What do you think?
Nine Bucks a Pound
For every A-Rod or Manny Ramirez seeking to boost his game to elite levels via illegal means, there have been scores of unheralded players toiling in the minor leagues, desperate to impress the brass enough to simply survive and advance. Young men who have dreamed of playing in the big leagues since they were old enough to swing a bat. When their natural ability alone isn't enough, the black and white blurs to gray, their fear of getting caught using banned substances outweighed by a more consuming fear of failure.
Three seasons into his professional career, Del Tanner can read the writing on the wall. A contact hitter at a power position, he recognizes his days in the Twins organization are numbered if he can't match the production of the other first basemen in the system. When his aspiring agent suggests he try steroids, Del makes a choice that will shadow him for the rest of his career.
In his second novel, James Bailey (The Greatest Show on Dirt, 2012) humanizes the players fans are so often quick to demonize. Nine Bucks a Pound ponders life on baseball's fringe and the dreams that tempt a young man to heed the devil on his shoulder. ESPN.com's Jayson Stark says, "Bailey hasn't just given us a great read. He's given us an important window into a topic we can't seem to stop talking about." Adds Russell Rowland, author of High and Inside, "Bailey expertly explores how the desire to succeed at any price can lead to unexpected consequences, mostly involving a man's relationships with others, not to mention with his own conscience. This is a powerful story about the perils of success at any price."
Three seasons into his professional career, Del Tanner can read the writing on the wall. A contact hitter at a power position, he recognizes his days in the Twins organization are numbered if he can't match the production of the other first basemen in the system. When his aspiring agent suggests he try steroids, Del makes a choice that will shadow him for the rest of his career.
In his second novel, James Bailey (The Greatest Show on Dirt, 2012) humanizes the players fans are so often quick to demonize. Nine Bucks a Pound ponders life on baseball's fringe and the dreams that tempt a young man to heed the devil on his shoulder. ESPN.com's Jayson Stark says, "Bailey hasn't just given us a great read. He's given us an important window into a topic we can't seem to stop talking about." Adds Russell Rowland, author of High and Inside, "Bailey expertly explores how the desire to succeed at any price can lead to unexpected consequences, mostly involving a man's relationships with others, not to mention with his own conscience. This is a powerful story about the perils of success at any price."
338 pages, Paperback
First published February 20, 2014
About the author
James Bailey
9 books36 followersHow much do you want to know? Here’s the About the Author that ran in my first novel, The Greatest Show on Dirt:
That doesn’t really tell the whole story, though, does it? If you took the trouble to come to this page, maybe you want to know more. (Maybe you don’t, in which case, feel free to keep on moving.) Here goes …
I grew up in Seattle, spent nearly 10 years in North Carolina, and have lived in Rochester, N.Y., since 2001. Graduated from North Carolina State University in 1993. While in school I worked for the Bulls for three years and started at Baseball America as an intern. That blossomed into a full-time position when I graduated, and I worked for BA for six years total in two separate stints (three if you count the summer I spent filing photos and cutting clippings out of newspapers, back before the age of the internet).
In between BA tours of duty, I returned to Seattle for three years, where I temped (full-time for 2 1/2 years solid) at Microsoft and coached 13-year-olds in Little League for three seasons. Our second team finished second in the state, one win away from winning the tournament and qualifying for regionals in Montana. It was during these years that I began to write fiction, pumping out the first draft of a truly horrible novel, which I am embarrassed to read now.
I began working on The Greatest Show on Dirt in 2006. It morphed quite a bit through several major revisions since then, finally setting in its current state four years later. (My son was born in 2009, which did interrupt progress for a bit.)
My second novel, Nine Bucks a Pound, was released in February 2014. This is also a baseball novel, about an overlooked minor leaguer who breaks through after succumbing to the lure of steroids and must later deal with the consequences when his secret is exposed.
I released my third novel, Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed, in May 2015. It has nothing whatsoever to do with baseball.
James Bailey worked for the Durham Bulls for three seasons, from 1990-92. He later spent six years covering minor league baseball for Baseball America magazine. He reviews books for Baseball America, and is an annual contributor to Lindy’s Fantasy Baseball magazine. He lives in Rochester, N.Y., with his wife Jill and son Grant.
That doesn’t really tell the whole story, though, does it? If you took the trouble to come to this page, maybe you want to know more. (Maybe you don’t, in which case, feel free to keep on moving.) Here goes …
I grew up in Seattle, spent nearly 10 years in North Carolina, and have lived in Rochester, N.Y., since 2001. Graduated from North Carolina State University in 1993. While in school I worked for the Bulls for three years and started at Baseball America as an intern. That blossomed into a full-time position when I graduated, and I worked for BA for six years total in two separate stints (three if you count the summer I spent filing photos and cutting clippings out of newspapers, back before the age of the internet).
In between BA tours of duty, I returned to Seattle for three years, where I temped (full-time for 2 1/2 years solid) at Microsoft and coached 13-year-olds in Little League for three seasons. Our second team finished second in the state, one win away from winning the tournament and qualifying for regionals in Montana. It was during these years that I began to write fiction, pumping out the first draft of a truly horrible novel, which I am embarrassed to read now.
I began working on The Greatest Show on Dirt in 2006. It morphed quite a bit through several major revisions since then, finally setting in its current state four years later. (My son was born in 2009, which did interrupt progress for a bit.)
My second novel, Nine Bucks a Pound, was released in February 2014. This is also a baseball novel, about an overlooked minor leaguer who breaks through after succumbing to the lure of steroids and must later deal with the consequences when his secret is exposed.
I released my third novel, Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed, in May 2015. It has nothing whatsoever to do with baseball.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
Read
February 26, 2014As I wrote Nine Bucks a Pound, I won't give it a star rating, but to help readers decide whether this is a book that might interest them I will copy some passages from a review written by Bob D'Angelo that ran on the Tampa Tribune site.
The review is quite thorough and goes into many of the main characters and the plot before summarizing with this:
James Bailey has a writing style that is as smooth as the left-handed swing of Del Tanner, the main character in his second novel. Once again, the Rochester, N.Y., author has written an engaging story with characters readers can relate to — even if the underlying theme is the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
“Nine Bucks a Pound” explores steroid use and the decisions struggling minor-league players sometimes must face. Is it better to toil in mediocrity and never realize your dream of making the majors, or is it better to go outside the rules for that extra edge that could land you on a big-league roster?
The review is quite thorough and goes into many of the main characters and the plot before summarizing with this:
Bailey’s second novel mixes baseball, romantic tension and testosterone into a satisfying cocktail of prose. It bubbles and percolates with action and tension. Even the cover is eye-catching, as it depicts a bobblehead of a baseball player wielding a syringe like he would grip a bat.
April 16, 2014
Del Tanner has a dream. But, really, it's more than a dream. It's a lifetime objective. It's who he is. He wants to be a Major League baseball player. More than that - he NEEDS to be one.
In this novel James Bailey does a wonderful job laying out the pressures that a young baseball player faces. The reader is given an inside look into the mind-set of a young baseball player just trying to keep up. For me personally, it altered my superficial perception of always blaming the players when steroid accusations occur, which is precisely what I'm looking for in a novel. I want to challenge my perceptions, and this book does just that.
Sure there is plenty of baseball, and Bailey does a wonderful job describing the game in vivid detail. I felt like I was there - a part of the game. But, the book is not just for baseball fans. It's for anyone that has a goal in life and understands the commitment that achieving that goal takes. Sometimes life's decisions aren't easy. Bailey takes us to a place where, even if we don't agree with those decisions, we can empathize with the person going through them.
What would you do in Del Tanner's shoes?
In this novel James Bailey does a wonderful job laying out the pressures that a young baseball player faces. The reader is given an inside look into the mind-set of a young baseball player just trying to keep up. For me personally, it altered my superficial perception of always blaming the players when steroid accusations occur, which is precisely what I'm looking for in a novel. I want to challenge my perceptions, and this book does just that.
Sure there is plenty of baseball, and Bailey does a wonderful job describing the game in vivid detail. I felt like I was there - a part of the game. But, the book is not just for baseball fans. It's for anyone that has a goal in life and understands the commitment that achieving that goal takes. Sometimes life's decisions aren't easy. Bailey takes us to a place where, even if we don't agree with those decisions, we can empathize with the person going through them.
What would you do in Del Tanner's shoes?
April 17, 2014
Title/Author:
“Nine Bucks a Pound” by James Bailey
Tags:
Fiction, sports, baseball, Twins, PEDs
Published:
February 20, 2014
Length:
340 pages
Rating:
5 of 5 stars (outstanding)
Review:
In his follow-up novel to 2012’s “The Greatest Show on Dirt”, James Bailey explores the world of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) beyond the headlines. Del Tanner is a minor league baseball player struggling to move up in the Minnesota Twins organization. He is told that he needs to get stronger and when the weight room alone doesn’t seem to be helping; he and a teammate decide to experiment with PEDs. This decision ended up being much more than something that would help his hitting – it would touch many aspects of both his professional and personal life.
What I really liked about this book is that it puts a human face on a topic that comes across as black and white. Especially to those who are not baseball fans, those players who took these substances are bad and those who didn’t were good. Del’s trials and tribulations, which were both good and bad, show that it is a very gray area. The reader follows Del from the minor leagues to his award-winning rookie season with the Twins, his relationship with his long-time girlfriend Dana and his parents. These are what resonated with me while reading this book – Del’s decision had more effects than just an increase in his home run totals.
The baseball scenes in the book are well written as well. Whether is on the diamond, in the clubhouse or just in the mind of Del as he is trying to figure out the pitcher while in the on-deck circle, fans of the game will love both the action on the field and the interactions of the players with both each other and the press.
With excellent character development, a story that never stalls but keeps the reader moving forward and many emotional moments that range from elation to downright sadness, Bailey has written an outstanding novel that should be read by fans of not only the game of baseball, but also of human nature stories as that is the strength of this book – it puts a human face on an ugly issue in America’s Pastime.
I wish to thank Mr. Bailey for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Did I skim?
No
Were the characters realistic?
Yes. Both Del and Dana were portrayed as young people who were mostly happy with life but were struggling with inner demons. Del’s teammates were also realistically portrayed as a diverse but cohesive unit, whether he was in the minor or major leagues. The closest portrayal to being a bit of a stretch was the relationship between Del’s parents Gwen and Milo, but that is more than made up with the portrayal of Del’s relationship with each of them.
Pace of the story:
Excellent
Do I recommend?
Yes. Baseball fans will especially like this story, but also for those who like books on current events that manage to put a more human element into the story will enjoy this story of a young man’s inner ethical struggle.
Book Format Read:
Ebook (Kindle)
“Nine Bucks a Pound” by James Bailey
Tags:
Fiction, sports, baseball, Twins, PEDs
Published:
February 20, 2014
Length:
340 pages
Rating:
5 of 5 stars (outstanding)
Review:
In his follow-up novel to 2012’s “The Greatest Show on Dirt”, James Bailey explores the world of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) beyond the headlines. Del Tanner is a minor league baseball player struggling to move up in the Minnesota Twins organization. He is told that he needs to get stronger and when the weight room alone doesn’t seem to be helping; he and a teammate decide to experiment with PEDs. This decision ended up being much more than something that would help his hitting – it would touch many aspects of both his professional and personal life.
What I really liked about this book is that it puts a human face on a topic that comes across as black and white. Especially to those who are not baseball fans, those players who took these substances are bad and those who didn’t were good. Del’s trials and tribulations, which were both good and bad, show that it is a very gray area. The reader follows Del from the minor leagues to his award-winning rookie season with the Twins, his relationship with his long-time girlfriend Dana and his parents. These are what resonated with me while reading this book – Del’s decision had more effects than just an increase in his home run totals.
The baseball scenes in the book are well written as well. Whether is on the diamond, in the clubhouse or just in the mind of Del as he is trying to figure out the pitcher while in the on-deck circle, fans of the game will love both the action on the field and the interactions of the players with both each other and the press.
With excellent character development, a story that never stalls but keeps the reader moving forward and many emotional moments that range from elation to downright sadness, Bailey has written an outstanding novel that should be read by fans of not only the game of baseball, but also of human nature stories as that is the strength of this book – it puts a human face on an ugly issue in America’s Pastime.
I wish to thank Mr. Bailey for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Did I skim?
No
Were the characters realistic?
Yes. Both Del and Dana were portrayed as young people who were mostly happy with life but were struggling with inner demons. Del’s teammates were also realistically portrayed as a diverse but cohesive unit, whether he was in the minor or major leagues. The closest portrayal to being a bit of a stretch was the relationship between Del’s parents Gwen and Milo, but that is more than made up with the portrayal of Del’s relationship with each of them.
Pace of the story:
Excellent
Do I recommend?
Yes. Baseball fans will especially like this story, but also for those who like books on current events that manage to put a more human element into the story will enjoy this story of a young man’s inner ethical struggle.
Book Format Read:
Ebook (Kindle)
March 13, 2014
The Steroids Era in Major League Baseball has (mostly) passed. It was fun while it lasted, if you didn’t care about minor things such as the record books. Sluggers’ statistics swelled as much as their muscles—and in some cases their heads (see one Barry Bonds). Mark McGwire, Bonds, and Sammy Sosa all slugged more than 60 homers (Sosa did it three times), while Bonds and McGwire made it to 70+.
But, you know, the little guys who weren’t sluggers wanted some of the action, too (see Bret Boone, Ivan Rodriguez, Brady Anderson). Their livelihood was at stake—if everyone else was juicing, they needed to keep up with the Joneses. They needed to hold on to their jobs. The temptation was there.
Just like Major Leaguers, minor league players also were fighting for their jobs, or looking for an advantage to make the leap to the big leagues. Enter Del Tanner, the lead character in James Bailey’s novel NINE BUCKS A POUND. Tanner is a minor league baseball player without a backup plan. All of his eggs are in one major league basket: Big Leagues or Bust. Making the bigs is still his dream, but with just warning-track power, the dream seems to be slipping away from him—quickly. Plus, he’s not getting any younger, though his teammates seem to be. What could a little boost of juice hurt?
Bailey wonderfully brings us into Tanner’s world: his teammates, his family, his rookie agent, and his girlfriend Dana, who are all invested one way or another in Tanner’s success. Currently there is a lot of hate directed at the former steroid users, including the baseball writers, who aren’t voting the obvious juicers into the Hall of Fame (though no one seemed to complain when everyone was hitting dingers like it was a Central Park softball beer league). What Bailey does in this novel is humanize Tanner. He shows us the struggle Tanner goes through, the decisions he has to make, the pressure that is put on him by some people in his inner circle (but mostly from himself). Of course—and I’m not giving anything away here that you couldn’t have guessed from the cover art—he eventually pulls the trigger, or in this case, pushes the plunger. Then he has to live with the consequences, good and bad.
Bailey knows his baseball, and (as with his previous novel THE GREATEST GAME ON DIRT) he really brings the reader into the daily grind of a minor leaguer’s life. It’s so close to the majors, but oh SO far. Tanner’s time spent traveling, and his secret guilt over trying steroids eventually takes it toll on his relationship with Dana. Cut off and on his own, his struggles continue. He’s scared and confused. Everything seems to be spinning out of control. (I’m trying not to give anything away here!) Will one mistake ruin everything he’s ever worked for? Can Del Tanner regain control of his life and realize his dream before it’s too late?
But, you know, the little guys who weren’t sluggers wanted some of the action, too (see Bret Boone, Ivan Rodriguez, Brady Anderson). Their livelihood was at stake—if everyone else was juicing, they needed to keep up with the Joneses. They needed to hold on to their jobs. The temptation was there.
Just like Major Leaguers, minor league players also were fighting for their jobs, or looking for an advantage to make the leap to the big leagues. Enter Del Tanner, the lead character in James Bailey’s novel NINE BUCKS A POUND. Tanner is a minor league baseball player without a backup plan. All of his eggs are in one major league basket: Big Leagues or Bust. Making the bigs is still his dream, but with just warning-track power, the dream seems to be slipping away from him—quickly. Plus, he’s not getting any younger, though his teammates seem to be. What could a little boost of juice hurt?
Bailey wonderfully brings us into Tanner’s world: his teammates, his family, his rookie agent, and his girlfriend Dana, who are all invested one way or another in Tanner’s success. Currently there is a lot of hate directed at the former steroid users, including the baseball writers, who aren’t voting the obvious juicers into the Hall of Fame (though no one seemed to complain when everyone was hitting dingers like it was a Central Park softball beer league). What Bailey does in this novel is humanize Tanner. He shows us the struggle Tanner goes through, the decisions he has to make, the pressure that is put on him by some people in his inner circle (but mostly from himself). Of course—and I’m not giving anything away here that you couldn’t have guessed from the cover art—he eventually pulls the trigger, or in this case, pushes the plunger. Then he has to live with the consequences, good and bad.
Bailey knows his baseball, and (as with his previous novel THE GREATEST GAME ON DIRT) he really brings the reader into the daily grind of a minor leaguer’s life. It’s so close to the majors, but oh SO far. Tanner’s time spent traveling, and his secret guilt over trying steroids eventually takes it toll on his relationship with Dana. Cut off and on his own, his struggles continue. He’s scared and confused. Everything seems to be spinning out of control. (I’m trying not to give anything away here!) Will one mistake ruin everything he’s ever worked for? Can Del Tanner regain control of his life and realize his dream before it’s too late?
February 26, 2014
Del Tanner is a minor league baseball player who isn't making the grade. He's got a sweet swing, but he doesn't have the strength to be an impact player, and he's on the verge of washing out of baseball before he even makes the majors. So he's faced with a tough decision - should he take some performance enhancing drugs to add the strength he needs and make the majors at the cost of his innocence? His roommate thinks so. His agent thinks so. Is a tainted career better than no career?
Author James Bailey does a great job telling the story from Del's perspective. The baseball scenes are very realistic. The depiction of minor league life is outstanding. Bailey also mixes in romantic interests and family drama, and those are well written too. Overall I enjoyed the book. At times I felt like it could be a 5 star book but it wasn't quite perfect.
If you want to put yourself in the shoes of a struggling minor league player faced with a tough decision, this is a great book.
Author James Bailey does a great job telling the story from Del's perspective. The baseball scenes are very realistic. The depiction of minor league life is outstanding. Bailey also mixes in romantic interests and family drama, and those are well written too. Overall I enjoyed the book. At times I felt like it could be a 5 star book but it wasn't quite perfect.
If you want to put yourself in the shoes of a struggling minor league player faced with a tough decision, this is a great book.
February 26, 2014
James Bailey's second book does not disappoint. While still centered around baseball, like Greatest Show on Dirt, this story is completely different and exposes another side to the whole PED shebazzle. A fast, fun read with enough below the surface to get your mind chewing. The characters are well fleshed out and Bailey handles the novels multi-year structure well. You never feel, although you may have skipped many months between sections, that there is a loss of continuity to the sotry or the characters. I had high expectations for this one based on Bailey's first work and this exceeded my expectations. Overall a great read with compelling characters, a nice pace, an original structure and implementation and you have a little bit to noodle on as a takeaway.... 4.5 stars, rounded up
March 1, 2014
Fantastic book! Stayed up all night reading because I couldn't put it down. Very believable characters. Plot captured the moral dilemma associated with PED use in an engaging manner. I liked everything about this book.
March 6, 2014
Another Homerun for Mr.James Bailey!!!
June 21, 2016
Riveting!
If you love baseball you will not be disappointed in this book, great look at the fictional world of baseball!
If you love baseball you will not be disappointed in this book, great look at the fictional world of baseball!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews