Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball

One on One: Behind the Scenes with the Greats in the Game

Moment of Glory: The Year Underdogs Ruled Golf

Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember

Tales from Q School: Inside Golf’s Fifth Major

Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four

Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today’s NFL

Let Me Tell You a Story: A Lifetime in the Game

Caddy for Life: The Bruce Edwards Story

Open: Inside the Ropes at Bethpage Black

The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever

The Last Amateurs: Playing for Glory and Honor in Division I College Basketball

The Majors: In Pursuit of Golf’s Holy Grail

The First Coming: Tiger Woods, Master or Martyr?

A March to Madness: The View from the Floor in the Atlantic Coast Conference

A Civil War: Army vs. Navy

Winter Games

A Good Walk Spoiled: Days and Nights on the PGA Tour

Play Ball: The Life and Troubled Times of Major League Baseball

Running Mates

Hard Courts

Forever’s Team

A Season Inside: One Year in College Basketball

A Season on the Brink: A Year with Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers

SCOTT ELARTON
—Pitcher. A one-time first round draft pick who won seventeen games for the Houston Astros at the age of twenty-four, his career was brought to a halt in 2008 by injuries and drinking issues. In August 2011, Elarton realized he wasn’t finished with baseball, and he talked himself into a tryout with the Philadelphia Phillies … that ended up exceeding his wildest expectations.

RON JOHNSON
—Manager, Norfolk Tides (Triple-A team of the Baltimore Orioles). Johnson is fifty-seven and has spent most of his adult life in the minor leagues. He played in twenty-two major-league games and likes to say, “I’m in the twilight of a mediocre career.” It is that approach that makes him a perfect Triple-A manager, because he loves coming to the ballparks—any ballpark—every day. Johnson’s other saying about Triple-A life is very direct: “If you don’t like it here, do a better job.”

JON LINDSEY
—Designated hitter. Lindsey is a footnote in baseball history: He had played more minor-league games without a major-league call-up than any player in history. In 2010, his unwanted streak came to an end. Lindsey liked to say he was “an accident away,” from a return to the major leagues. “Not rooting for anybody to get hurt,” he would say. “But people
do
get hurt. It’s just a fact.”

MARK LOLLO
—Umpire. At thirty years old, Lollo had finally made it to the major-league “call-up list” in 2011, meaning he got to work a handful of games at the big-league level and was in line to move up to the majors in the near future. But 2012 was more difficult: there were fewer call-ups and there were questions about his umpiring future.

NATE McLOUTH
—Outfielder, Baltimore Orioles. A perfect example of the vagaries of baseball life, McLouth went from being an All-Star in Pittsburgh in 2008 to Atlanta to Pittsburgh, where in 2012 he was released while hitting .140. He wondered if his career might be over before he got a chance in Triple-A Norfolk and made the most of it, ending up as the Orioles starting left fielder in the 2012 playoffs. In a five-month period he went from out of baseball to signing a $2 million contract to play in Baltimore in 2013.

CHARLIE MONTOYO
—Manager, Durham Bulls (Triple-A team of the Tampa Bay Rays). At forty-seven, Montoyo is considered one of Triple-A’s best managers—his team has reached the postseason six times in seven seasons in Durham, and the Rays loved the way he develops players. But he hasn’t been able to get a serious sniff for a major-league job, even though he’s been successful and is highly respected.

SCOTT PODSEDNIK
—Outfielder. A World Series hero in 2005, hitting a walk-off home run in game 2 for the Chicago White Sox, helping lead to their four-game sweep of the Houston Astros. Two years later he was looking for a job. He became a baseball wanderer, going from Kansas City to Chicago to Philadelphia to Boston—getting hurt and dropping back to Triple-A along the way. He began 2012 in Lehigh Valley, Triple-A team of the Philadelphia Phillies, thinking he should retire, and ending up on a head-spinning baseball odyssey.

CHRIS SCHWINDEN
—Pitcher. He lived through one of the most remarkable seasons in baseball history in 2012, but not for the reasons a player would want his season to be considered remarkable. In a five-week period he was released and then picked up by four different organizations. In thirty-seven days he went from New York to Buffalo to Las Vegas to Columbus to Scranton Wilkes-Barre and—at last—back to Buffalo, where he finally found a home that wasn’t a hotel room.

BRETT TOMKO
—Pitcher. A one-hundred-game winner in the major leagues. Tomko came all the way back from a serious shoulder injury suffered while he was winning his one-hundredth game in 2009. He started over in rookie league ball where he was—his words—“absolutely terrible”—but pitched his way back to the major leagues in Texas two years later. He started the 2012 season in Louisville, Triple-A team of the Cincinnati Reds.

J
UNE
2, 2012

On a spectacular late spring evening in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a sellout crowd of 10,100 people packed Coca-Cola Park, the five-year-old stadium that has served as the home for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs since 2008. Dusk was rapidly approaching. The temperature was seventy degrees with just a hint of breeze. It was a Saturday night, and clearly the ballpark was the place to be in the town of just under 120,000 that was made famous by Billy Joel’s 1982 ballad.

Sellouts, or near sellouts, have become commonplace since the franchise that once resided in Ottawa as the Lynx moved to Allentown and became the Lehigh Valley IronPigs. And with the Pawtucket Red Sox in town for a twi-night doubleheader, the park was jumping with noise as the second game began.

The IronPigs had just, thirty minutes earlier, come from behind for a 5–4 win in game one, and game two had also started promisingly for the home team. The PawSox had been forced to start Tony Peña Jr.—normally a reliever—because the scheduled starter, Ross Ohlendorf, had opted out of his contract a day earlier to sign with the San Diego Padres.

Such is life in the minor leagues: today’s starter for Pawtucket could become tomorrow’s starter for Arizona. Or, just as often, it happens the other way around.

Peña had lasted three innings. Arnie Beyeler, the Pawtucket manager,
would have taken Peña out at that point even if he hadn’t given up six runs. He had thrown fifty-four pitches, well beyond the number a manager normally wants to see a reliever throw. And so, when the IronPigs came to the plate in the bottom of the fourth leading 6–4, Beyeler went to his bullpen.