From the best-known and most widely read woman sports columnist in the United States comes a remarkable memoir of a father and a daughter, the story of a girl who would turn her love for sports into a trailblazing career.

Christine Brennan grew up in Toledo, Ohio, spending her summers playing with the boys on her block, memorizing baseball statistics, accompanying her dad to countless baseball and football games, and falling in love with everything about sports. While other girls were playing with Barbie dolls, Chris was collecting baseball cards and listening to the radio for the play-by-play accounts of her favorite teams.

The eldest of four children, Chris was her father's daughter from the beginning. For a girl growing up in the 1960s and '70s, in the days before Title IX changed the playing fields of America, there were few opportunities to play organized sports. But Jim Brennan encouraged his daughter to believe she could play anything she wanted to, and when she couldn't be on the field, he was by her side in the stands -- she always thought the seat next to her father was the best seat in the house -- usually cheering for the underdog, and making sure Chris knew there was a place for her in the world of sports.

In her warm and inspiring memoir, the first of its kind by a female sports journalist, Brennan takes readers from her neighborhood ball fields to the press boxes and locker rooms of stadiums around the world.