Scooter Riley–named after Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto–is just a regular kid growing up in the Bronx, right near Yankee Stadium, in 1969. His father, Patrick Riley, is a New York City cop. His grandfather, a fireman for thirty years, is a man who firmly believes that all of life’s great lessons are explained in baseball lore. In the wake of the assassinations of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, as the neighborhood changes around him, Scooter is forced to see that life, like baseball, is a game in which a few extraordinary moments–moments of either courage or cowardice–will define the man he becomes.
"A very entertaining, warmhearted novel. . . . It's carefree and lively and violent, and comes, of course, with a crash course in America's historic pastime." –The Washington Post"A dark coming-of-age tale and an elegy for a neighborhood in decline. . . . Foley . . . balances Scooter's dark side with qualities that make us root for the character, including good humor, compassion, tenderness and cleverness." –Fort Worth Star-Telegram“Wholly touching. . . . It is each character’s energy and the pure essence of baseball that knocks this story out of the park. . . . A truly entertaining look at youth and the lost face of baseball.” –The Free Lance-Star“Read this book. I say this not only because Mick Foley is a fine writer, but also because he can pick me up one-handed and squash my skull like a grape.” –Dave Barry“Boisterous…Vigorous…A steroid-fueled brawl.”—Publisher’s Weekly“Breakneck-paced, witty, laugh-out-loud funny and—surprisingly—addictively entertaining…A strange mix of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho.”—Paul Goat Allen, Bookpage“A story of unbearable tenderness and brutality, the tenderness serving to make the brutality more shocking.”—Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian (London)“A raw, picaresque coming-of-age story, by turns funny and darkly violent.”—Michael Harrington, Philadelphia Inquirer“Tietam Brown makes you laugh so hard sometimes it makes you cry. Foley’s achievement…is not only the portrayal of his narrator’s maturation under most unpromising situations. It is also the creation of a great character.”—Christian Sheppard, Chicago Tribune“One of the things that made Foley so effective in wrestling was…his flair for the dramatic and shocking, his sense of humor and his knack for pushing certain emotional buttons. Now, he applies those same skills to his first novel.”—Mark E. Hayes, Miami Herald“Foley knows how to spin an intriguing if somewhat off-beat tale…a compulsively readable first novel.”—Jim Coan, Library Journal“A sometimes lurid, sometimes painful book, but one that ultimately trumpets the human spirit. It’s not ‘good, for a wrestler book.’ It’s good, period.”—Scott E. Williams, Galveston County Daily News
