Safe by a Mile

Tom Altherr is a professor of history at the Metropolitan State College of Denver. He is a coauthor of Sports in North America: A Documentary History.

• List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1 Hookey from High School; 2 The Big Leagues Were a Long Way Off; 3 Up with Detroit and Philadelphia; 4 Go West, Young Man; 5 Points South; 6 The Road Back to Triple-A; 7 Mile High, Here We Come; 8 A Car Missing a Wheel; 9 Scouting, the Toughest Job in Baseball; 10 Putting All the King's Men Together; 11 If This Is Tuesday, It Must Be Albuquerque; 12 Billy Ball; 13 Retirement? What Retirement?; 14 My Own Hall of Fame; 15 I Dream of Baseball; Appendix: Career Statistics; Index

""Metro's career saved him from the coal mines of western Pennsylvania and afforded him the chance to play, then manage, in dozens of venues throughout the country. . . . With a cast that includes such varied personalities as Billy Martin, Richard Nixon, Lou Piniella and Dorothy Lamour, Safe by a Mile is a wide-ranging tale by one of baseball's happiest wanderers.""—David Plaut, USA Today Baseball Weekly|""Safe By a Mile by Charlie Metro with Tom Altherr tells the story of a baseball lifer. . . . A highly respected judge of baseball talent, Metro shares his insights about many players and managers in this engaging book.""—Sacramento Bee|""[Metro] will never make the Hall of Fame, and yet his insights into the game of baseball are valuable. This thick book is especially strong on minor league baseball during the last half-century.""—Library Journal|""The man can flat out tell a tale.""—Denver Post|""One hell of a read.""—Rob Neyer, ESPN.com