An excerpt from the novel coming soon, Trading It Away:

Today, at 3:00 PM CST, the baseball world will have let another trade deadline slip by, like a steamship chugging along the choppy Mississippi waves. Fans huddled in masses hoping to step foot on the ramps leading up to their baseball dreams are left to wonder when their ship will come 'round again, only to realize it will be another year of vicious "What If" games until it grazes the shoreline once more. Others lucky enough to be aboard take solace in knowing they made it; although, as they look back at the drifting city landscape, a little nag sitting in the corner of their brains ridicules and rivets: "The cost is tall, but the dream is small. The cost is tall, but the dream is small." Indeed, at what cost does this trip come, with no real knowledge of where it heads? "Maybe they are the lucky ones," he says, as he watches their shapes turn into ants on a child's playtoy. "They know not the sacrifice. We know not the destination." Somewhere, Steve Phillips smiles.

Names to keep watching today: Chad Qualls, Jon Rauch, and Russ Springer.