Stealing Home

Five Stars, Readers Favorite

An epic ballpark road trip with his Little League son sends a dad onto a path to find his way to fatherhood perfection--and learn how his father's suicide traced a route to repeating his mistakes.

The rarest outcome in sports is baseball's perfect game. One team does everything right, forcing the other to accomplish nothing. In 150 years of baseball, there have only been 23. Perfect is nearly impossible. As a divorced dad, Ron was trying to redeem his fatherhood with a road trip with his Little League son Nicky. Their odyssey of crossing eight states in a rented convertible was supposed to salvage Ron's life as an unsure father. Custody fatherhood demoted him to the second team -- he was certain of that. One sign of salvation came unbidden in an unscheduled tenth ballgame.

The adventures and revelations of the road lead to a deeper reckoning of how Ron's father had failed enough at his fatherhood to take his own life. Thousands of miles and dozens of innings delivered a discovery: a drive toward perfect fatherhood has a destination that cannot be found on any map. Stealing Home is the story of an eleven-day, nine-game trip with a Little Leaguer -- and how plans for perfection delivered things deeper than scores, miles, and smiles. You don't have to drive 3,147 miles to find your way to fatherhood. When Ron did, something magical and rare appeared at the end, inside his heart as well as on a diamond.

"Part baseball, part fatherhood, and all boyhood, Stealing Home plays out the mystery of love and family. Fueled by his determination to become a better dad, Seybold's journey becomes a quest to reconcile the past and his future. The magic lies in the storytelling that travels the road to something perfect." - Donna Johnson, author of Holy Ghost Girl: A Memoir

"A beautifully written, touching memoir about family dynamics revealed in the bonding of a father and son." - Larry Brill, author of award-winning romance Deja Vu All Over Again"

"Five Stars. It's so much more than a memoir. It's a grand road trip story as well as a real-life family saga. At its heart, Stealing Home is the consummate baseball story. An enthralling memoir, most highly recommended." Jack Magnus, Reader's Favorite

"Readers receive unexpected treats that move far beyond the physical journey and into the finer art of sharing not just love, but life. Stealing Home deserves a spot in any good parenting collection. Its road trip and baseball observations and metaphors permeate a jaunty yet introspective story about an evolving relationship between father and son.

The meat of any family expos lies in tracing intergenerational patterns. Seybold does a fantastic job of integrating his experiences with his own father and their connections through baseball, which are very different scenarios than what he more mindfully cultivates with his son. Stealing Home will especially appeal to male readers seeking enlightenment and ideas for their own approaches to fatherhood. Its backdrop of baseball lends to a rare accessibility for men who usually don't consider parenting books to be engrossing reading." - Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review