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"[It's] Montgomery's journalistic eye for distilling the humanity behind the unfulfilled athletic potential that makes this a real home run." - Booklist, Starred Review • A Booklist Top 10 Book on Sports 2024
Stories of baseball idols and heroes are oft-repeated, but what about those players who everyone thought would be the next "great one" and have since disappeared from the sport? What happened after they failed to meet the weighty expectations placed on them?
In Baseball's Great Expectations: Candid Stories of Ballplayers Who Didn't Live Up to the Hype, Patrick Montgomery brings out from the shadows nine of those players who were once poised for greatness. They include a player who received a then-record-breaking MLB Draft signing bonus, a left-handed pitcher who was ordained to be the next Sandy Koufax, the only catcher to go straight from high school to the major leagues during the MLB Draft Era, and more. Drawing from his extensive interviews with the players, family members, general managers, executives, scouts, and more, Montgomery shines a fresh light on these players and provides a candid perspective on the major leagues. Players reflect on their careers, what went wrong, how they feel about baseball now that their playing days are over, and, for many of them, how they have found new purpose in their lives.
Baseball's Great Expectations reveals an often-overlooked side of professional baseball, of the struggles with injury, mental exhaustion, pressure, temptations, and sometimes just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The path to baseball stardom is not as glamorous as it is sometimes made out to be, and this book reveals just how difficult the journey truly is.
About the author
Patrick Montgomery is an award-winning writer. His most recent book, The Baseball Miracle of the Splendid 6, garnered 1
st place for Sports Book at the 2022 Speak Up Talk Radio Firebird Book Awards and was a winner in the 2022 Hollywood Book Festival. Montgomery is a youth softball coach, baseball historian, student of the game, and member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
Summary
Baseball’s Great Expectations features the fascinating stories of baseball players who were on the cusp of greatness, who everyone expected to be the next superstar, but never quite lived up to the hype—or through tragic circumstances, never had the chance.
