• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
  • Baseball ’19
  • Day Zero 3
  • Earl
  • My list
  • Photo Blogging Challenge

A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

high school sports

Book Review: One Shot at Forever

January 25, 2013

I’m a sucker for a good baseball book.

I hadn’t heard of “One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season” by Chris Ballard before stumbling across it on Amazon. The Kindle price was but $2.24 (it’s since gone up to $2.99, but still a very fair price), so I thought it would be a good way to start the 2013 reading campaign.

One Shot at Forever

This is more of a historical baseball book as it goes back to remember a small-school baseball teambased in Illinois. They have old uniforms and a unique coach who does things quite a bit differently. This coach — the English teacher at the school who has zero experience in coaching — leads his squad to the Illinois state final. This is back in a time when there were no divisions. Macon is still the smallest school to reach the state final.

The team took on the spirit of its coach — long hair, peace symbols on their hats and a carefree outlook that seemed balanced enough to win over a town.

Ballard is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, so he tells a wonderful story from beginning to end, including catching up with many of these players in the present time.

The Good

This is a great story. If you like feel-good stories, especially in sports, this is a fine read. This shows that all in sports isn’t bad and it brings you back to a glory day when high school sports were serious, but at the same time, it wasn’t as crazy as it is today. Games were serious back then, but society today puts high school sports on a whole different level.

Ballard does a wonderful job of developing all the people in this story, which is tough, considering you have a full team, a coach, his eventual wife, school administration, members of the media and some parents. That’s a lot of people. For the most part, I was able to keep track of who is who throughout, though not always. It was really easy to cheer for certain people and, at the same time, have a bit of a dislike for others.

The book also helps the reader related to the team. Even those who grew up and live in large urban areas should be able to feel the emotion of this town and area and the support of the team. One think to keep in mind is this is the early 1970s, so a different time. Though everybody will be able to relate and see what this type of atmosphere was like, I know I got a bit more out of it because I grew up in a small town and understand the thought process and how people will live for the days of a great high school team to show pride in the town.

The Bad

At times, it was tough when some of the players were being mentioned. Though the big ones were pretty easy to follow with, sometimes one of the more secondary players was mentioned and it would make me stop for a moment. I think that’s the tough part with a book like this because there are so many people who need to be in it. This isn’t fictional, so one can’t just eliminate some in situations. To tell the story, these players need to be in the story.

This is a tough “bad,” per say, but books like this need a few photos. When dealing with historical items like this, I know I like to see what people look like, or anything else to help my mind paint a picture of the town, the field, the players and all that. Ballard does a wonderful job of describing everything, but having a section in the book with images would have helped. If it’s in the print version, I can’t comment. But I didn’t see any photos, outside of the cover photos in the Kindle edition.

Overall thoughts

I truly enjoyed this book. I didn’t take too long to read it as it moved quickly, kept my attention and made me want to keep going. And it really is an underdog story. If you are a sports fan and like something like Hoosiers, you’ll like this book. It’s the same sort of thing — the David vs. Goliath. I won’t give away the ending of this book, but it doesn’t matter what the end result is. It’s well worth the read and I would encourage anybody who likes books about real life, sports, overcoming odds or the little guy to give it a go.

Rating

This is a strong book and one I’d highly recommend to many people. In the end, though not fully perfect, I’d give this book a strong 4/5 and consider a little higher if I gave it a little bit of a longer thought.

Artwork (For The Artful Readers Club)

This book is also one I’m reading for The Artful Readers Club. In this club, we read one book per month and also have to so some sort of a piece of art to go with it. For this one, I decided to take an old baseball photo I took and make an “advertisement” for the book. It’s not great, but I hope people enjoy!

Artful Readers Club artwork.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Filed Under: Baseball, Books, My world Tagged With: an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season, baseball, book, book review, chris ballard, high school, high school sports, illinois, illinois high school baseball, macon, macon high, macon high ironmen, macon ironmen, one shot at forever, One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, Reading, review

46 Comments

Foto Friday: Rivalry football

October 5, 2012

There’s nothing like a good, old fashioned football rivalry to fill up a nice fall Saturday.

Such it was this past Friday when Delhi and Walton met at Jim Hoover Field for an annual battle. The game pits two of the finest coaches in the state — Walton’s Hoover and Delhi’s Dave Kelly. They are the top-two winningest football coaches in Section Four history and, between them, have more than 550 victories in a combined 84 years of coaching.

Yikes!

The game was like many in the past. Hard-hitting, defensive and a couple of big plays to separate the two. In the end, it was Walton which came out on top, 28-18.

That victory gave Hoover a 29-13 edge over his Route 10 rival.

Though, I’ll admit, I didn’t roam as much as I had hoped for this photo essay, I did capture, I believe a feeling of this game. So, below, are some of my favorite images from the game.

Tough catch.

Too high.

No room to run.

Getting away.

Pass attempt.

Just out of the reach.

Coach Jim Hoover.

Coach Dave Kelly.

Tackled.

On the Walton sideline.

On the Delhi sideline.

Breaking away from the pack.

Game over.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Filed Under: Foto Friday, My world, Photography, Sports Tagged With: delhi, football, foto, foto friday, high school football, high school sports, photography, photos, section four football, sports, sports photography, walton

1 Comment

Primary Sidebar

Welcome

Welcome to A 'lil HooHaa!

This is a personal website covering many topics! We host a monthly photo blogging challenge, and then every January hold a fun writing challenge.

Thank you for stopping by and hope this becomes a stop for you!

Connect

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Follow

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 882 other subscribers

Instagram

hoohaa29

Writer who loves images just as much as words! In search of perfectly poured pints of Guinness and great hot dogs. Find me on twitter @softball29.

Couldn’t resist stopping on the way to work too Couldn’t resist stopping on the way to work too quickly snap some photos of this scene. Hamden Covered Bridge. #bridge #coveredbridge #hamden #snow #winter #instagood #photooftheday #happy #picoftheday #fun #igers #bestoftheday #life #photo #iphonesia #igdaily #iphoneonly #love #beautiful #photography
A nice day to get out for a hike, grab a #geocache A nice day to get out for a hike, grab a #geocache and place a few. Felt good abs here’s hoping for a much better year!
Thought this wax seal came out pretty well! #waxse Thought this wax seal came out pretty well! #waxsealstamp #waxseal #waxseals #card #mail #snailmail
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Twitter

P.J.Follow

P.J.
Retweet on TwitterP.J. Retweeted
QU_MIHQuinnipiac Men's Ice Hockey@QU_MIH·
11 Jan

Our stock is 📈 #BobcatNation

Reply on Twitter 1348721955793489920Retweet on Twitter 13487219557934899202Like on Twitter 134872195579348992060Twitter 1348721955793489920
softball29P.J.@softball29·
15 Jan

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Shut up, Meg@MMMac88

Karma's a bitch. Thanks for the assist @GarlandTMI ✌💙

Reply on Twitter 1349975081716486149Retweet on Twitter 1349975081716486149Like on Twitter 1349975081716486149Twitter 1349975081716486149
Retweet on TwitterP.J. Retweeted
NYIslandersNew York Islanders@NYIslanders·
15 Jan

FIRST GAME OF THE SEASON
FIRST #ISLES WIN OF THE SEASON
FIRST SHUTOUT OF THE SEASON
🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞

Reply on Twitter 1349910557365858308Retweet on Twitter 13499105573658583081027Like on Twitter 13499105573658583083673Twitter 1349910557365858308
Load More...

Archives

Categories

Calendar

January 2021
S M T W T F S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  
« Dec    

Search The Site

Site Information

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

A 'lil HooHaa © 2021 · Created By Coded Creative

Copyright © 2021 · Ava Mae on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in