Length13h 21m
About this audiobook
He could not hit a curveball. He could see everything else.
Mason City, Missouri, 1921. Sam Bell keeps the scorebook for a team that will never matter, filling the margins with a private notation only he can read — the pitcher whose arm is failing, the fielder who can't move left, the hitter who chases what he can't reach. When a Cardinals scout in road-dusty shoes notices what the boy is really writing down, Sam is drawn into the strangest experiment in baseball: Branch Rickey's plan to stop buying players and start growing them.
What follows is the building of a machine — tryout camps, contracts, a map of the country pinned with circles — that will produce champions and change the sport forever. But the machine runs on boys. One of them is Sam's brother.
A novel about the price of building something that works.
Audiobook details
GenreHistorical Fiction
Length13 hrs 21 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateJun 1, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Team That Grew Its Own Stars: Prologue
2Part I: The Poor Team’s Problem
3Chapter 1: The Boy Who Kept Score
4Chapter 2: The Scout with Dust on His Shoes
5Chapter 3: St. Louis Is Broke
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6Chapter 4: The Failed Manager
7— Interlude: January 1921: The Commissioner —
8Chapter 5: The Price of a Prospect
9Chapter 6: The Map on the Wall
10Chapter 7: Not Stars Yet
11Part II: Building the Machine
12Chapter 8: Signed for a Train Ticket
13Chapter 9: The Lowest Rung
14Chapter 10: Teaching Baseball
15Chapter 11: The Notebook
16Chapter 12: Numbers No One Asked For
17Chapter 13: Tommy Tries Out
18Chapter 14: Too Many Boys
19Chapter 15: The Old Baseball Men
20Chapter 16: The Commissioner Notices
21— Interlude: November 1929: What Landis Sees —
22Chapter 17: Buck Learns to Pitch
23Chapter 18: Eli Changes His Swing
24Part III: Proof, Pressure, and Backlash
25Chapter 19: First Crop
26Chapter 20: The Boy from the System
27Chapter 21: Everybody Wants In
28Chapter 22: Landis Cuts the Wires
29— Interlude: March 1932: The Hearing —
30Chapter 23: Rickey’s Defense
31Chapter 24: Tommy’s Release
32Chapter 25: Sam Quits the Notebook
33Chapter 26: The Gashouse Future
34Chapter 27: Cheap or Smart?
35Part IV: The Game Changes
36Chapter 28: The Cardinals Arrive Early
37Chapter 29: A Different Kind of Scout
38Chapter 30: The Player No One Liked
39Chapter 31: The Pennant Machine
40— Interlude: October 1934: The Gashouse Gang —
41Chapter 32: The Cost of Being First
42Chapter 33: Tommy Comes Home
43Chapter 34: The Report
44Chapter 35: What Everybody Copies
45— Interlude: 1936–1941: What Everybody Copies —
46Chapter 36: The Field Behind the Field
47Epilogue
48Author’s Note
49A Note on the History
50What the Farm System Was
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