Baseball Imposters

For over 40 years, author Rob Sheinkopf has collected stories of grown men who falsely claim to have played Major League Baseball. In BASEBALL IMPOSTERS, Sheinkopf explores what author W.P. Kinsella called "The Eddie Scissons Syndrome," inspired by a character in his novel Shoeless Joe, the story behind the movie Field of Dreams. Though the syndrome is named after a fictional character, it is disturbingly real and widespread.

Drawing upon real-life examples, Sheinkopf recounts these stories, as he says, "changing names to protect the guilty..." with a mix of humor, contempt, and compassion for the families who all too often only uncover the truth when trying to verify facts for obituaries, biographies, or personal histories.

His fascination with this practice of deception involving baseball goes back to 1985, when he completed a master's thesis based on interviews with 53 former Major League players who retired before free agency. His research focused on how athletes prepared for life after baseball during a time when very few professional baseball retirees were millionaires, and most were not financially secure enough to just stop working, forcing them to seriously plan for second careers.

Among those "former major leaguers" whom Sheinkopf interviewed was a high-profile local businessman who later proved to be an imposter-someone whose false representation of his past was both puzzling and unsettling. This discovery of patient zero sparked Sheinkopf's curiosity about why individuals engage in such deception, leading to over four decades of research revealing that baseball imposters are all too common, and most people are unaware of how widespread this phenomenon is.

These stories will surprise, amuse, and in some cases, remind readers of deceptions told to them by their colleagues, teachers, neighbors, or even family members... stories that, upon closer inspection, reveal such deception.

BASEBALL IMPOSTERS offers a compelling, entertaining, and eye-opening look into a peculiar and persistent phenomenon that extends beyond baseball into the human experience.