A DAMN NEAR PERFECT GAME

For readers of Keith Law's Smart Baseball and Chipper Jones's Ballplayer, the game's most outspoken fireballer brings the high heat.

Baseball has an image problem, the chorus of nonbelievers gets louder every year, and the Major Leagues have made an art of tuning them out. It wasn't always this way, and it doesn't have to be anymore. Enter Joe Kelly: a walking, talking, fastball-throwing embodiment of why baseball matters and why we should love it.

A DAMN NEAR PERFECT GAME calls out the hacks, cheats, ridiculous rules, and more that have tarnished the game of baseball - from the field of play to the clubhouse, front office, broadcast booth, and beyond - and serves up A-plus ideas on how to make baseball pure, fun, and damn near perfect. From Kelly's perspective as a two-time World Series Champion, baseball's most meme-able player according to ESPN, Big League firebrand, and current pitcher for the Chicago White Sox, Kelly takes readers on a house-cleaning tour of the clubhouse, the field of play, the bullpen, the front office, the commissioner's office, and a ballplayer's restricted life off-the-field. Kelly goes off on rule changes that matter and sticking to them (pitch clocks, no designated hitter, and more); baseball hacks (overused analytics, shifts, sign-stealing, and more); the promotion of baseball to a new generation of fans (letting players get edgy on social media, merchandising in truly trend-setting ways, and more); encouraging actual emotion (let the players fight, let them bat-flip, let them talk sh*t); and fixing all that's wrong with the front office and the Commissioner's Office.

And to show what happens when baseball has some piss and vinegar, he gives the inside scoop on his legendary exploits - starting a bench-clearing brawl with the Yankees' Tyler Austin, his famous "pouty face" scene when calling out the notorious sign-stealing Houston Astros, and wearing a Mariachi jacket to the White House visit with his World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers.

Joe Kelly is a ten-year major league veteran, having won the World Series with both the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers. He also went to the World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals, the franchise that selected him in the third round of the 2009 Major League Baseball Draft. He currently plays for the Chicago White Sox.
Rob Bradford has covered the Boston Red Sox for more than twenty years, covering Major League Baseball for the Lowell Sun, Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, Boston Herald, and WEEI. He has written two books: Chasing Steinbrenner: Pursuing the Pennant in Boston and Toronto and Deep Drive : A Long Journey to Finding the Champion Within, the best-selling autobiography of World Series MVP Mike Lowell.