Excerpted from ONE SHOT AT FOREVER by Chris Ballard. Copyright © 2012 Chris Ballard. Published by Hyperion. Available wherever books are sold. All Rights Reserved.
Bob Fallstrom had to read the sheet twice, and still he didn't believe it. Was this some sort of joke? The work of a smartass kid? By 1971 Fallstrom had been at the Decatur Herald & Review for twenty-two years and had spent the bulk of that time covering small- town high school sports in central Illinois. Over the years he'd seen plenty. He'd covered future major leaguers like Bill Madlock and farm boys who'd never seen a curveball. He'd dealt with coaches who were autocrats, coaches who were jerks, coaches who didn't know their own players' names, and, once, a married coach who skipped town on the day of a big game with the school nurse. But he'd never seen anything like this.
In his hand, Fallstrom held a rumpled survey returned by L. C. Sweet, the baseball coach at Macon High, a tiny school twenty minutes south of Decatur that had enjoyed surprising success the previous season.