.