"The Big Bounce" by Elmore Leonard

This  is the story of a washed up baseball player, now a petty criminal, neither career amounting to anything, looking for the next score. He meets his match with a seductress who pushes her boundaries and drags him along. It is not a western as I first suspected but tries to be a crime novel that comes off more like a bunch of juvenile delinquents. More talk than action.

Eye On the Ball

Keep your eye on the ball, especially if you are at the ball park, sitting in an area prone to foul balls.

When they say a baseball player is a free agent, I don't think he's free. This sounds like something CNN would have you believe.