June 7th: "One Shot at Forever" @ Michigan Shores Club

ONE SHOT AT FOREVER

A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and

a Magical Baseball Season

by Chris Ballard

Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated

Lynn Sweet never set out to be a baseball coach. As the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, Sweet—an idealist and dreamer with long hair, eclectic reading habits, and an unconventional way of teaching high school English—was an unlikely choice to coach the kids who played ball for the Macon Ironmen. Macon, Illinois, was notoriously a football and basketball town with a population of only 1,200, frozen in the Eisenhower era. Why not let the beatnik Sweet coach a team of players who have no hope of winning?

With barely enough boys to field a team and a nonexistent budget, Sweet and the Ironmen could have played to low expectations. They could have succumbed to the fear and unease gripping the country as the economy faltered and eighteen-year-old boys were shipped off to Vietnam. But Sweet’s talented group of boys just wanted to hang onto their youth and play baseball. Sweet’s unusual coaching methods and his edgy appearance made the school and town wary, but his boys loved him. Sweet allowed the boys to wear peace signs on their clothes, listen to Jesus Christ Superstar when they practiced, and grow their hair out. And against all odds, they won.

ONE SHOT AT FOREVER unearths the Macon Ironmen’s improbable run at the Illinois state finals in 1971. At a time when there were no class distinctions in high school baseball, this group of overmatched boys emerged from a field of 370 teams to become the smallest school in Illinois history to make the final, a distinction that still stands today. There they would play a dramatic game against a Chicago powerhouse that would change their lives forever.

Sports Illustrated writer Chris Ballard takes readers on this entertaining journey from Coach Sweet’s arrival in Macon, to the Ironmen’s run to the state final, to the present day, where Ballard returns to the 1971 Ironmen to explore the effect the game had on their lives’ trajectories. In doing so, Ballard paints a memorable portrait of small-town boys readers will immediately recognize—boys who race through cornfields on hot summer nights, who love baseball almost as much as they love pulling pranks, and who bond as teammates and friends during halcyon days when they stand together on the verge of manhood, not sure of what the future holds.

The Book Stall event details: June 7, 2012 at Michigan Shores Club