It’s the ultimate in fantasy baseball: You get to pick the roster, set the lineup, and decide on strategies-with real players, in a real ballpark, playing in real time. That’s what Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when the Sonoma Stompers, an independent minor-league team in California, offered them the chance to run the team’s baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics. Their story is unlike any other baseball tale you’ve ever read.

We tag along as Lindbergh and Miller apply their number-crunching insights to all aspects of assembling and running a team, following one cardinal rule: It has to work. We meet colorful figures like general manager Theo Fightmaster and boundary-breakers like the first openly gay player in American professional baseball. Even Jose Canseco makes a cameo appearance.

Will their knowledge of numbers bring the Stompers a championship? Will the team have a competitive advantage, or is the old folk wisdom really true after all? Will the players attract the attention of big-league scouts or will this be a fast track to oblivion?

It’s a wild ride, as the authors’ infectious enthusiasm and feel for the absurd make the Stompers’ story one that will speak to numbers geeks and traditionalists alike. And in a new afterword, Lindbergh and Miller pick up the story in a new season to show how the team and its players continue to break new ground, on and off the field.