The Chicken Runs at Midnight

Author: Tom Friend
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Zondervan, 2018
Pages: 288
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: As a Major League Baseball coach, Rich Donnelly was dedicated, hardworking, and successful. But as a husband and father, he was distant, absent, and a failure. He'd let baseball take over his life, and as a result his family suffered. That is, until one day his daughter called with harrowing news.

"Dad, I have a brain tumor, and I'm sorry." These words from his seventeen year old daughter, Amy, turned his world upside-down. Now, more than ever, he was determined to put his family first.

The time they spent together in the months before her death will be treasured and remembered forever, but especially the inside joke that because a catchphrase for the Donnelly family as well as the Pittsburgh Pirates team that played in the National League Championship Series that year: "The chicken runs at midnight."

This book shares the heartwarming story behind the odd catchphrase - and how it still lives on a as a symbol for never giving up - and proves that God can work in the life of any person, even through their mistakes and failures.

Weaving baseball history with personal memoir, this book is one that will make you thrill to victory, believe in hope, stand up to cheer for what is good in peoples' lives. IT's a powerful story of redemption and faith that reminds us that God can work in our lives even when we think it's too late for change - and sometimes he sends us signs from heaven if we only have eyes to see.

Review: A biography that reads like a memoir. I might mostly be a baseball fan because my husband is, but this book sounded good to me. I picked it up just to "try it," and really enjoyed it. It's about far more than baseball, although there is a lot of baseball talk, and the author's writing style is good.

Many of the names of players/coaching staff in MLB in the 1970s and 80s were meaningless to me, but others I've heard my husband mention at various times. 

What I didn't know when I first picked this up was that my husband and Rich Donnelly have mutual friends. Rich grew up in Steubenville, Ohio, and my husband has taught in public school system there for almost 25 years. 

Incidentally, I stayed up past my bedtime to finish this, and it was just a few minutes before midnight.