Roger Snell, 51, won top investigative journalism awards throughout his 18-year newspaper career, including the Pulitzer Prize and Silver Gavel.

Snell wrote more than 3,000 articles while working for newspapers in Ohio and Missouri and was state capital bureau chief in both states for three news organizations. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 as a member of the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal staff.

Snell and Michael J. Berens won several awards in 1990 at the Columbus Dispatch, exposing narcotics cops who owned crack houses, a police informant who committed murder and other major irregularities in the city's anti-drug war.

Snell's investigations of ethical abuses on the Ohio Supreme Court won the American Bar Association’s top national journalism award in 1992, the Silver Gavel.

The Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers named Snell the Ohio Reporter of the Year in 1992 and 1993, the only reporter ever to win in consecutive years.

Snell lives in Frankfort, Ky., with his wife Linda and daughters Rachel and Hannah and administers a marketing program called Kentucky Proud that helps farmers transition away from tobacco and find retail markets for alternative crops such as fruits, vegetables and more. His boss is another sports legend, Richie Farmer, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture. Farmer and the University of Kentucky "Unforgettables" nearly beat top-ranked Duke in the 1991-92 NCAA tournament that ESPN Classics calls the greatest college basketball game ever played.

Snell's lifelong baseball passion extends beyond this book. He is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and is now volunteering his fourth season as a software beta tester for Out of the Park Baseball.

This book was inspired by the first newspaper article that Snell ever wrote as an Ohio State freshman, about the neighbor who lived five doors away in Arcanum, Ohio.

Berly "Trader" Horne only made it to the majors for one season -- the 1929 Chicago Cubs. He told his story to the author on his front porch in 1978. Horne became Snell's own personal Moonlight Graham, just like the character in the movie "Field of Dreams."