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

In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois<br>playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats<br>defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no<br>coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen emerged from a field of 370<br>teams to become the smallest school in modern Illinois history to make the<br>state final, a distinction that still stands. There, sporting long<br>hair, and warming up to Jesus Christ Superstar, the Ironmen would play<br>a dramatic game against a Chicago powerhouse that would change their<br>lives forever.<br><br>In a gripping, cinematic narrative, <i>Sports Illustrated</i> writer Chris<br>Ballard tells the story of the team and its coach, Lynn Sweet, a<br>hippie, dreamer and intellectual who arrived in Macon in 1966,<br>bringing progressive ideas to a town stuck in the Eisenhower era.<br>Beloved by students but not administration, Sweet reluctantly took<br>over a rag-tag team, intent on teaching the boys as much about life as<br>baseball. Inspired by Sweet's unconventional methods and led by fiery<br>star Steve Shartzer and spindly curveball artist John Heneberry, the<br>undersized, undermanned Macon Ironmen embarked on an improbable<br>postseason run that infuriated rival coaches and buoyed an entire<br>town.<br><br>Beginning with Sweet's arrival, Ballard takes readers on a journey<br>back to the Ironmen's historic season and then on to the present day,<br>returning to the 1971 Ironmen to explore the effect the game had on<br>their lives' trajectories--and the men they've become because of it.<br><br>Engaging and poignant,<i> One Shot at Forever</i> is a testament to the power<br>of high school sports to shape the lives of those who play them, and<br>it reminds us that there are few bonds more sacred than that among a<br>coach, a team, and a town <i></i>