A wild and humorous ride through the world of multi-cultural, multi-national professional baseball.
Although 2001: A Baseball Odyssey began as an informative look at a season of professional baseball in Taiwan, the author's sudden return to the minor leagues in California came to represent a soul-searching, and, at times, comical, look at the daily life of a ball team, the Sonoma County Crushers. As Bo Durkac's new team struggled against big hitting teams, he and a small core of experienced players held together a less-than-talented group of younger athletes which then challenged the top teams to compete for the playoffs of the independent Western Baseball League. Told in journal form, the book tells of the bus rides into the night, the intrasquad humor and squabbles, and the constant revolving door of players brought in and players moved out. Furthermore, as a microcosm of the increased "internationalization" of professional baseball, he includes a number of humorous exchanges with a former Japanese Major League All-Star, a 34-year-old Colombian pitcher, and two recently defected Cuban ballplayers. Ultimately, Durkac goes to Long Island to close out the summer with a team in the independent Atlantic League and attempts to resolve his own internal conflict over his future while his batting average plummets in the face of superior competition.
