Bluegrass Baseball

<p>Forget the steroid-addled overpaid and unmotivated players: America's pastime is still alive and well and is still the heartfelt sport it's always been--in the Minor Leagues. And nowhere is this truer than in Kentucky whose rich baseball history continues to play out in the four teams profiled in this book. Following these teams through the 2010 season--the triumphs struggles and big league hopes and dreams--the book tells the larger story of baseball in America's smaller venues where the game in its purest form is still valued and warmly embraced.</p><p>The story begins before the season with national-anthem singing tryouts in Lexington then tags along with players staffs and fans at home in the office and on the field offering a rare glimpse of the unglamorous reality of Minor League ball. From the front-office staff in Bowling Green planning kooky promotions to a trainer grocery shopping for a team on forty dollars a day to a new wife coming to terms with her husband's transitory lifestyle to a father struggling to make it back to the Majors and a Cuban defector blowing everyone away with a 100-mph-plus fastball these are the people who live to make baseball happen in all its nitty-gritty glory.</p><p><br></p><p>Katya Cengel is a freelance writer based in Richmond California. A staff reporter for the <em>Louisville Courier-Journal</em> for eight years she reported from the former Soviet Union Europe and Africa and has published in <em>Esquire</em> and the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>.</p><p><br></p>