In 1972, the Montreal Expos send their newly drafted minor-league baseball players to Jamestown, New York, to play their first season in Single-A ball. Every one of these guys had been the cream of the crop, the stars in their respective hometowns. Each thought it would be a piece of cake to go from Jamestown to Major League Baseball. 

All of them were wrong. It's a giant leap, not a baby step, as they all discover.

Take, for example, one of the main characters. Jimmy Bailey, pitcher, of North Weymouth, Massachusetts. Perennial all-star. Groomed by his father, who once had the chance to play in MLB. Touted by every sportswriter in the Commonwealth, as well as in New England, as the most likely to succeed. He even had the chance to pitch at Fenway Park in a high school game.

Then there's Bobby Mangino. Son of a single mother from Yonkers, New York. Baseball was his ticket out. Not only was his pitching extraordinary--girls swooned all over him. His mother worked several jobs to pay for his baseball and was devastated when he wasn't drafted by her beloved Yankees. Bobby thinks he's God's gift to baseball. In Jamestown, he discovers otherwise.

And pitcher Cameron "Bud" Prescott of Athens, Georgia. Bud lives, sleeps and breathes baseball. He doesn't seem to have an anxious bone in his body. He's calm whenever he pitches. He works hard and does everything his coaches tell him to. He's modest and has the look of an All-American baseball player. He also helps some of his fellow players get through tough emotional challenges. 

Empty Seats focuses on these three and how they handle the pressure that comes along with being a minor-league ballplayer. They soon discover that making MLB baseball isn't the walk in the park they thought it would be, especially when confronted with physical challenges, some made more complex by their own personal choices.

This novel has implications as a coming-of-age book as well as just a fiction title. Teenagers might find it useful.