Download One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season AudioBook Free
In 1971, a small-town senior high school baseball team from rural Illinois playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signals on the hats defied convention and the odds. Led by an British teacher with no instruction experience, the Macon Ironmen surfaced from a field of 370 teams to become the smallest institution in Illinois history to make the state final, a variation that still stands. There, sporting long hair, and warming up to "Jesus Christ Superstar", the Ironmen would play a remarkable game against a Chicago powerhouse that could change their lives permanently. Inside a gripping, cinematic narrative, Athletics Illustrated copy writer Chris Ballard explains to the storyplot of the team and its coach, Lynn Special, a hippie, dreamer and intellectual who arrived in Macon in 1966, delivering progressive ideas to a town stuck in the Eisenhower time. Beloved by students however, not administration, Special reluctantly required over a rag-tag team, objective on educating the boys just as much about life as baseball. Motivated by Sweet's unconventional methods and led by fierystar Steve Shartzer and spindly curveball musician John Heneberry, the undersized, undermanned Macon Ironmen embarked on an improbable postseason run that infuriated rival instructors and buoyed a whole town. Beginning with Sweet's entrance, Ballard needs listeners on a journey back to the Ironmen's historic season and then on to the present day, returning to the 1971 Ironmen to explore the result the game had on the lives' trajectories-and the men they've become because of it. Engaging and poignant, One Shot at Forever is a testament to the energy of senior high school sports to shape the lives of those who play them, and it reminds us that there are few bonds more sacred than those among a trainer, a team, and a town.
