”The Dad Report: Fathers, Sons, and Baseball Families” with Kevin Cook

A tapestry of uplifting stories in which fathers and sons share the game...

Almost two hundred father-son pairs have played in the big leagues.  Kevin Cook takes us inside the clubhouses, homes, and lives of many of the greats.

In visiting these legendary families, Cook discovers that ball-playing families are a lot like our own.  Dan Haren regrets the long road trips that keep him from his kids.  Ike Davis and his father, a former Yankee, debate whether Ike should pitch or play first base.  Buddy Bell leads a generation of big-leaguers determined to open their workplace -- the clubhouse -- to their kids.

Framing The Dad Report is the story of Kevin Cook's own father, Art Cook, a minor-league pitcher, a loveable rogue with a wicked screwball.  In Art's later years, Kevin phoned him almost every night to talk baseball.  They called those nightly conversations “the Dad Report.”  In time, Kevin came to see that these conversations were about much more than the game.  That's what this book is about: the way fathers and sons talk baseball as a way of talking about everything -- courage, fear, fun, family, morality, and mortality.

An award-winning sportswriter and former senior editor at Sports Illustrated, Kevin Cook is the author of Titanic Thompson, Tommy's Honor, and Kitty Genovese.

Listen in to Kevin Cook's special Father’s Day week conversation in the Clubhouse...