Owning a Piece of the Minors

Owning a Piece of the Minors Book Description

Owning a Piece of the Minors is by and about a man who lived his dream and acquired a baseball team. When Jerry Klinkowitz joined the group that ran the Waterloo, Iowa, Diamonds in the 1970s, ownership of a minor league baseball franchise conferred little mystique. Neglected for a half century, minor league baseball was at best obscure. Yet in the purchase of fantasy, what difference if your desire is out of style? Klinkowitz continued his work with the Diamonds through the 1980s and much of the 1990s. In Owning a Piece of the Minors, he maps out his personal journey through baseball and probes his fluctuating fortunes and those of his team as he evolves from a fan to a team executive and, most important to a writer writing about baseball.
"Owning a Piece of the Minors" is by and about a man who lived his dream and acquired a baseball team. When Jerry Klinkowitz joined the group that ran the Waterloo, Iowa, Diamonds in the 1970s, ownership of a minor league baseball franchise conferred little mystique. Neglected for a half century, minor league baseball was at best obscure. Yet in the purchase of fantasy, what difference if your desire is out of style?

Klinkowitz continued his work with the Diamonds through the 1980s and much of the 1990s. In "Owning a Piece of the Minors," he maps out his personal journey through baseball and probes his fluctuating fortunes and those of his team as he evolves from a fan to a team executive and, most important, to a writer writing about baseball. This baseball story begins with a nine-year-old Klinkowitz who is elated when Milwaukee lures the Braves from Boston; this story of a love affair with baseball might have died--and in fact suffered a ten-year hiatus--when the apostate Braves fled to Atlanta in 1965.

Klinkowitz rediscovered the joy of being at the baseball park when, as a middle-aged professor, he took his own children to the Waterloo Diamonds games. Gradually his involvement with the Diamonds grew deeper until he owned the team. His immersion into team activities was complete, from shagging batting practice and working the beer bar to struggling with the Cleveland Indians and then the San Diego Padres as minor league affiliates to accommodate baseball's resurgence.

Klinkowitz writes of loss--first the Braves and later the Diamonds; of writing baseball fiction; of attending the 1982 World Series back in Milwaukee; of the great old ballparks around the country, including Wrigley, Fenway, and old Comiskey Park; of fictional and factual accounts of how the Diamonds franchise was lost; of friendships among season ticket holders in "Box 28"; and of Mildred Boyenga, the club president and Baseball Woman of the Year. A first-rate stylist, Klinkowitz shows the problems and perks and, most rewarding, the priceless relationships made possible in the world of baseball.

Jerry Klinkowitz has contributed to Owning a Piece of the Minors as an author. Jerry Klinkowitz is executive director of the Waterloo Indians, a farm team of the Cleveland Indians. In the off-season, he teaches at the University of Northern Iowa and has published twenty books of literary and cultural criticism.

Lee Gutkind has contributed to Owning a Piece of the Minors as an author. Lee Gutkind, founder and editor of the popular journal Creative Nonfiction, has performed as a clown for Ringling Brothers, scrubbed with heart and liver surgeons, traveled with a crew of National League baseball umpires, and wandered the country on a motorcycle-all as research for eight books and numerous profiles and essays. The former director of the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh and currently a professor of English there, Gutkind pioneered the teaching of creative nonfiction, conducting workshops and presenting readings throughout the United States.

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