num_pages: 172
description: It is a story of bus rides and Waffle House breakfasts, of baseball clubhouses and the characters who occupy them; of narcissists who made it and neurotics trying to make it, of the desperate at bats where one more out will get you a one-way ticket to Palookaville. Jeff Manto hit 17 home runs in 1995 for the Baltimore Orioles - four of them on four consecutive at bats -- the same year Cal Ripken Jr. set a new major league record for games played. The bat with which Manto hit those four straight homers is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He played on three teams that would go to the World Series. But mostly, Manto's career was a long odyssey through a vast minor league minefield. Over 16 professional seasons, Manto played in three countries for 13 different baseball organizations. He made the newspaper's Transactions list 36 times. One year, he bounced from Tokyo, Japan to Pawtucket, RI, to Boston, to Trenton, NJ, to Seattle, and back to Boston, in the span of three weeks. All in a quest to make in major league baseball. Bullpen groupies who used minor league players to prepare for Motley Crue. Midget clubhouse men who drove the team's equipment truck using stilts. The strange, locker room habits of grown men. Manto's is a story as farcical and gut-wrenching as Kevin Costner's in Bull Durham. With one difference. This one's true.
language: English
title: The Transaction: Surviving Professional Baseball Through 16 Years and 36 Waives, Recalls, Trades, and Releases
titlecomplete: The Transaction: Surviving Professional Baseball Through 16 Years and 36 Waives, Recalls, Trades, and Releases
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Authorhouse