The author, John Grisham, once dreamed of a career as a professional baseball player for the St. Louis Cardinals.[1] This, his first baseball novel, is about a beanball that ends the career of a promising player.[1] The novel is inspired by the real-life story of Ray Chapman, the only professional baseball player killed by a pitch.[2] The book was also inspired by some of Grisham's personal baseball experience, as noted in the foreword, when Grisham played baseball and developed a dislike of aggressive, bad-mannered pitchers. For example, at the age of 19, Grisham saw a ball fly by his face at about ninety miles per hour and quit the game, promptly and permanently.
The novel involves a near-fatal pitch thrown on August 24, 1973[3] and its implications 30 years later on both the batter, "Calico Joe" Castle, and the pitcher, New York Mets player Warren Tracey, as narrated by his son, Paul Tracey.[2]
