"The next best thing to attending a baseball game with Harris Cooper is to read his delightful, insightful, and, yes, unique take on the national pastime. Finding America is a major-league book centered joyously on a minor-league team, with players yearning to rise to the big leagues, with heartfelt fans and even heartfelt ushers cheering them on. My scorecard has it: A fresh view of a long-beloved game." --Ira Berkow, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, and author of How Life Imitates Sports and Baseball's Best Ever "After spending a year as an usher for the Durham Bulls, Harris Cooper gathered insights now presented in Finding America. Easy to read because of a format rich in charts, photographs, and sidebars, Cooper says fans of all ages, sizes, sexes, colors, and political persuasions came to the park for a good time. The best part of this diary-like journey is the section on minor-league history, including the history and map of the minors; why Branch Rickey owned thirty-two teams; how a game lasted thirty-two innings; and when a seventeen-year-old girl named Jackie Mitchell struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game. Readers will also be amazed that there are twenty things a pitcher can do to be charged with a balk. They're listed in this gem of a book.
It's a real keepsake." --Dan Schlossberg, author of Home Run King: The Remarkable Record of Hank Aaron "Just when you begin to fear you've lost all touch with Major League Baseball, along comes a book like Harris Cooper's Finding America in a Minor League Ballpark to reassure you there indeed is still joy to be found in your lifelong love affair with our national pastime. Harris makes sure he lives up to the personal credo he adopts: Treat the park as your home and each new arrival as your guest in it. His reward is a pleasure-filled summer." --David Nemec, award-winning baseball historian, author of more than twenty books on baseball, including The Absolutely Most Challenging Baseball Quiz Book, Ever "A great ride through the Durham history of monikers, origin stories, and fun quirky facts and the evolution of the Bulls, the Minors, and the game itself. I thoroughly enjoyed taking a trip down baseball movie memory lane and reading about the everyday fun (and annoyances) of being at the ballpark, with great commentary and insights of the psychologies behind fans' behaviors. And the quotes from the likes of Casey Stengel and Bob Uecker--vintage!" --Tom Dondero, president of Baseball America.