From Beans Reardon, who came up to the National League in 1926, to Ed Sudol, who retired in 1977, this book presents a witty portrait of baseball from the boisterous Golden Age to the Jet Age of Instant Replay.

Larry R. Gerlach is a professor of history at the University of Utah. A frustrated player, he took to umpiring only to learn that he "couldn't call the pitch either." Writing about baseball, he says, is a way of "staying in the game." He is also author of the introduction to the Bison Books edition of Harry S. Johnson's Standing the Gaff: The Life and Hard Times of a Minor League Umpire.