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    One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season
    One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season
    One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season
    Audiobook8 hours

    One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season

    Written by Chris Ballard

    Narrated by Mike Chamberlain

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen emerged from a field of three hundred and seventy teams to become the smallest school in Illinois history to make the state final, a distinction that still stands. There, sporting long hair, and warming up to Jesus Christ Superstar, the Ironmen would play a dramatic game against a Chicago powerhouse that would change their lives forever.In a gripping, cinematic narrative, Sports Illustrated writer Chris Ballard tells the story of the team and its coach, Lynn Sweet, a hippie, dreamer and intellectual who arrived in Macon in 1966, bringing progressive ideas to a town stuck in the Eisenhower era. Beloved by students but not administration, Sweet reluctantly took over a rag-tag team, intent on teaching the boys as much about life as baseball. Inspired by Sweet's unconventional methods and led by fierystar Steve Shartzer and spindly curveball artist John Heneberry, the undersized, undermanned Macon Ironmen embarked on an improbable postseason run that infuriated rival coaches and buoyed an entire town.Beginning with Sweet's arrival, Ballard takes listeners on a journey back to the Ironmen's historic season and then on to the present day, returning to the 1971 Ironmen to explore the effect the game had on their lives' trajectories-and the men they've become because of it. Engaging and poignant, One Shot at Forever is a testament to the power of high school sports to shape the lives of those who play them, and it reminds us that there are few bonds more sacred than those among a coach, a team, and a town.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 28, 2012
    ISBN9781452680293
    One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season
    Author

    Chris Ballard

    Chris Ballard is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated covering the NBA and writing features. He has written profiles of people with offbeat professions for the New York Times Magazine and is the author of Hoops Nation, which was named one of Booklist’s Top Ten Sports Books of 1998, and The Butterfly Hunter. He lives in Berkeley, California.

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    Reviews for One Shot at Forever

    4.5/5

    47 ratings9 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 5/5
      When I'm choosing a rating for a book, I ask myself, "Could anything have made this book better?" In this case I don't think so, thus the 5-star rating for Chris Ballard's One Shot at Forever. Ballard does an excellent job developing the sense of place and time to put the reader right into small town (REALLY small town) central Illinois in the early 70s. And even though you know that the Macon team makes it to the state championship, Ballard still develops a sense of suspense by highlighting all the obstacles one after another. Not only that, but the scenes on the field are described in such a way to inspire tears. This sports narrative balances everything - characters, setting, and plot - seamlessly.
    • 5/5
      A great story of overcoming the odds.
    • 5/5
      This is a great story of a small town baseball team that made an improbable run at the Illinois high school baseball championship in 1971, in the days when small schools and big schools played each other in the postseason. It's also a story of how a young teacher/coach transformed his players, students, and, to some degree, the town of Macon, IL.

      I grew up in Decatur and Champaign, so it was an added bonus for me that Macon is close to Decatur and Lynn Sweet's family settled in Champaign. Fred Schooley, one of Sweet's Champaign friends, taught and coached at Champaign Central when I went there. It was a pleasant surprise to find him in the story. Macon also played at Champaign Central's McKinley Field, which is where Central's baseball team still plays.

      Highly recommended for people who like a good sports story, especially those who live in Central Illinois.
    • 5/5
      A teriffic book about small towns, high school sports and the culture wars of the Vietnam Era.
    • 5/5
      A great story of overcoming the odds.
    • 5/5
      A great nonfiction story of the tiny town of Macon, IL and their improbable run at a state baseball championship in 1971. A tiny school of 250 faces huge odds going against some of the large powerhouse teams before there were divisions in the state championship system. A coach that definitely did not fit the normal definition of coach. A team of only 13 or 14 that fought to do the impossible. If you like David vs. Goliath stories you'll love this story. Events that shaped the lives of these young men and the small town they lived in come alive and stay with these men for life. A great story.
    • 4/5
      Good David v. Goliath baseball story. Also an excellent glimpse at the last vestiges of small town America before the technology age and total corruption of sports at all levels. Ending was a little on the melancholy side, nevertheless, a nice " Hoosiers" like baseball nugget.
    • 5/5
      If someone were to ask me about my favorite movie genre, it would be, hands down, motivational sports dramas (and yes, Netflix has a category for that). I am a sucker for any type of sports drama, whether I've actually played or followed the sport in my life. Add a dedicated and supportive team of really good kids (while a bit rambunctious at times) and a coach that really is a LEADER? Doubly hooked.With that taken into account, I was happily suprised to find Ballard's gem of a book which recounts the 1970 and 1971 baseball season for Macon High School. It's been compared to Hoosiers, which I get. Macon is a small town, made up of farmers and in comes this English Teacher who just doesn't fit the crew cut, "yes sir" type of norm, and insists on doing his own curriculum. As a reader, I cheered Lynn Sweet, because he got through to the kids and they flourished under his classroom guidance. (As a school principal, I would have had some words, but deep inside, would have been rooting him on as well, by the way.)He finds himself in charge of the baseball team. I wouldn't say coaching, because he really turned it back to the boys, and guided them, more than anything. He was their biggest cheerleader, their confidant, their friend, and the boys did everything right. It truly was magical. Ballard links the story with an assortment of facts that I found equally intriguing. He most definitely did his research on this team, and I loved hearing about what happened to the players after the 1971 series. A truly wonderful, heartwarming read. Not long, but enough to keep you up late at night (or maybe that's just me)! Loved it!!!
    • 4/5
      A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball SeasonMacon, Illinois was said to be a town stuck in the Eisenhower era. Lynn Sweet was a hippie who was hired as the English teacher by a rather progressive administrator. He ended up being asked to coach the baseball team even though he had no experience coaching. His students loved him, and so the players loved him. Administration and the parents were not in love.Even though he had no experience and his methods were unorthodox to say the least, he got results. His students learned to love reading and the players, even though they were told that practice was optional, showed up to practice and played to win. They made it to the state final, the smallest school to ever make it, and it has never happened again.I almost gave up on this book, I was under the wire to read 90 books by the end of the year and was in a reading frenzy, for a while I thought this book was going to be about Lynn Sweet and his problems with the administration, quickly however, I realized the author was just setting the stage, it quickly progressed to the team and the boys.Besides getting a history of Macon Illinois in 1971 and being introduced to Sweet’s laid back style of coaching, we also get a history of the boys, why they played, their family situation, how their friendship with each other affected the loyalty to the team. Also, the author takes us to the present day, we see how their dreams were fulfilled, where their skill and talent took them.In all an informative enjoyable book.