Starting and Closing Perseverance, Faith, and One More Year [Paperback]

John Smoltz was one of the greatest Major League pitchers of the late twentieth / early twenty-first century—one of only two in baseball history ever to achieve twenty wins and fifty saves in single seasons—and now he shares the candid, no-holds-barred story of his life, his career, and the game he loves inStarting and Closing.

A Cy Young Award-winner, future Baseball Hall of Famer, and currently a broadcaster for his former team, the Atlanta Braves, Smoltz  delivers a powerful memoir with the kind of fascinating insight into game that madeMoneyballa runaway bestseller, plus a heartfelt and truly inspiring faith and religious conviction, similar to what illuminates each page of Tim Tebow’s smash hit memoir,Through My Eyes.

As a seven-year-old kid pitching a ball against a brick wall, John Smoltz decided to be a professional baseball player when he grew up. And from that simple decision until his last season on the mound in the major leagues, it was his faith, work ethic, and love for the game that propelled him through challenges that would have ruined other athletes.

Starting and Closingchronicles the final season in a legendary career that included fourteen years in one of the most dominant rotations in baseball, a Cy Young Award, and a World Series title—all while battling and overcoming career-ending injuries. Recounting a season that tested his perseverance and deepened his faith, Smoltz flashes back to watershed moments in the skeptic-defying journey from being one of the best starting pitchers of all time, to closer, to starter again. What emerges is an inspirational story from a man who believed not just in himself but in God's plan for him—and one more year.