The Road to Omaha

"A fascinating look inside one of the best, and most underplayed, tournaments in sports, the College World Series." ―Tim Kurkjian, ESPN analyst and author of I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies

Every summer, college baseball teams from around the nation come to Omaha, Nebraska, to play pure move-the-man-over, run-manufacturing baseball in a series that's part college bowl game, part county fair. In 2008, the ten-day, eight-team tournament was the scene of one of the greatest series in its illustrious history. And Ryan McGee puts the reader behind closed doors with the underdog champs, the Fresno State Bulldogs, as well as with their seven opponents, from the first batting practice session, to bus rides to the ballpark, to the locker room and the dugout. It's the CWS as few ever see it.

But The Road to Omaha goes far beyond the 2008 season. It's an in-depth look at the managing strategies and playing style of college baseball, as well as a series of profiles that examine the people behind and around the CWS—the players, coaches, and fans who keep that feeling of good-old-days innocence alive through their reverence for the Great American Pastime.

Thanks to Ryan McGee's quick eye for play-by-play action, as well as his deep love for sports, The Road to Omaha is a rare glimpse into the kind of baseball our grandfather's knew—a snapshot of the one of the last remaining vestiges of pure Americana: a hometown, baseball, and the people who shape it and are shaped by it in turn.

"The on-field action was gripping." —Sports Illustrated

"The best baseball book published this year." —Ryan Fagan, The Sporting News