Synopsis
Bill Seinsoth had it all: looks, personality, and loads of charisma. He also was good at baseball--very good. One of the top prep players in the country and a College World Series MVP for the USC Trojans, Seinsoth was so good that the Los Angeles Dodgers selected him in the first round of baseball's 1969 major-league draft and were counting on him to be the team's first baseman long into the future. As former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda said, "He was good. He had power, he could do everything." Unfortunately, the likable, hardscrabble slugger lived life under a cloud, and it often rained down calamity. In his short life Seinsoth was driven from Little League and Babe Ruth League by those who believed he was too good, fell from a bleacher, was slashed twice by menacing assailants, suffered a horrendous beaning at the hands of an Oregon State pitcher and, finally, lost his life in an explicable accident while driving home following his first season in the Dodgers organization. This is the story of the darling of college baseball and 1968 NCAA champion USC, a can't-miss major league prospect who only came up short once: while driving along the nation's most dangerous stretch of highway through the lonely, sun-baked California desert. In "Seinsoth -- The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Dodger," revisit the glory years of USC baseball and the life well lived of a can't-miss Los Angeles Dodgers star whose journey toward greatness fell tragically short.
About the Author
Steven K. Wagner is a longtime author and freelance writer. He began his career as a newspaper reporter, working for several small papers before joining the legendary wire service United Press International in Boise, Idaho, as assistant bureau chief. He left there to become an editor with Oregon's largest daily newspaper, The Oregonian, and later worked as the newspaper's night crime reporter. After four years with The Oregonian Mr. Wagner moved to Los Angeles and began working as a freelance journalist. His writing and photography appeared in the Los Angeles Times for 15 years and he has also completed assignments for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service, Seattle Times, Oklahoma City Oklahoman, Baseball America and other newspapers. His first book, titled "Perfect: The Rise and Fall of John Paciorek, Baseball's Greatest One-Game Wonder" (Breakaway Books, NY), was published in March 2015. His second book, titled "Seinsoth: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Dodger" (Sunbury Press, PA), was released in November 2016. A third book, titled "Sweet Sixteen: Stories of the Four-Home Run Batsmen," is in process.
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