Why does society enjoy hating their villains with such passion? Are the judgments ever wrong? Can these villains be so easily tagged? These are the questions that the nine-year-old Sami Avery begins to ask and continues to ask in her poignant yet tumultuous journey through life. Sami struggles through devastating situations while learning that things aren't always cut and dry, black and white, or good and bad. Through hard work, and a stubborn spark of self-worth, she begins to create her own destiny. Leaving her hometown at sixteen, she confronts a part of herself, which she finds shameful and, like most others, will never admit that she was a part of. As the years go by, social norms continue to improve and, like others, she leaves ignorance in her past. Sami's experiences come full circle, however, in her thirties, when she falls in love with, and marries, a man twenty years her senior. She comes to more fully understand how insidious ignorance in judgments can be. Deeply depressed, she is nearly destroyed by it, until a single moment when all the events of her life come together. She remembers the strength she witnessed in a mentor who had dealt with the echoes of prejudice throughout the entirety of his life. Her epiphany is about connection, love and, most importantly, about forgiving ignorance.

Each work, chosen with exquisite care by an expert, is analyzed and summarized. Its greatness as baseball literature, its place in the genre, its peculiarities, weaknesses, strengths, how the critics went for it--all are discussed in such a way, with quotations, that reading or browsing Shannon's book is equivalent to absorbing a rich history of the sport.

The 'bonus rule' of 1953-1957 required baseball players who signed a contract for more than $4,000 to remain on the major league roster for two full seasons. Kelley tells the stories of the 'bonus babies' who reaped the benefits, and the others whose careers were destroyed by the rule.