"At last, the great American baseball novel..."

The lost story of a ballplayer passing in the deadball era.

Moody Riley knocks around the major leagues as a solid but mediocre player for more than twenty years. A light-skinned toddler who survived a lynching, Moody spent his childhood under the bleachers of the baseball field where his parents were killed.

He''s a catcher, useful as a substitute or for warming up pitchers from 1904 to 1928. Like a hardball Forrest Gump, Riley happens to be in the dugout or on the field when legendary events happen in the early, wild years of 20th century baseball. He knows legends and heroes, like Christy Mathewson and John McGraw, and opposites like Ty Cobb and Drew Foster. Not to mention Babe Ruth when he was a starveling nobody.

It''s a wonder no one thought to write this story before.