Heart of the Game, Life, Death, and Mercy in Minor League America, by S. L. Price, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, may be one of the best baseball books ever. It is about Mike Coolbaugh, the first base coach who died after being hit by a ball off the bat of Tino Sanchez during a double-A game between the Tulsa Drillers and Arkansas Travelers in Little Rock, Arkansas, in July 2007.
The book focuses on Coolbaugh, a baseball 'lifer' who left behind a pregnant wife and two young sons, Sanchez, who, like Coolbaugh, had lost and found his way in baseball, and the tragic convergence of people and events that summer evening in Little Rock. Price has written a heartbreaking and sensitive tale of what happened and how those involved--families, friends, teammates, and others--were left to cope in the aftermath of Coolbaugh's death. In one of those peculiar twists of fate, two of the witnesses to the accident, Drillers pitching coach Bo McLaughlin and pitcher Jon Asahina, had themselves suffered severe injuries when hit by balls during games.
Much of the book is also about the minor leagues, where Coolbaugh and Sanchez long toiled. The two could have been players on any team in the majors, striving for a goal that is always, cruelly, out of reach for most. Tino Sanchez is now back in Puerto Rico, coaching and teaching baseball---and still trying to come to terms with his part in Coolbaugh's accidental death.
When Willy Taveras, then an outfielder with the Colorado Rockies, heard about Coolbaugh's death, he said, "This game of baseball will break our heart." The Drillers are part of the Rockies' farm system, and the organization rallied behind Coolbaugh's family. Several months later, with the Rockies poised to go to the World Series, Rockies' players made the unprecedented gesture of voting a full share of their winnings to Amanda Coolbaugh and her children. This is in many ways a heartbreaking book but its lesson of mercy resonates far beyond baseball. As Price puts it, most of us spend our lives in the minors. We are in life inevitably humbled.
