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To Honor The Good Times
Kings of the County League is a stirring and fun story sharing your experiences as one of the members of The Kings of the County League. What inspired you to write this sports memoir?
I gave a large part of my life—18 summers—to the league immortalized in this book. When my playing days ended, I felt the proper way to honor the good times, the guys, and my long-time manager—a man who gave his life to the game—was to write this book. The process a labor of love and I couldn’t be more proud of the product.
Was there any research that you had to do to ensure you got the facts of the story correct?
It is a work of nonfiction and based primarily on the accounts of the characters. Where archival information was available, I relied on it for information, quotes, and the foundation of parts of the narrative. While I relied upon a number of sources, most of the research came from revisiting in memory those not-so-long-ago events.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Set against the backdrop of a small German town in Illinois just minutes from the big city, the story charts the history and fortunes of one manager, one baseball club, and one summer in mid-western county league baseball. It is a funny and poignant story that reminds us of the real meaning of summer, friends, and America’s favorite pastime. The book also contains over 100 pages of pictures and stats encompassing the 60-year history of the club.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
I want readers to be entertained and at the same time appreciate the down-to-earth characters and unadulterated brand of baseball depicted in the story.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook
Kings of the County League presents baseball unadorned, a game sweet enough to lure ex-big leaguers, grown men married with kids still living for the occasional square-up, college upstarts dreaming of the pros, and the blossoming high school hopefuls looking to hang with the “big boys” every summer to the scorched, dusty sandlots in the middle of America’s heartland.
Set against the backdrop of a small German town in southern Illinois just minutes from the big city, the story charts the history and fortunes of one manager, one baseball club, and one summer in town vs. town, you versus me mid-western county league baseball. The funny and poignant story reminds us of the real meaning of summer, friends, and what was America’s favorite pastime.
Kings of the County League: One Summer, One Team, One Dynasty
In a story that will touch the heart of the readers, Kings of the County League: One Summer, One Team, One Dynasty is a feel-good story that makes one glad to be American. This impassioned story is all about the “Great American Past time,” but not in the way that most would expect.
Author Craig Ohlau has done a marvelous job of immersing the reader into the world of semi-pro baseball; which is his world. In sharing his experience as one of the members of The Kings of the County League, Mr. Ohlau has not only opened up an entirely different perspective of one of our beloved games, but in the process will more than likely convert even some of the most loyal fans of MLB to the semi-pro aspect. He does on excellent job of painting a vivid picture of the differences between the two levels of the game and illuminating the supposed “lower” levels of the game, that most people think players go to die or that they can’t quite cut it in the big league. I beg to differ, and you will too after you read this rousing book.
As this is a real-life story, I can say that the story reads like a good fiction novel. The author does a fantastic job of fleshing out the characters in the story, which were his real-life teammates. The story is a first-hand account of one summer that is told from a first-person perspective, but I suspect that Craig Ohlau is simply speaking from his heart when writing this book, as readers will be able to tell that it came from a place of love.
I highly recommend Kings of the County League to readers who want a feel-good story that shows what amounts to the triumph of “the little guy”. This spirited story may in fact change one’s view that the “little guy” is actually the coolest.
Pages: 259 | ASIN: B08KWQXB74
LITERARY TITAN 