Strike IX — Paul Lonardo

This book tells the story of the 1999 Providence College Friars baseball team and their beloved sport that was set to be eliminated after that season in order for the school to comply with federal regulation, Title IX, which was designed to prohibit sex discrimination against women. This book was the result of speaking with a majority of the players on that team, and it marks the 10-year anniversary of the ordeal that the Providence College athletes went through on the field and off the field when they learned that their sport had been cut. They collectively put aside all their emotions and anger and went out and had the best season in the 80-year history of the school's baseball program, winning the Big East Championship and getting into the NCAA Division I Tournament with a lot more to prove. It's a sports story, but it is also an inspirational story about team work and achieving something when everyone else writes you off.

Eighty years of baseball at Providence College was gone just like that. I knew it would be an interesting book to local sports fans, anyone with a love of the sport, really. But I also realized that this book would become part of local history, so I wanted to be as accurate as possible. That's the reason I covered the entire season, all the game summaries included. I would describe Strike IX as a narrative scrapbook, something that the players and avid fans could keep as a memento or souvenir of the 1999 championship season the Friars had that final year of baseball at Providence College.