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"This could be a great work of fiction. The damndest thing is it's all fact." - Michael Farber, Sports Illustrated It was a time of Prohibition, jazz, and gangland murder, and it was baseball's age of magic, when even Hall of Fame players believed that rubbing the hump of a hunchback guaranteed a hit. Broken and deformed by a childhood fall from a seesaw, Hughie McLoon never grew taller than forty-nine inches but he made himself one of the lucky ones. He was chosen as the batboy and mascot of the Philadelphia Athletics. Although the team finished last in each of the three seasons that the A's rubbed his hump and Hughie tended their bats, he became a local celebrity. He loved the crowds and they loved him back. Graduating from batboy to boxing manager, and running his own speakeasy while serving as a secret agent for the Chief of Police, Hughie was the toast of Philly until one summer

There was a player who suffered a heart attack in the middle of a match, a defender who was murdered for defending his honesty after having committed the sin of scoring an own goal, a striker who preferred to die rather than serve Nazi propaganda, and numerous players who refused to leave the pitch despite having broken bones. In this fascinating, funny romp through almost a century of World Cups, esteemed sportswriter Luciano Wernicke chronicles the unforgettable crashes, the magnetic personalities, and the stunning records set in the global contest for supremacy in the most popular of