The book is a story about the relationship between "the captain" and a baseball prodigy.
Canton's Thurman Munson and Atlanta's Ron Blomberg both were projected to be stars in their sport when they met late in the 1960s after making it to the big leagues with the New York Yankees.
But though the Major League careers of these two highly sought athletes went in different directions on the field -- one's legacy heightened by accomplishments and the other's troubled by injuries -- the men themselves became became friends in ways that extended well beyond baseball.
"I came up (into professional baseball) in 1967 and he came in 1968 and we met in spring training in 1969," recalled Blomberg in a recent telephone interview. "We hit it off right away. I was from the South and he was from the Midwest so we were raised differently. But we both loved baseball and we loved the Yankee pinstripes."