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
We're pairing up with the Arlington Heights Memorial Library for an evening with Tim Green, who
is equal parts star athlete/star author, for a talk about the
importance of education and character and the joys and benefits of
reading. Mr. Green, an All-American football player at Syracuse and
later a defensive end for the Atlanta Falcons, will also discuss his
newest middle 
grade novels Lost Boy (a baseball novel about one kid's search of a lifetime) and Kid Owner (about a boy who inherits the Dallas Cowboys when the team's owner -- his estranged father -- passes away). Click here for Mr. Green's website.
