just finished reading the new book out in May 2009 Heart of the Game by Sports Illustrated writer SL Price. This book touches every emotion you will ever feel but rather than try to explain it myself this review of the book says it all. Sorry I dont know how to add the link so i just put the whole review here
By Cary Clack - Express-News Staff Writer Heart of the Game: Life, Death and Mercy in Minor League America
By S.L. Price
Ecco, $24.99
There are moments, while reading this book, when you want to just put it down for good.
It's not because of any deficiencies in the book. S.L. Price's "Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in Minor League America" is a superb piece of journalism ó soulful, elegant and deeply reported by one of this nation's finest sportswriters.
But to want to stop reading is to want to be deluded that doing so will delay, maybe even prevent, the awful moment that's approaching.
Baseball is a game of myth and lore and this story should end with our hero, Mike Coolbaugh, slamming a dramatic home run like Babe Ruth calling his shot in the 1932 World Series.
But that wasn't the fate of San Antonio's Coolbaugh. Despite a talent that allowed him to carve out a notable minor league record, his national fame came because of what happened to him on one tragic summer night.
On July 22, 2007, in Little Rock, 35-year-old Coolbaugh, the new first base coach for the minor league Tulsa Drillers, was at his position when a searing line drive off of the bat of Tino Sanchez hit him in the neck, killing him instantly.
Until then, most San Antonians who remembered Coolbaugh for his baseball and football exploits at Roosevelt High School ó where he was also the unfortunate recipient to the face of a clipboard thrown by the football coach ó had lost track of him in the minors. But overnight, the nation knew his name as the victim of a rare on-field fatality.
Price, a senior writer with Sports Illustrated, profiles the two men, Sanchez and Coolbaugh, linked in this tragedy. Both men were minor league "lifers," decent men pushed since childhood by hard-driving fathers to excel in baseball.
A theme throughout the book, one played out until that night in Little Rock (and one that Coolbaugh himself came to believe), was that he couldn't catch a break in baseball.
Price places the struggles of Coolbaugh and Sanchez to break into the major leagues within his brilliantly rendered portrait of minor league baseball.
But at the center of this story is Coolbaugh, an immensely engaging, classy and gifted man whose devotion to his family and to his craft is inspiring.
Ultimately, "Heart of the Game" is two love stories: the love story with baseball that players like Coolbaugh have for the game, and the love story between Coolbaugh and his remarkable wife Mandy.
When Mike died, the couple had been married seven years, had two small sons and Mandy was pregnant. Neither Mandy nor Price hides her raw grief. As strong as she is, Mandy is still coming to terms with Mike's death, as are their sons.
One of the books most poignant moments is when the oldest, Joey, is hitting baseballs in the front yard when his younger brother steps into his line of vision.
"Jacob, get out of the way," says Joey. "I don't want you to get killed."
Other than Coolbaugh's family, no one is more devastated than Sanchez. Three different times, the Coolbaughs ó first Mike's sister and sister-in-law, then his brother, and finally, Mandy ó reach out to him to assure him that they're there for him.
"Everything that's got to do with love is God," Sanchez tells Price about the Coolbaughs' embracing of him. "And that was pure love."
There is a passage in "Heart of the Game" noting how Coolbaugh was always irked by the lack of baseball facilities in San Antonio.
There should be a Mike Coolbaugh Baseball Complex here in his hometown. It would be an enduring tribute to a man who loved the game so much that he not only devoted his life to it but gave his life to it.
S.L. Price reads from and signs copies of "Heart of the Game" at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Twig Book Shop, 5005 Broadway.
