The book is called Minor League Mom, and if at first glance it might seem like some cutesy little fictional enterprise, something for the Lifetime channel, don’t be fooled.

This is a family’s journey through minor league baseball, interestingly told by Pam Carey, who has two sons who spent time in the Red Sox organization in the ‘90’s, one of whom played for the PawSox, one step away from the big-time.

At one level, it’s the story of two kids who grew up in Cumberland, got hooked on the baseball dream early, and then got signed by the Red Sox in the same year, Todd Carey in the ninth round, Tim Carey as a free agent.

Two brothers from Rhode Island signed in the same year by the Red Sox?

From the beginning, the Careys had defied a lot of odds.

But, of course, the odds immediately got greater, as both kids entered the world of professional baseball, a world that has little to do with sandlot fantasies, a Darwinian world where only the select few ever to make it the stadiums of the major leagues and all the rest eventually see their dreams die along the way.

Tim Carey had just finished his career at Dartmouth in the spring of ’92. He was a catcher and was signed by the Red Sox. Todd Carey was signed that same spring, taken in the ninth round after his junior year at Brown, considered the better prospect, an infielder with a sweet stroke.

They were different, these two players, Tim who worked out relentlessly, and Todd who seemed more gifted, the game coming more naturally to him. And they had been raised to be achievers. Both always had been excellent students. Both played musical instruments. Both played two sports in high school, in addition to numerous other activities. Both had big dreams, always had had big dreams.

But now they were entering a world where none of those things mattered, not really.

Now they were entering a world where the only thing that mattered was how you did on a baseball diamond.

So it began.

The book also is about a family’s baseball journey, too.

Charley Carey, who once had played college baseball at Colby, taught his two boys how to play, had coached them in youth leagues, mentored them every step of the way. Almost by default, this became Pam Carey’s life, too. There were no other children, and the family’s life revolved around games, and road trips to games, to talking about games, to ultimately obsessing about them, too. Baseball as centerpiece.

Minor League Mom: A Mother’s Journey Through the Red Sox Farm Teams  is excellent in dealing with family issues when it comes to sports? How much involvement is too much? How much should kids’ careers define a family? Is it possible to care more than your kids do, and what are the ramifications of that?

All of these themes are played out, a virtual primer on issues that run throughout sports in America today.

It was soon apparent that Tim Carey was not considered a ``prospect’’ by the Red Sox, one of the unofficial tags that gets attached to players like a lead weight. In April 1994, in a 48-hour period, he went from Double A to Single A, to released, told by the Sox minor league operations director Ed Kenney that ``we don’t feel you have major league potential.’’

``Then I guess stats and hard work don’t mean a thing,’’ he shot back at Kenney.

``Maybe another club will pick you up and prove us wrong,’’ Kenney said.

One dream was over.

``It was definitely a love-hate relationship I now had with America’s pastime,’’ Pam Carey writes. She says she had come to hate the game, ``the injustice to the minor leaguers, the mismanagement, the lack of communication, even lies; the cut-throat competition; the treatment of individuals like pieces of meat; the emotional upheaval of kids in their teens and early twenties.’’

She already had learned one painful lesson: the road to Fenway Park was littered with dead dreams.

Todd Carey, though, was moving through the Red Sox minor league system. Not always easily. Not always without a little anguish and a little doubt. But moving upward nontheless, a journey through Elmira, N.Y., then two years in Fort Lauderdale and Lynchburg, Va. Then it was on to Double A Trenton in 1995, the classification that separates suspects from prospects, a team that included Nomar Garciaparra and Trot Nixon, Lou Merloni and Carl Pavano.

In his second season there he turned into a definite prospect, now a third baseman who hit 20 home runs, and the next year he was in McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, just 40 miles away from Fenway Park, the dream so close he must have felt as though he could reach out and touch it.

That’s where his career with the Red Sox would essentially end, in the same ballpark he used to go to as a kid, the same ballpark that was close to the Cumberland home of his childhood. There’s no crying in baseball? Apparently there’s no sentiment either.

In the spring of ’98 he was in spring training with the Red Sox, was once again assigned to the PawSox, but after 28 games was traded to the Mets. He was out of the game a year later, released by the Dodgers in spring training.

The second dream was over.

What remains, though, is this book, Minor League Mom, part family history, part a look at the Red Sox’s organization in the ‘90s, part of an examination of baseball culture. A book that’s both an inside look at life in the minor leagues, and a memorial to a family dream, too.