They Don't Play Hockey in Heaven: A Dream, a Team, and My Comeback Season »

KEN BAKER is the West Coast executive editor at Us Weekly and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, Premiere, and ESPN magazine. A native of Buffalo, New York, Baker is also the author of the critically acclaimed Man Made: A Memoir of My Body. He has all his teeth.

Ken Baker wanted nothing more than to play ice hockey in the pros, until a brain tumor cut his dreams short while in college. After surgery and several years of rehab, Baker, who in high school was a top prospect for the U.S. Olympic team, put his successful journalism career on hold to attempt the seemingly impossible: a comeback.
He moved away from his family to become the third-string goalie for the Bakersfield Condors, a AA-level minor-league team in the dusty oil town of Bakersfield, California. At age thirty-one, Baker became the oldest rookie in all of pro hockey, facing 100-m.p.h. slap shots and long bus rides, hostile fans and cheap motel rooms, body bruises and battle-worn teammates.
From his visit to an NHL training camp to his first nerve-rattled minutes as a pro, Baker joins the rookies who still dream of making it to the Show, the veterans long past their prime, and the obsessive fans who keep them going. There's the coach who tests Baker at every turn; the troubled captain who gets arrested for battery on his wife; the former NHL goon who stages fights out of boredom; and the team's other goalies, who eye the newcomer warily, knowing there's only room for one of them in the net. Baker's pro-hockey adventure ends up teaching him nearly everything he will ever need to know about life.

Library Journal

As a teenage Olympic prospect, Baker wanted to play in the National Hockey League (NHL). However, by his senior year at Colgate University, the opportunity to play pro hockey had not yet materialized. Disillusioned, he moved on to become a journalist. Baker's world came to a grinding halt when a pituitary tumor was discovered in his brain. After a life-saving operation, he decided to live life to the fullest, putting his journalist career on hold to attempt a hockey comeback. At 31, Baker joined the Bakersfield (CA) Condors (a minor pro club) as a third-string goalie, becoming the oldest rookie in the league. Here he chronicles his trials and tribulations on the team and those of the many aging veterans who still have aspirations of playing in the NHL. Currently, Baker (Man Made: A Memoir of My Body) is the West Coast Bureau Chief for U.S. Weekly. A heartwarming tale of courage and determination; buy where demand warrants.-Larry R. Little, Penticton P.L., B.C. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.