"My father's name was Pasquale Giordano. Or Patsy Giordano. Or Patsy Jordan. Or Patrick Michaele Jordan. Like everything about his life, even his name was elusive."

So begins My Father's Con, a Memoir, by Pat Jordan, the octogenarian former pro baseball prospect-considered for a time to be one of the hardest throwing pitchers in the minor leagues-who later became an award-winning sportswriter. Jordan is the author of a dozen books, including A False Spring, a bittersweet memoir of his baseball career, ranked #37 on Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time.

Now, with the elegant ease of a craftsman who has worked at his trade every day for nearly sixty years, Jordan tries to make sense of his life before and after baseball, starting with the story of his father-a grifter and gambler who would come to be known in his dotage as Il Professore, the professor emeritus of con.

An accounting of an extraordinary life, lived beneath the long shadow of "the exquisite perfection of my father's con."