A Feel Good Baseball Novel

WINNER 2021-2022 Silver Award
Reader Views for Young Adult Fiction
Bronze for General Fiction

Ever wish you could regain the magic you felt as a child when you first played the game of baseball? Do you feel like all the modern analytics and statistics are ruining enjoyment of the game today?

In The Genius Who Saved Baseball, fourteen-year-old genius and baseball player Charlie Collier feels the same way. In a college class, he attempts to prove statistically to his statistics professor that baseball’s obsession with analytics has resulted in a lower caliber of play. The professor gives him a C–. Undeterred, Charlie continues to work on his plan for a major league team to adopt his philosophies. He hits pay-dirt when his dad, a former minor leaguer, gets hired as an executive with the Nashville Knights, a new franchise in Major League Baseball. The team’s charismatic owner, country music legend Big T. McCraw, makes the boldest move since Billy Beane and Moneyball, when he decides to adopt Charlie’s unorthodox theories.

While Charlie’s theories have their naysayers, soon he finds that not only have the Knights’ embraced him and his ideas, but he’s hobnobbing with celebrities, making new friends and celebrating with old ones, and ultimately, making baseball history.

Readers will travel with Charlie through the Knights’ first two seasons as they put the magic back into baseball and revolutionize the industry.

As a bonus chapter, author Bob Ingram offers his Nine Innings Principles, which draw on lessons learned by the characters, as models for readers to live by.

Bob Ingram is a former baseball coach, an award-winning speaker, and former corporate marketing executive. The Genius Who Saved Baseball is his entry into fiction. He previously co-authored two business books, Marketing by Delight and Your Ultimate Sales Force.Bob lives on Fox Island, Washington, with his wife Cara and dog Sonny. They are season ticket holders for the nearby Tacoma Rainiers (AAA affiliate of the Seattle Mariners) and even Sonny is allowed in on Take Your Dog to the Park Day. Bob and Cara’s other passion is kayaking around the island during the summer months.