about the book
The nail-biting moment would affect not only the baseball team but also an entire town.
The Macon High baseball team was made up of mostly poor farm kids. Small and under-manned, they were taking on a Chicago powerhouse. How did they emerge from 370 larger and better funded teams to make it to the state finals? How could they win when their new coach was a rookie teacher who knew nothing about molding a baseball team?
Their story is almost forgotten, even in Macon. In 1971, the conservative town had only 1200 residents. now it is a commuter community for Decatur, and even the high school has been consolidated.
But one gray-haired gent remembers vividly. Lynn Sweet was that inexperienced coach.
High school principal Roger Britton wanted to expose his students to as many interesting people as possible; that is why he gave Lynn the English teaching position, even though the young man was obviously a hippie. Lynn took the job because he didn’t want to tar roofs anymore.
But things didn’t work out as either of them thought. Though Lynn took on the coaching position just to bump up his pay check, he began to care about the young men. His laid- back coaching style was not what anyone expected. His team warmed up to blaring rock music, wore hand-me-down uniforms, and sported peace signs on their caps. Lynn infuriated the school board and enraged rival coaches. But he was loved by his team and cheered on by the whole town.
Read this book, even if it is only to relive that one heart-pounding game. But more, it will help you understand how one game, win or lose, can change the lives of many.
about the author
Chris Ballard has a real thing for basketball. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay area dribbling a ball. After playing a year at Pomona College, he realized he was a low-man on the roster of very serious players, so he opted out.
Instead he drank a lot of beer, played intramural ball, spent summers working at Yellowstone, and wrote a bunch of snarky sports columns for the school’s newspaper. Ever since, he’s been playing anywhere he can find a game. (His luggage always includes hoops gear!)
A year after graduating, Chris got this crazy idea. He spent the next seven months traveling to 48 states, driving 31,000 miles in a used Chevy van with his brother and two college buddies. They visited over a thousand basketball courts, picking up games at most of them. He posted photos and comments on a blog which resulted in Chris’s first book, Hoops Nation: A Guide to America’s Best Pick-up Basketball. and it’s sequel The Back-in-Your-Face Guide to Pick-up Basketball. The books jump-started Chris’s writing career.
For a few years, Chris wrote freelance. He attended the Columbia School of Journalism and interned at the Courier-Post in Camden, New Jersey. A mentor recommended him to Sports Illustrated, where he is now a senior writer. He has written about everything the NBA to pigeon racing! He is also part of a rotation of writers who author the “Point After” column.
In addition, he writes for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Men’s Health, and has made appearances on The Charlie Rose Show, ABC News with Dick Schaap, and Outside the Lines.
Chris lives in Berkeley with his wife Alexandra and their two daughters, Callie and Eliza.
Sources:
Author biography : Sports Illustrated
Author interview : The Big Lead
Author interview : Skip Prichard
Also by Chris Ballard:
The Art of a Beautiful Game : The Thinking Fan’s Tour of the NBA. Simon & Schuster. 2009.
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