What do you think?
Rate this book
Close Call
A bad umpiring call ruins a pitcher’s once-in-a-lifetime chance to make Major League Baseball history. Fans boo and sports talkers bray—but murder?
FBI Special Agent Patti Moreland knows nothing about baseball, but she must uncover who’s leaving a trail of bodies outside of stadiums in New York and New Jersey, and why. Each body comes with a note demanding the league commissioner reverse the call that ruined an ultra-rare perfect game, or more people die—including a player close to the investigation who’s vanished and has less than thirty-six hours to live if the commissioner doesn’t buckle.
Unless Moreland catches the madman first.
FBI Special Agent Patti Moreland knows nothing about baseball, but she must uncover who’s leaving a trail of bodies outside of stadiums in New York and New Jersey, and why. Each body comes with a note demanding the league commissioner reverse the call that ruined an ultra-rare perfect game, or more people die—including a player close to the investigation who’s vanished and has less than thirty-six hours to live if the commissioner doesn’t buckle.
Unless Moreland catches the madman first.
Audible Audio
Published October 23, 2025
About the author
Matt Manochio
5 books35 followersI've been writing and editing professionally for my entire adult life. I spent most of that time in the newspaper business. Writing novels is what I enjoy doing the most, and I'm fortunate enough to have Samhain Publishing backing my debut, The Dark Servant. Those of you who enjoy Christmas, mayhem and demons will love it. When I'm not writing, I'm wrangling my toddler from mischief.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 6, 2023
RICK “SHAQ” GOLDSTEIN SAYS: BASEBALL NOVEL… FACT… FICTION… MURDERS… FBI… BLOWN CALL… ENTERTAINING
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Baseball… our nation’s national pastime… not only creates… memories for a lifetime… but also creates dreams from childhood to old age. It also creates arguments between every walk of life. Not just one team against another… but one fan against another fan… family members against family members… strangers against strangers. Hating and booing the ump… is probably truly our national pastime over the game itself. Innumerable songs and chants have endured for over a hundred years! Arguments and storytelling about individual plays… games… seasons… have created an almost infinite link between every age… race… country… and person.
With all the thousands upon thousands of baseball books that have been written… there are only a select few… that have successfully taken real historical baseball facts and events… and been able to add a wild… yet… in today’s crazy world… believable… fiction… to create a wild… fast… paced… and “almost” believable scenario of an almost perfect game… leading to multiple murders… kidnapping… and for good measure… some human sex trafficking… police and cop raids and undercover work… and the FBI then taking the lead in trying to save the lives all because of a missed call in baseball. And almost humorously the female FBI agent who winds up heading the entire investigation… KNOWS LITERALLY NOTHING ABOUT BASEBALL!
The author… Matt Manochio… had a wild idea of a story to write… with the catalyst being a factual event. That event was a Major League baseball game on June 2, 2010 between the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians. In that game Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga had retired the first twenty-six batters… and was one out away from becoming the twenty-first pitcher in the history of baseball to pitch a vaunted perfect game. The next batter for the Indians… Jason Donald grounded *OUT* (as everybody in the stadium… both teams… TV viewers acknowledged) for what would be the twenty-seventh out… thereby making Galarraga a name for the ages with a part of his uniform enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But wait one second… for some strange reason… the first base umpire Jim Joyce inexplicably called him safe! While everyone went crazy… the pitcher Galarraga showed restraint and class. After the game umpire Joyce with tears in his eyes after reviewing the play admitted wholeheartedly he blew the call and that the poor pitcher should have had the perfect game.
Now… other than the non-stop ESPN film loops… and every local TV station replaying the “unforgivable” blunder… every newspaper and magazine… retelling the same story of eternal history being stolen from Galarraga… the story has been mostly forgotten on a day to day basis. But then there was author Matt Manochio… who had an idea… almost like a Twilight Zone adventure. What if some fan (i.e. fanatic) wouldn’t let the story die. The author then ties together a gripping “what if story” linking together the original facts… changes the names to fictional players… adds a fictional team along with the real ones… even ties in suspects to being on the same high school team as Alex Rodriguez (a real-life steroid criminal of his own regard)… has dead bodies popping up… have murder threats to strangers along with an envelope of bloody human finger nails… ripped out of the hands of a victim sent to the commissioner of baseball stating there will be more murders if he doesn’t reverse the call in the fictional game pitched by fictional character Wilson Santiago and umped by fictional Dave Doyle. If y0u’re a true baseball fan… let alone a murder mystery buff… the writing will grab you by the seat of your pants right out of the gate. Before the game even begins… you’re in the midst of raids… stings… undercover… and enough good and bad guys to stock an entire expansion team.
And as the bodies pile up… and the case is going nowhere with the commissioner of baseball and the cops… FBI Special Agent Patti Moreland is assigned to head up the investigation. The almost tongue-in-cheek-humor infused by the author… is that Patti barely knows the difference between a bat and a ball.
The action travels from New York… New Jersey… to Las Vegas… and even to a person of interest in France. Along with the clever fiction-non-fiction baseball “slight-of-hand”… it’s also quite enjoyable the way the author blends in constant in-fighting between the different law enforcement agencies… and varied personalities. There is an old saying I have used for years… “Ideas are a dime a dozen… but men who put them into practice… are priceless!” And that to me… is a perfect description of what author Matt Manochio has done here… take the kind of “what-if?” scenario that a bunch of baseball buddies might have hypothesized over a few beers… and actually followed through with bringing this saga to life. I want to thank the author for approaching me and providing a pre-release copy to read and review. It is thoroughly enjoyable AND ENTERTAINING ON MULTIPLE LEVELS… I recommend it highly!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Baseball… our nation’s national pastime… not only creates… memories for a lifetime… but also creates dreams from childhood to old age. It also creates arguments between every walk of life. Not just one team against another… but one fan against another fan… family members against family members… strangers against strangers. Hating and booing the ump… is probably truly our national pastime over the game itself. Innumerable songs and chants have endured for over a hundred years! Arguments and storytelling about individual plays… games… seasons… have created an almost infinite link between every age… race… country… and person.
With all the thousands upon thousands of baseball books that have been written… there are only a select few… that have successfully taken real historical baseball facts and events… and been able to add a wild… yet… in today’s crazy world… believable… fiction… to create a wild… fast… paced… and “almost” believable scenario of an almost perfect game… leading to multiple murders… kidnapping… and for good measure… some human sex trafficking… police and cop raids and undercover work… and the FBI then taking the lead in trying to save the lives all because of a missed call in baseball. And almost humorously the female FBI agent who winds up heading the entire investigation… KNOWS LITERALLY NOTHING ABOUT BASEBALL!
The author… Matt Manochio… had a wild idea of a story to write… with the catalyst being a factual event. That event was a Major League baseball game on June 2, 2010 between the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians. In that game Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga had retired the first twenty-six batters… and was one out away from becoming the twenty-first pitcher in the history of baseball to pitch a vaunted perfect game. The next batter for the Indians… Jason Donald grounded *OUT* (as everybody in the stadium… both teams… TV viewers acknowledged) for what would be the twenty-seventh out… thereby making Galarraga a name for the ages with a part of his uniform enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But wait one second… for some strange reason… the first base umpire Jim Joyce inexplicably called him safe! While everyone went crazy… the pitcher Galarraga showed restraint and class. After the game umpire Joyce with tears in his eyes after reviewing the play admitted wholeheartedly he blew the call and that the poor pitcher should have had the perfect game.
Now… other than the non-stop ESPN film loops… and every local TV station replaying the “unforgivable” blunder… every newspaper and magazine… retelling the same story of eternal history being stolen from Galarraga… the story has been mostly forgotten on a day to day basis. But then there was author Matt Manochio… who had an idea… almost like a Twilight Zone adventure. What if some fan (i.e. fanatic) wouldn’t let the story die. The author then ties together a gripping “what if story” linking together the original facts… changes the names to fictional players… adds a fictional team along with the real ones… even ties in suspects to being on the same high school team as Alex Rodriguez (a real-life steroid criminal of his own regard)… has dead bodies popping up… have murder threats to strangers along with an envelope of bloody human finger nails… ripped out of the hands of a victim sent to the commissioner of baseball stating there will be more murders if he doesn’t reverse the call in the fictional game pitched by fictional character Wilson Santiago and umped by fictional Dave Doyle. If y0u’re a true baseball fan… let alone a murder mystery buff… the writing will grab you by the seat of your pants right out of the gate. Before the game even begins… you’re in the midst of raids… stings… undercover… and enough good and bad guys to stock an entire expansion team.
And as the bodies pile up… and the case is going nowhere with the commissioner of baseball and the cops… FBI Special Agent Patti Moreland is assigned to head up the investigation. The almost tongue-in-cheek-humor infused by the author… is that Patti barely knows the difference between a bat and a ball.
The action travels from New York… New Jersey… to Las Vegas… and even to a person of interest in France. Along with the clever fiction-non-fiction baseball “slight-of-hand”… it’s also quite enjoyable the way the author blends in constant in-fighting between the different law enforcement agencies… and varied personalities. There is an old saying I have used for years… “Ideas are a dime a dozen… but men who put them into practice… are priceless!” And that to me… is a perfect description of what author Matt Manochio has done here… take the kind of “what-if?” scenario that a bunch of baseball buddies might have hypothesized over a few beers… and actually followed through with bringing this saga to life. I want to thank the author for approaching me and providing a pre-release copy to read and review. It is thoroughly enjoyable AND ENTERTAINING ON MULTIPLE LEVELS… I recommend it highly!
Displaying 1 of 1 review