A colorful portrait of old-time baseball - an enthralling story of how the legendary Baltimore Orioles & their fans were sacrificed on the altar of greed - events eerily echoing the state of the game today. Greedy owners, spoiled players, disillusioned fans - all hallmarks of baseball in the nineties. Only in this case, it's the eighteen-nineties. We may think that business interests dominate the sport today, but baseball's early years were an even harsher & less sentimental age - when the National League nearly turned itself into an out-and-out cartel. Where They Ain't tells the story of that tumultuous age, through the prism of the era's best team, the Baltimore Orioles, & its best hitter, Wee Willie Keeler, whose famous motto - "Keep your eye clear, & hit 'em where they ain't" - was wise counsel for an underdog in a big man's world. Just as John D. Rockefeller did with oil & Andrew Carnegie did with steel, the baseball owners in this era began to consolidate for the sake of monopoly profits. Burt Solomon's fascinating account of the 'syndicate" agreement in 1899 between the greedy owners of the Orioles & the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers shows how the Orioles were soon destroyed, how the city of Baltimore lost control of its economic destiny, & how even Willie Keeler, a joyful innocent, ultimately sold out as well. Where They Ain't lays bare the all-too-human origins of our national game & offers a cautionary tale of the pastime at a century's end.