In Baseball's Greatest Hits & Misses, Jack L. Hayes, award-winning author of two other books on Major League Baseball, shares interesting and almost unbelievable stories from his experiences as a batboy at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. Jack also makes you privy to some of those nuggets he picked up along the way, and a few other amazing Hits and Misses-unconventional, bizarre, wacky, and legendary happenings that took place on and off a big league baseball field. Baseball's history is rich with interesting characters and the way they played ball. Characters like the seventeen-year-old female who took to the mound in her first professional appearance and struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig; little Eddie Gaedel, standing only three feet, seven inches tall, who stepped up to the plate to bat against the Detroit Tigers; Bobby Thomson, whose greatest moment in baseball history home run was given an embarrassing black eye years later. Some baseball bloopers are insignificant and fun to see. Others can be devastating and leave such players as Fred Snodgrass, Fred Merkle, Mickey Owens, Ralph Branca, and Bill Buckner with a lifetime of heartbreak and ridicule. Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle, both ran the bases under similar circumstances. One emerged a hero; the other was blamed for an unbelievable blunder. Baseball's Greatest Hits & Misses, Volume I, is full of stories-amazing, amusing, almost unbelievable, a few sad. Yet, they all have one thing in common-they're true!
JACK L. HAYES possesses a highly diversified and rather unique background; as a teenager, he served as a professional batboy for seven Major League Baseball teams, and rubbed elbows with some of the greatest players of all time, including Mickey Mantle, Satchel Paige, Ted Williams, and dozens of other immortal stars. As an adult, Jack served as CEO of his management consulting firm, Jack L. Hayes International, Inc. for thirty years, and his company has been retained by some of the finest corporations in the United States, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, and South America. Jack, as an internationally recognized authority on business crime and loss prevention, has also consulted with the New York Stock Exchange, United States Marine Corps, and U.S. Navy. He has testified in Federal and State Criminal and Civil Courts as an expert witness on internal and external theft and dishonesty. Jack is an award-winning published author of four non-fiction books (two on Major League Baseball and two business-related). He has produced 180 minutes of award-winning training videos, served as a regular columnist for two trade magazines, published a subscription newsletter for 22 years; been quoted in numerous newspapers and participated in radio and TV shows. Jack has self-published a variety of educational workbooks and motivational materials. He has lectured on numerous occasions before national and international business audiences, and given presentations on baseball on cruise ships and before various baseball clubs. Jack and his wife Darlene, live in Central Florida.
