Enshrinement in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, is the ultimate honor for any major leaguer. This rousing, you-are-there history tells the story of seventeen legendary players who came up just short of Cooperstown: Virgil Trucks, Gene Woodling, Carl Erskine, Frank Thomas, and others. Collectively, the humorous, engaging, behind-the-scenes stories also tell the tale of baseball in the 1950s: a game performed on fields of grass and dirt, divided by segregation, played by men who took trains from city to city and held off-season jobs.
The New York Times applauded this oral history as "great fun," and sportscaster Mel Allen praised it as "a must-read for anyone who wants to know where today's game came from and what it can become once again." Former Commissioner of Baseball Fay Vincent noted that "Oral historians like Moffi do us the service of preserving what these men have to say about their baseball lives. These are players who gave me much enjoyment and so did this fine book. You will agree."