books by keri

There's No Crying in Baseball: Growing Up in America's Pastime

This family memoir tells the story of my father's career in Major League Baseball—and how it shaped our family. 

I lived every warm-blooded American kid’s dream: stadiums instead of swing sets, batting lessons with baseball greats, terrorizing spring training with fellow ‘baseball brats.’ But like many dreams, there’s fantasy, and then there’s reality. 

By the time I entered seventh grade, I’d attended seven different schools and my mother had put a house back on the market mere hours after its closing. And, while seeing the Oakland A’s through three consecutive World Series wins, my father had been fired and ‘unfired’ by the team’s owner four times—once over his refusal to ride in the back of a garbage truck. He’d also been part of a clandestine vote that he believes—had smartphones been invented in the mid-70s—would have changed National League Baseball forever.

I can say this about my childhood: had reality shows been around back then, my father’s on-the-job experiences, combined with our—and this is putting it nicely—wacky home life, would have made for some serious entertainment. But despite being interviewed for numerous books, articles and television clips, my ever-reticent father has kept most of these stories to himself. Until now. 

There’s No Crying in Baseball offers a glimpse into a side of America’s pastime you just won’t find elsewhere. But it’s more than that too. It’s about a family struggling against the backdrop of a sport experiencing the seismic shifts of salary arbitration, free agency and the Messersmith/McNally decision. It’s about very public failures, outrageous antics, debilitating depression, a marriage made in hell, and growing up a ‘vagabond child.’ 

It’s also pretty damn funny.