Wild Pitch by Jeffrey Grose and Richard Strack

Wild Pitch is a true story that tears the human condition of a man's life down to the bare bone. Its pages paint a portrait of a childhood shattered to pieces by an alcoholic father that leaves Jeff Grose with an anger that grows into a beast born from his dad's belt. Jeff channels the beast inside him into extraordinary success as a baseball pitcher on high school fields and then inside professional ball parks after he is drafted by the New York Mets at age 16. Life in the minor leagues and a debilitating arm injury send Jeff crashing onto bathroom floors with addictions to drugs and alcohol. Life after baseball leaves him with a drink in one hand and a bag of cocaine in the other, a strong sense of self hatred, suicidal thoughts and no resume for the job market. Finally, during his search for self identity, he learns that salvation has always been much closer to him than the sixty feet, six inches it had taken for his blazing fastball to explode into the heart of a catcher's mitt.