Making It In The Minors

There are many sports-related books about what happens on the playing field, but few are written about the equally interesting stories of what happens on the business side. Why acquire a professional sports team? What goes into the branding, marketing and entertainment that make some teams successful, and others not? What are the challenges that managers and staff face? Are there valuable lessons from the major and minor leagues for university, high school and other amateur sports programs? How do sports teams generate a profit? While the examples are drawn from the business of baseball, the lessons are applicable to other sports and many retail businesses.

It’s 1960 and sixteen-year-old Karny Wilson has run away from home, found his father and joined him working in a circus. He’s also shown his potential as a baseball pitcher and had a tryout with the Reds. While waiting to hear from the Reds, he saves the circus from the wrath of Simba, the Lioness Queen. Will he make the minors?

In a follow up to "The Bullpen Gospels," the author details his major league rookie season, revealing that for him, it isn't just about the game, but about the people and events in it.

Using the 1973 season of the San Jose Bees as an example, examines the organization, management, and daily struggles of a minor league team.

Minor league baseball is quintessentially American: small towns, small stadiums, $5 tickets, $2 hot dogs, the never-ending possibility of making it big. But looming above it all is always the real deal: Major League Baseball. John Feinstein takes the reader behind the curtain into the guarded world of the minor leagues, like no other writer can. Where Nobody Knows Your Name explores the trials and travails of the inhabitants of Triple-A, focusing on nine men, including players, managers and umpires, among many colorful characters, living on the cusp of the dream. The book tells the stories of former World Series hero Scott Podsednik, giving it one more shot; Durham Bulls manager Charlie Montoya, shepherding generations across the line; and designated hitter Jon Lindsey, a lifelong minor leaguer, waiting for his day to come. From Raleigh to Pawtucket, from Lehigh Valley to Indianapolis and beyond, this is an intimate and exciting look at life in the minor leagues, where you’re either waiting for the call or just passing through.

The multiplication tables are presented in verse.

Set against the vibrant backdrop of Chicago, this is a story of science and poetry, manipulation and intrigue, and the lengths to which people will go for their passions. The Yucca Mountain Project deep in the Nevada desert is the first planned long-term nuclear storage facility. The project is designed to contain nuclear waste for ten-thousand years, the amount of time it will take for the waste to no longer be radioactive. It is an ambitious project, especially in light of the fact that in this century alone we lacked the foresight to anticipate Y2K. Given this daunting responsibility, the project employs an artist, a botanist and an architect to contribute visual warnings to the site, in a manner decipherable to future generations. Conrad imagines an influential poetry professor who insists that the project also include a poem, a great poem, an epic poem. It is this poem that brings us to the center of an extended circle of minor poets who are continually upstaging, back-stabbing and falling in and out of love with one another. "... Conrad’s novel recalls another comic first work: John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces." - Nashville Scene

Baseball is pure and hope springs eternal.