AETN Presents
On the Same Page with Scott L. Price
On the Same Page with Scott L. Price
From the author of Pitching Around Fidel and Far Afield comes an account of the accidental death of minor league first base coach Mike Coolbaugh, illustrating the many ways in which baseball still has a hold on America.
“Heart of the Game” centers on the death of Mike Coolbaugh, a minor league coach who was killed on a sweltering Sunday evening in Little Rock in July 2007 when a foul ball rocketed off Tino Sanchez's bat. Coolbaugh died almost instantly, his body carted off the field of the Double-A Arkansas Travelers. He was 35 years old and the father of two children; a third child was on the way.
Mike's exemplary life—his devotion to the game and to his family—is the spine of the story. But this side of the story isn't the focus of the book. The drama is in the telling of what can happen when a projectile hits the human body, of the narratives of the remarkable people who happened to be in the ballpark at that fatal moment, of the impact of Coolbaugh's death on the man who hit the ball, and of all the lives left behind.
Price reveals anew that classic heart of Americana—small-town sports, small-town lives—and makes us understand that a game played away from the mindless churn of Internet blather and highlight shows can be more important than those played on the national stage.
A Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated since 1994, Scott L. Price has written three books: “Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey into the Heart of Cuban Sports” (1998, HarperCollins/Ecco), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and in September 2007, “Far Afield: A Sportswriting Odyssey”, which The New York Times Sunday Book Review called “a gracefully written book…Price is a virtuoso at locating unconventional entries into common topics.
Tommy Sanders interviewed Scott L. Price at the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame during the 2009 Arkansas Literary Festival.
