iBookstore Top 50 Baseball Ebooks

The top 50 most popular and best selling baseball ebooks at the Apple iBookstore. Chart of the baseball iBook best sellers updated several times daily.

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Sports Ebook Best Sellers

Top Baseball Ebook Best Sellers

1

The Boys of Summer - Roger Kahn Cover Art

The Boys of Summer

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

"A moving elegy . . . [to] the best team the majors ever saw . . . the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s."  — New York Times The classic narrative of growing up within shouting distance of Ebbets Field, covering the Jackie Robinson Dodgers, and what’s happened to everybody since. This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for The Herald Tribune. This is a book about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory days were behind them. In short, it is a book about America, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and disaster, and told with warmth, humor, wit, candor, and love.

2

The 1998 Yankees - Jack Curry Cover Art

The 1998 Yankees

The 1998 Yankees The Inside Story of the Greatest Baseball Team Ever by Jack Curry

"The 1998 Yankees were a perfectly constructed team. Jack Curry does an amazing job of telling the tales of that phenomenal group." —David Cone Discover the inside story of the Yankees' unprecedented talent with this gripping account from a reporter who was there for the team's 125 wins.​ The visiting clubhouse in San Diego was soggy, sweaty and sticky after the 1998 Yankees swept the Padres in four games and celebrated winning their 24th World Series title. The players raised bottles of Champagne, sprayed the bubbly on each other and reveled in a baseball season that might have been more memorable than any in history. Jack Curry was part of that unforgettable scene as a reporter, navigating around the clubhouse to ask the same, pertinent question. After winning an unprecedented 125 games and pummeling teams along the way, were these Yankees, the Yankees of Jeter, Mariano, Posada, Pettitte, Bernie, O’Neill, Tino and so many other vital players, the best team ever? “Right now, you would have to call them the best team ever,” said owner George Steinbrenner. Twenty five years later, Curry revisits that season to discuss how that team was built and why the Yankees were such a talented, refreshing and successful club. This book includes new interviews with more than 25 players, coaches and executives, who revealed some behind-the-stories about the magical journey and who also discussed the depth of this historic squad.   “From the first man to the 25th man on the roster, I don’t think there’s a team that had more talent and a team whose players knew their roles as well as our players did,” said pitcher David Cone. “If you’re using that as a barometer for the best team of all-time, then I think you can call us the best team of all-time.” During that wondrous season, Don Zimmer, a Yankee coach and a baseball lifer who began his career with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1954, told associates there would never be another team like the 1998 Yankees. Zimmer was right. Twenty five years later, Curry describes how and why that Yankee team could be the best ever.

3

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game - Michael Lewis Cover Art

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
by Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

4

Banana Ball - Jesse Cole & Don Yaeger Cover Art

Banana Ball

Banana Ball The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas by Jesse Cole & Don Yaeger

The Savannah Bananas have peeled back the game of baseball and made it fun again. This is their story.   For his entire childhood, Jesse Cole dreamed of pitching in the Majors. Now, he has a life in baseball that he could have only imagined: he met the love of his life in the industry; they shaped Savannah, Georgia’s professional team into the league champion Savannah Bananas; and now the Bananas have restyled baseball itself into something all their own: Banana Ball.    Fast, fun, and outrageously entertaining, Banana Ball brings fans right into the game. The Bananas throw out a first banana rather than a ball. Their first-base coach dances to "Thriller" or Britney between innings. Players run into the crowd to hand out roses. And the rules themselves are bananas: if a fan catches a foul ball it’s an out; and players might go to bat on stilts or wearing a banana costume. And their fans absolutely love it.    But the reason this team is on the forefront of a movement is less about the play on the field and more about the atmosphere that the team culture creates. For the first time in this book, Jesse reveals the ideas and experiences that allowed him to reimagine America’s oldest sport by creating a phenomenon that is helping fans fall in love with the game all over again.    This is a story that’s bigger than baseball and bigger than the yellow tuxedo Jesse wears as the “ringmaster” of every game. And to understand the movement, you have to understand the story at its core. In Jesse’s telling, it takes heart, innovation, and joy (and a bit of tropical fruit) to make something wholly original out of one of America’s great traditions. His story is part Moneyball , part Field of Dreams , part The Greatest Showman . It is a personal story, a creativity story, and the story of a business scrapping for every success. And it has several distinct love stories—love stories like Jesse and his father, Jesse and his wife, the team and the sport of baseball, the team and the fans.   This is Jesse calling his dad from the outfield after each Bananas game, and putting unending creativity into a team with the ultimate goal of bringing the Bananas to the professional ballparks he himself never got to play in. This is his story of baseball, love, leadership, and going just a bit bananas for all.

5

Rod Carew: One Tough Out - Rod Carew & Jaime Aron Cover Art

Rod Carew: One Tough Out

Rod Carew: One Tough Out Fighting Off Life's Curveballs by Rod Carew & Jaime Aron

An unforgettable story of insight, inspiration, and faith Growing up in a small town in the Panama Canal Zone, Rod Carew and his friends spent the long, temperate days hitting bottle caps with broomsticks, outfitted with mitts molded from paper bags, cardboard, and string. Each broomstick bat was customized by its owner; Carew's, slathered in black paint with yellow trim, bore in orange the number 42—that of his idol, Jackie Robinson. It was in this fashion, years before he would move to New York City in search of a better life, Carew honed the skills that would one day turn him into a perennial All-Star. For 19 seasons, Carew was a maestro in the batter's box. Uncoiling from his crouched stance, he seemed to guide the ball wherever he wanted on the way to a whopping seven batting titles and a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. If only everything in life had been as easy as he made hitting look. In One Tough Out: Fighting Off Life's Curveballs , Carew reflects on the highlights, anecdotes, and friendships from his outstanding career, describing the abuse, poverty, and racism he overcame to even reach the majors. In conversational, confessional prose, he takes readers through the challenges he's conquered in the second half of his life, from burying his youngest daughter to surviving several near-fatal bouts with heart disease. He also details the remarkable reason he's alive today: the heart transplant he received from Konrad Reuland, a 29-year-old NFL player he'd met years before. Carew explains how that astonishing connection was revealed and the unique bond he and his wife, Rhonda, have since forged with his donor's family. As Robinson once said, "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives." As Carew recounts his story, Robinson's words take on an even greater resonance.

6

Ball Four - Jim Bouton Cover Art

Ball Four

Ball Four
by Jim Bouton

The 50th Anniversary edition of “the book that changed baseball” (NPR), chosen by Time magazine as one of the “100 Greatest Non-Fiction” books.   When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold, and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries.   Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four . Fans liked discovering that athletes were real people—often wildly funny people. David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Vietnam, wrote a piece in Harper’s that said of Bouton: “He has written . . . a book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book.”   Today Ball Four has taken on another role—as a time capsule of life in the sixties. “It is not just a diary of Bouton’s 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros,” says sportswriter Jim Caple. “It’s a vibrant, funny, telling history of an era that seems even further away than four decades. To call it simply a ‘tell all book’ is like describing The Grapes of Wrath as a book about harvesting peaches in California.”   Includes a new foreword by Jim Bouton's wife, Paula Kurman   “An irreverent, best-selling book that angered baseball’s hierarchy and changed the way journalists and fans viewed the sports world.” — The Washington Post

7

The Baseball 100 - Joe Posnanski Cover Art

The Baseball 100

The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Winner of the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year “An instant sports classic.” — New York Post * “Stellar.” — The Wall Street Journal * “A true masterwork…880 pages of sheer baseball bliss.” — BookPage (starred review) * “This is a remarkable achievement.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) A magnum opus from acclaimed baseball writer Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100 is an audacious, singular, and masterly book that took a lifetime to write. The entire story of baseball rings through a countdown of the 100 greatest players in history, with a foreword by George Will. Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,? The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski. In the book’s introduction, Pulitzer Prize–winning commentator George F. Will marvels, “Posnanski must already have lived more than two hundred years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?” Baseball’s legends come alive in these pages, which are not merely rankings but vibrant profiles of the game’s all-time greats. Posnanski dives into the biographies of iconic Hall of Famers, unfairly forgotten All-Stars, talents of today, and more. He doesn’t rely just on records and statistics—he lovingly retraces players’ origins, illuminates their characters, and places their accomplishments in the context of baseball’s past and present. Just how good a pitcher is Clayton Kershaw in the 21st-century game compared to Greg Maddux dueling with the juiced hitters of the nineties? How do the career and influence of Hank Aaron compare to Babe Ruth’s? Which player in the top ten most deserves to be resurrected from history? No compendium of baseball’s legendary geniuses could be complete without the players of the segregated Negro Leagues, men whose extraordinary careers were largely overlooked by sportswriters at the time and unjustly lost to history. Posnanski writes about the efforts of former Negro Leaguers to restore sidelined Black athletes to their due honor and draws upon the deep troves of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and extensive interviews with the likes of Buck O’Neil to illuminate the accomplishments of players such as pitchers Satchel Paige and Smokey Joe Williams; outfielders Oscar Charleston, Monte Irvin, and Cool Papa Bell; first baseman Buck Leonard; shortstop Pop Lloyd; catcher Josh Gibson; and many, many more. The Baseball 100 treats readers to the whole rich pageant of baseball history in a single volume. Engrossing, surprising, and heartfelt, it is a magisterial tribute to the game of baseball and the stars who have played it.

8

One Season in Rocket City - Dale Tafoya Cover Art

One Season in Rocket City

One Season in Rocket City How the 1985 Huntsville Stars Brought Minor League Baseball Fever to Alabama by Dale Tafoya

It’s 1984. Minor League Baseball mogul Larry Schmittou needs a new home for his Southern League Nashville Sounds franchise. Walt Jocketty, an Oakland A’s executive, searches for a new town for his Double-A club. Fate brings them together in Huntsville, Alabama, a city in need of an outlet to unite its residents. Thus the Huntsville Stars are born. One Season in Rocket City brings to life the baseball renaissance that shook up Huntsville, a city many doubted would support professional baseball. Named after Huntsville’s celebrated space industry, the Stars electrified the town with baseball fever to become one of the biggest attractions in Minor League Baseball that first season. Composed of Oakland’s top prospects, who later fueled the A’s championship run in the late 1980s, the Stars were the hottest ticket in town. Visiting teams called Huntsville the “Minor League show,” and the Stars were the toast of the Southern League. Wearing patriotic red, white, and blue team colors, the team won the Southern League championship in their first year, led by future Major Leaguers Darrel Akerfelds, Tim Belcher, Greg Cadaret, José Canseco, Brian Dorsett, Stan Javier, Eric Plunk, Luis Polonia, and Terry Steinbach. But besides the lineup of touted prospects on the club, it was the gutsy role players who never reached the Major Leagues that willed them to a championship. Through interviews with former players, managers, executives, coaches, and beat writers who witnessed the Stars take the Southern League by storm, Dale Tafoya depicts the city’s romance with the club, success on the field, and push for a championship. Beginning with a glimpse into Huntsville’s rich history, One Season in Rocket City takes readers on a journey through the team’s dramatic founding, Huntsville politics, tape-measure home runs, and the club’s resilience to win the championship despite losing top players to promotions in midseason. The Stars were just what Huntsville needed.  

9

Astroball - Ben Reiter Cover Art

Astroball

Astroball The New Way to Win It All by Ben Reiter

NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER • The inside story of the Houston Astros, whose relentless innovation took them from the worst team in baseball to the World Series in 2017 and 2019   “Reiter’s superb narrative of how the team got there provides powerful insights into how organizations—not just baseball clubs—work best.”— The Wall Street Journal Astroball  picks up where Michael Lewis’s acclaimed  Moneyball  leaves off, telling the thrilling story of a championship team that pushed both the sport and business of baseball to the next level. In 2014, the Astros were the worst baseball team in half a century, but just three years later they defied critics to win a stunning World Series. In this book, Ben Reiter shows how the Astros built a system that avoided the stats-versus-scouts divide by giving the human factor a key role in their decision-making. Sitting at the nexus of sports, business, and innovation,  Astroball  is the story of the next wave of thinking in baseball and beyond, at once a remarkable underdog tale and a fascinating look at the cutting edge of evaluating and optimizing human potential.

10

Eight Men Out - Eliot Asinof Cover Art

Eight Men Out

Eight Men Out
The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof

First published in 1963, Eliot Asinof's Eight Men Out has become a timeless classic of a scandalous world series. The headlines proclaimed the 1919 fix of the World Series and attempted cover-up as "the most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America!" Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the fantastic scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation's leading gamblers to throw the Series in Cincinnati. Mr. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial. Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the motives and backgrounds of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Here, too, is a graphic picture of the American underworld that managed the fix, the deeply shocked newspapermen who uncovered the story, and the war-exhausted nation that turned with relief and pride to the Series, only to be rocked by the scandal. Far more than a superbly told baseball story, this is a compelling slice of American history in the aftermath of World War I and at the cusp of the Roaring Twenties.

11

The Glory of Their Times - Lawrence S. Ritter Cover Art

The Glory of Their Times

The Glory of Their Times The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It by Lawrence S. Ritter

“Easily the best baseball book ever produced by anyone.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer “This was the best baseball book published in 1966, it is the best baseball book of its kind now, and, if it is reissued in 10 years, it will be the best baseball book.” — People From Lawrence Ritter, co-author of The Image of Their Greatness and The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time, comes one of the bestselling, most acclaimed sports books of all time. Baseball was different in earlier days—tougher, more raw, more intimate—when giants like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb ran the bases. In the monumental classic The Glory of Their Times, the golden era of our national pastime comes alive through the vibrant words of those who played and lived the game. It is a book every baseball fan should read!

12

The Mental Keys to Hitting - H.A. Dorfman Cover Art

The Mental Keys to Hitting

The Mental Keys to Hitting A Handbook of Strategies for Performance Enhancement by H.A. Dorfman

A must-have book by acclaimed author and expert H.A. Dorfman that highlights the crucial mental components involved in hitting a baseball and playing the game, components that are as important, if not more so, than the intense physical regimen of an athlete.

13

So Many Ways to Lose - Devin Gordon Cover Art

So Many Ways to Lose

So Many Ways to Lose The Amazin' True Story of the New York Mets—the Best Worst Team in Sports by Devin Gordon

“This is a weird, wonderful, and essential book about both America and its pastime. It’s about a place as vast as New York City and as intimate as the human heart. Fred Exley meets Richard Ben Cramer—a funny, wild, heartfelt, and keenly observed portrait of yearning itself.”—Wright Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of The Cost of These Dreams “Mr. Gordon’s ability to explain the Sisyphean plight of all Mets fans is truly remarkable. Bravo!”—Ron Darling, New York Times bestselling author of Game 7, 1986 The Mets lose when they should win. They win when they should lose. And when it comes to being the worst, no team in sports has ever done it better than the Mets.  In So Many Ways to Lose, author and lifelong Mets fan Devin Gordon sifts through the detritus of Queens for a baseball history like no other. Remember the time the Mets lost an All-Star after Yoenis Céspedes got charged by a wild boar? Or the time they blew a six-run ninth-inning lead at the peak of a pennant race? Or the time they fired their manager before he ever managed a game? Sure you do. It was only two years ago, and it was all in the same season. The Mets have an unrivaled gift for getting it backward, doing the impossible, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and then snatching defeat right back again.  And yet, just ask any Mets fan: Amazing and/or miraculous postseason runs are as much a part of our team's identity as losing 120 games in 1962. The DNA of seasons like 1969, the original Miracle Mets, and the 1973 “Ya Gotta Believe” Mets, who went from last place to Game 7 of the World Series in two months, and the powerhouse 1986 Mets, has encoded in us this hapless instinct that a reversal of fortune is always possible. It’s happened before. It’s kind of our thing. And now we've got Steve Cohen's hedge-fund billions to play with! What could go wrong? In this hilarious history of the Mets and love letter to the art of disaster, Devin Gordon presents baseball the way it really is, not in the wistful sepia tones we've come to expect from other sportswriters. Along the way, he explains the difference between being bad and being gifted at losing, and why this distinction holds the key to understanding the true amazin’ magic of the New York Mets.

14

Sports Illustrated Great Baseball Writing - Editors of Sports Illustrated Cover Art

Sports Illustrated Great Baseball Writing

Sports Illustrated Great Baseball Writing by Editors of Sports Illustrated

When SPORTS ILLUSTRATED was launched in 1954, baseball was, indisputable, the national pastime, its stars America's epic heroes, its rivalries the era's mythology. As baseballs fortunes rose and fell over the next 50 years--and then rose again to new heights, drawing more than 65 million fans to ballparks in 2004 - the game never failed to produce great drama and inspired storytelling. This collection is a virtual Hall of Fame from the pages of SI, bringing together the stories of baseball's greatest heroes (Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax) and villains (Ty Cobb, Pete Rose, Denny McLain) and characters (Casey Stengel, Max Patkin, Yogi Berra); its legendary quests (the home run chases of Roger Maris, Hank Aaron, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds; the thrilling pennant races, from the Dodgers-Giants in 1951 to the Yankees-Red Sox in 1978); its world-class writers (Frank Deford, Mark Kram, George Plimpton, Peter Gammons, and Tom Verducci) and its own players writing from the inside about their game (Ted Williams, Jim Brosnan, and Jim Bouton). In the wake of SI's acclaimed Fifty Years of Great Writing comes this baseball anthology worthy of Cooperstown. This special edition includes bonus digital-only content.

15

The Last Best League (10th anniversary edition) - Jim Collins Cover Art

The Last Best League (10th anniversary edition)

The Last Best League (10th anniversary edition) One Summer, One Season, One Dream by Jim Collins

Every summer, in ten small towns across Cape Cod, young college baseball players showcase their talents in hopes of making it to the "show." A vicious filter, the league has produced one out of every six major league players, from Nomar Garciaparra and Todd Helton to Jeff Bagwell and Barry Zito.In this brilliantly crafted narrative, Jim Collins chronicles a season in the life of the Chatham A's, perhaps the most celebrated team in the Cape Cod Baseball League. Set against a seemingly bucolic backdrop--a well-heeled resort town on the bend of the outer Cape -- the story charts the changing fortunes of a handful of players, all of whom battle slumps and self-doubt in an effort to impress major league scouts and make the playoffs. Several players go home with career-threatening injuries; one blue-chip prospect fulfills great expectations while another is dubbed "the biggest disappointment on the Cape." A pitcher hides an arm injury while negotiating a minor league contract; another leaves early to tend to his dying father. And nearly all look to the following year's major league draft as a barometer of their worth. Far more than a baseball book, The Last Best League is an engrossing story about dreams fulfilled and dreams destroyed, about Cape Cod and the rites of summer, about coming of age in America.

16

1954 - Bill Madden Cover Art

1954

1954 The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever by Bill Madden

1954: Perhaps no single baseball season has so profoundly changed the game forever. In that year—the same in which the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education , that segregation of the races be outlawed in America's public schools—Larry Doby's Indians won an American League record 111 games, dethroned the five-straight World Series champion Yankees, and went on to play Willie Mays's Giants in the first World Series that featured players of color on both teams.   Seven years after Jackie Robinson had broken the baseball color line, 1954 was a triumphant watershed season for black players—and, in a larger sense, for baseball and the country as a whole. While Doby was the dominant player in the American League, Mays emerged as the preeminent player in the National League, with a flair and boyish innocence that all fans, black and white, quickly came to embrace. Mays was almost instantly beloved in 1954, much of that due to how seemingly easy it was for him to live up to the effusive buildup from his Giants manager, Leo Durocher, a man more widely known for his ferocious "nice guys finish last" attitude.   Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Bill Madden delivers the first major book to fully examine the 1954 baseball season, drawn largely from exclusive recent interviews with the major players themselves, including Mays and Doby as well as New York baseball legends from that era: Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford of the Yankees, Monte Irvin of the Giants, and Carl Erskine of the Dodgers. 1954 transports readers across the baseball landscape of the time—from the spring training camps in Florida and Arizona to baseball cities including New York, Baltimore, Chicago, and Cleveland—as future superstars such as Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, and others entered the leagues and continued to integrate the sport. Weaving together the narrative of one of baseball's greatest seasons with the racially charged events of that year, 1954 demonstrates how our national pastime—with the notable exception of the Yankees, who represented "white supremacy" in the game—was actually ahead of the curve in terms of the acceptance of black Americans, while the nation at large continued to struggle with tolerance.

17

The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers - Bill James Cover Art

The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers

The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers by Bill James

The man Newsweek once called “the guru of baseball” offers profiles of top managers, sidebars, statistics, and snapshots of each decade.   Widely considered to be one of the greatest minds in the history of the game, Bill James has changed the way we think about the sport of baseball. In this chronicle of field generals, strategists, and occasional cannon fodder, James writes with piercing insight about the men who hold what may be the most important spot in the dugout.   For nearly forty years, James has led the vanguard of how we measure the game. From sabermetrics to his Baseball Abstracts , James has influenced even the casual fan all the way up to the top brass. Somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, however, is the manager, and Bill James has penned a guide on some of the most innovative and renowned men to ever hold that position.   Some of the game’s greatest managers have been Hall of Fame players who put down a bat and picked up a lineup card: Frank Robinson, Mel Ott, Joe Cronin, Tris Speaker, and Rogers Hornsby. Others have achieved greatness from their ability to assemble legendary teams: Billy Martin, Tommy Lasorda, Connie Mack, Joseph McCarthy, Dick Williams, and Leo Durocher. Here, Bill James explores the history of the manager, and its evolution from 1870–1990, in a decade-by-decade chronicle, examining the successes, the failures, and what baseball fans can learn from both.   The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is a thought-provoking, entertaining, and seminal guide to a vital part of the national pastime, written by one of its most groundbreaking iconoclasts.   “A delightful collection that will satisfy baseball fans of all ages.” — Library Journal

18

Harmon Killebrew - Steve Aschburner Cover Art

Harmon Killebrew

Harmon Killebrew Ultimate Slugger by Steve Aschburner

When Hall of Famer Harmon "Killer" Killebrew died in May 2011, the baseball world lost one of its best hitters and one of the finest ambassadors the game has ever known. Killebrew was second only to Babe Ruth in home runs by an American League slugger, and finished his career with 573 home runs and in 11th place for all-time Major League Baseball history. This book takes a look at the 22-year career of a perennial Most Valuable Player candidate and baseball powerhouse, reviewing his life in and out of baseball and peeling back the mystery surrounding this intensely private athlete. This biography is a look not only at Killebrew's long career as a player, but his life as an announcer and businessman after his retirement from baseball.

19

Joe Black - Martha Jo Black & Chuck Schoffner Cover Art

Joe Black

Joe Black More than a Dodger by Martha Jo Black & Chuck Schoffner

He was told that the color of his skin would keep him out of the big leagues, but Joe Black worked his way up through the Negro Leagues and the Cuban Winter League. He burst into the Majors in 1952 when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In the face of segregation, verbal harassment, and even death threats, Joe Black rose to the top of his game; he earned National League Rookie of the Year and became the first African American pitcher to win a World Series game. With the same tenacity he showed in his baseball career, Black became the first African American vice president of a transportation corporation when he went to work for Greyhound. In this first-ever biography of Joe Black, his daughter Martha Jo Black tells the story not only of a baseball great who broke through the color line, but also of the father she knew and loved.

20

One Season In the Sun - Joe Schuster Cover Art

One Season In the Sun

One Season In the Sun by Joe Schuster

These are the tales of one-season wonders. The history of baseball is filled with forgotten names—players who are good enough to reach the top of the sport but who, for any number of reasons, land at the edges of the game. Some spend a week or two in the major leagues and then disappear back into the minors. Many leave the sport for good. Still, for an afternoon, a week, or a couple of months, these men stood on the field alongside the best players in The Show. Here are gripping stories of their brief moments in the sun.

21

Knuckleball - Lew Freedman Cover Art

Knuckleball

Knuckleball The History of the Unhittable Pitch by Lew Freedman

“It took me a day to learn [the knuckleball] and a lifetime to learn how to throw it for a strike.” This quote, by pitcher and coach Charlie Hough, is the best way to understand baseball’s most baffling and mysterious pitch. Not even the best practitioners of the art of throwing a knuckleball know where it is going most of the time. As a pitch that floats and comes into the plate in what appears to be slow motion, it is miraculous that those who employ the pitch don’t get creamed all over the park by batters who seem to know that it’s coming. Including interviews with Hall of Famer Phil Niekro, former All-Stars Wilbur Wood and Tim Wakefield, as well as other famed knuckleballers, Lew Freedman ( Clouds over the Goalpost , A Summer to Remember ), breaks down the history of this infamous pitch, which it seems can be traced back to Chicago White Sox pitcher Ed Cicotte, as well as its effect on baseball as a whole. With pitcher R. A. Dickey, who rejuvenated his career from castoff to 2011 Cy Young Award winner, the knuckleball is still a topic of conversation in the sport, and it continues to be one of the many marvels of our national pastime. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

22

The Era, 1947–1957 - Roger Kahn Cover Art

The Era, 1947–1957

The Era, 1947–1957 When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World by Roger Kahn

The author of The Boys of Summer explores the golden age of baseball, an unforgettable time when the game thrived as America’s unrivaled national sport. The Era begins in 1947, with Jackie Robinson changing major league baseball forever by taking the field for the Dodgers. Dazzling, momentous events characterize the decade that followed—Robinson’s amazing accomplishments; the explosion on the national scene of such soon-to-be legends as Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Bobby Thomson, Duke Snider, and Yogi Berra; Casey Stengel’s crafty managing; the emergence of televised games; and the stunning success of the Yankees as they play in nine out of eleven World Series. The Era concludes with the relocation of the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, a move that shook the sport to its very roots. “Kahn knows where the bodies are buried and allows his audience a joyous read as he digs them up.”— Publishers Weekly “[Kahn] engagingly captures the flavor of the times by bringing to the fore the defining traits and relationships that added human dimension to the sport.”— Library Journal “Kahn weaves such personal information into his rich descriptions of thrilling regular-season, playoff and World Series games. And in doing so he endows the players, managers and owners with more dynamic dimensions than any baseball writer of his generation. The men in The Era are ballplayers, not deities; and it takes the unerring strength of a straight shooter like Kahn to remind nostalgic baseball fans of that simple fact.”— Chicago Tribune

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The Card - Michael O'Keeffe & Teri Thompson Cover Art

The Card

The Card Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card by Michael O'Keeffe & Teri Thompson

Since its limited release just after the turn of the twentieth century, this American Tobacco cigarette card has beguiled and bedeviled collectors. First identified as valuable in the 1930s, when the whole notion of card collecting was still young, the T206 Wagner has remained the big score for collectors who have scoured card shows, flea markets, estate sales, and auctions for the portrait of baseball's greatest shortstop. Only a few dozen T206 Wagners are known to still exist. Most, with their creases, stains, and dog-eared corners, look worn and tattered, like they've been around for almost a century. But one—The Card—appears to have defied the travails of time. Thanks to its sharp corners and its crisp portrait of Honus Wagner, The Card has become the most famous and desired baseball card in the world. Over the decades, as The Card has changed hands, its value has skyrocketed. It was initially sold for $25,000 by a small card shop in a nondescript strip mall. Years later, hockey great Wayne Gretzky bought it at the venerable Sotheby's auction house for $451,000. Then, more recently, it sold for $1.27 million on eBay. Today worth over $2 million, it has transformed a sleepy hobby into a billion-dollar industry that is at times as lawless as the Wild West. The Card has made men wealthy, certainly, but it has also poisoned lifelong friendships and is fraught with controversy—from its uncertain origins and the persistent questions about its provenance to the possibility that it is not exactly as it seems. Now for the first time, award-winning investigative reporters Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson follow the trail of The Card from a Florida flea market to the hands of the world's most prominent collectors. They delve into a world of counterfeiters and con men and look at the people who profit from what used to be a kids' pastime, as they bring to light ongoing investigations into sports collectibles. O'Keeffe and Thompson also examine the life of the great Honus Wagner, a ballplayer whose accomplishments have been eclipsed by his trading card, and the strange and fascinating subculture of sports memorabilia and its astonishing decline. Intriguing and eye-opening, The Card is a ground-breaking look at a uniquely American hobby.

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The Grandest Stage - Tyler Kepner Cover Art

The Grandest Stage

The Grandest Stage A History of the World Series by Tyler Kepner

From the New York Times bestselling author of K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches comes the ultimate history of the World Series—a vivid portrait of baseball at its finest and most intense, filled with humor, lore, analysis, and fascinating behind-the-scenes stories from 117 years of the Fall Classic. The World Series is the most enduring showcase in American team sports. It’s the place where legends are made, where celebration and devastation can hinge on a fly ball off a foul pole or a grounder beneath a first baseman’s glove. And there’s no one better to bring this rich history to life than New York Times national baseball columnist Tyler Kepner, whose bestselling book about pitching, K , was lauded as “Michelangelo explaining the brush strokes on the Sistine Chapel” by Newsday . In seven scintillating chapters, Kepner delivers an indelible portrait of baseball’s signature event. He digs deep for essential tales dating back to the beginning in 1903, adding insights from Hall of Famers like Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, Jim Palmer, Dennis Eckersley and many others who have thrived – and failed – when it mattered most. Why do some players, like Madison Bumgarner, Derek Jeter and David Ortiz, crave the pressure? How do players handle a dream that comes up short? What’s it like to manage in the World Series, and what are the secrets of building a champion? Kepner celebrates unexpected heroes like Bill Wambsganss, who pulled off an unassisted triple play in 1920, probes the mysteries behind magic moments (Did Babe Ruth call his shot in 1932? How could Eckersley walk Mike Davis to get to Kirk Gibson in 1988?) and busts some long-time myths (the 1919 Reds were much better than the Black Sox, anyway).  The Grandest Stage is the ultimate history of the World Series, the perfect gift for all the fans who feel their hearts pounding in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game Seven.

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The Last Real Season - Mike Shropshire Cover Art

The Last Real Season

The Last Real Season A Hilarious Look Back at 1975 - When Major Leaguers Made Peanuts, the Umpires Wore Red, and Billy Martin Terrorized Everyone by Mike Shropshire

A rollicking and ribald first-person account of the 1975 Major League Baseball season—the last year before free agency took over and changed the national pastime forever—for better or for worse! There are baseball books and there are baseball books. But for the baseball cognoscenti, there are just a few "must-have" classics: Ball Four by Jim Bouton. The Long Season by Jim Brosnan. Willie's Time by Charles Einstein. And Seasons In Hell by Mike Shropshire, which was a hilarous first-person account of Mike's travails serving as a daily beat writer covering the hapless 1972 Texas Rangers. Now, in The Last Real Season , Shropshire captures the essence of a different time and different place in baseball, when the average salary for major leaguers was only $27,600...when the ballplayers' drug of choice was alcohol, not steroids...when major leaguers sported tight doubleknit uniforms over their long-hair and Afros...and on July 28th, 1975, the day that famed Detroit resident Jimmy Hoffa went missing, the Detroit Tigers started a losing streak of 19 games in a row. On the day that the Tigers blew a 4-run lead in the bottom of the ninth, Shropshire recalls: "I drank three bottles of Stroh's beer in less than a minute and wrote that 'Jimmy Hoffa will show up in the left field stands with Amelia Earhart as his date before the Tigers will win another game.'" And so it goes. Filled with just the kind of wonderful baseball stories that real fans crave, this is the funniest baseball book of the year.

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The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball - Tom M. Tango, Mitchel G. Lichtman & Andrew E. Dolphin Cover Art

The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball

The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tom M. Tango, Mitchel G. Lichtman & Andrew E. Dolphin

Written by three esteemed baseball statisticians, The Book continues where the legendary Bill James’s Baseball Abstracts  and Palmer and Thorn’s  The Hidden Game of Baseball  left off more than twenty years ago. Continuing in the grand tradition of sabermetrics, the authors provide a revolutionary way to think about baseball with principles that can be applied at every level, from high school to the major leagues. Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin cover topics such as batting and pitching matchups; platooning, the benefits and risks of intentional walks and sacrifices; the legitimacy of alleged “clutch” hitters; and many of baseball’s other theories on hitting, fielding, pitching, and even baserunning. They analyze when a strategy is a good idea and when it’s a bad idea, and how to more closely watch the “inside” game of baseball. Whenever you hear an announcer talk about an “unwritten rule” or say that so-and-so is going “by the book” in bringing in a situational substitute,  The Book  reviews the facts and determines what the real case is. If you want to know what the folks in baseball should be doing, find out in  The Book.

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Road to Nowhere - Chris Donnelly Cover Art

Road to Nowhere

Road to Nowhere The Early 1990s Collapse and Rebuild of New York City Baseball by Chris Donnelly

Road to Nowhere is the story of New York City baseball from 1990 to 1996, describing in intimate detail the collapse of both the Mets and the Yankees in the early nineties, the Yankees’ then reclaiming of the city and the Mets attempts to rebuild from the ashes. After the chaos of the 1980s, the New York Yankees finally bottomed out in 1990. The team finished in last place, enduring one of their worst seasons ever. Their best player, Don Mattingly, was suffering from a debilitating back injury. Manager after manager had been fired. The clubhouse was a miserable place to be, with moody, egocentric players making life difficult for up-and-coming talent. It looked like New York would remain a Mets town well into the twenty-first century. Then Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was banished from baseball. Without their manic, meddling owner, the Yankees fell into the hands of Gene Michael. Setting out to rebuild the franchise, Michael made shrewd trades and free agent signings, and he allowed the team’s prospects to develop in the Minor Leagues before getting to the Bronx. Meanwhile, the Mets, beloved for their intensity and hard-partying ways in the 1980s, became everything that had driven fans away from the Yankees. They made bad trades and questionable signings, fired managers seemingly every year, and were a powder keg of never-ending controversy. The Mets bottomed out in 1993, perhaps their worst season ever, when they not only lost 103 games but officially lost the heart of the city to the Yankees. But by 1996, despite their record, the Mets were already making moves that would return them to relevance and set them on a path to the ultimate showdown with the Yankees. Road to Nowhere tells the story of how two teams that had swapped roles in the 1980s swapped them right back in the early 1990s. While playing through several difficult seasons, both teams were making moves that would return them to prominence in just a few years.

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Opening Day - Jonathan Eig Cover Art

Opening Day

Opening Day The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season by Jonathan Eig

This bestselling account of the most important season in baseball history, 1947, tells the dramatic story of how Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and changed baseball forever. April 15, 1947, marked the most important opening day in baseball history. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the diamond that afternoon at Ebbets Field, he became the first black man to break into major-league baseball in the twentieth century. World War II had just ended. Democracy had triumphed. Now Americans were beginning to press for justice on the home front—and Robinson had a chance to lead the way. In Opening Day , Jonathan Eig tells the true story behind the national pastime’s most sacred myth. He offers new insights into events of sixty years ago and punctures some familiar legends. Was it true that the St. Louis Cardinals plotted to boycott their first home game against the Brooklyn Dodgers? Was Pee Wee Reese really Robinson’s closest ally on the team? Was Dixie Walker his greatest foe? How did Robinson handle the extraordinary stress of being the only black man in baseball and still manage to perform so well on the field? Opening Day is also the story of a team of underdogs that came together against tremendous odds to capture the pennant. Facing the powerful New York Yankees, Robinson and the Dodgers battled to the seventh game in one of the most thrilling World Series competitions of all time. Drawing on interviews with surviving players, sportswriters, and eyewitnesses, as well as newly discovered material from archives around the country, Jonathan Eig presents a fresh portrait of a ferocious competitor who embodied integration’s promise and helped launch the modern civil-rights era. Full of new details and thrilling action, Opening Day brings to life baseball’s ultimate story.

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Satchel - Larry Tye Cover Art

Satchel

Satchel The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The superbly researched, spellbindingly told story of athlete, showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker Leroy “Satchel” Paige “Among the rare biographies of an athlete that transcend sports . . . gives us the man as well as the myth.”— The Boston Globe Few reliable records or news reports survive about players in the Negro Leagues. Through dogged detective work, award-winning author and journalist Larry Tye has tracked down the truth about this majestic and enigmatic pitcher, interviewing more than two hundred Negro Leaguers and Major Leaguers, talking to family and friends who had never told their stories before, and retracing Paige’s steps across the continent. Here is the stirring account of the child born to an Alabama washerwoman with twelve young mouths to feed, the boy who earned the nickname “Satchel” from his enterprising work as a railroad porter, the young man who took up baseball on the streets and in reform school, inventing his trademark hesitation pitch while throwing bricks at rival gang members. Tye shows Paige barnstorming across America and growing into the superstar hurler of the Negro Leagues, a marvel who set records so eye-popping they seemed like misprints, spent as much money as he made, and left tickets for “Mrs. Paige” that were picked up by a different woman at each game. In unprecedented detail, Tye reveals how Paige, hurt and angry when Jackie Robinson beat him to the Majors, emerged at the age of forty-two to help propel the Cleveland Indians to the World Series. He threw his last pitch from a big-league mound at an improbable fifty-nine. (“Age is a case of mind over matter,” he said. “If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.”) More than a fascinating account of a baseball odyssey, Satchel rewrites our history of the integration of the sport, with Satchel Paige in a starring role. This is a powerful portrait of an American hero who employed a shuffling stereotype to disarm critics and racists, floated comical legends about himself–including about his own age–to deflect inquiry and remain elusive, and in the process methodically built his own myth. “Don’t look back,” he famously said. “Something might be gaining on you.” Separating the truth from the legend, Satchel is a remarkable accomplishment, as large as this larger-than-life man.

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Future Value - Eric Longenhagen, Kiley McDaniel & Keith Law Cover Art

Future Value

Future Value The Battle for Baseball's Soul and How Teams Will Find the Next Superstar by Eric Longenhagen, Kiley McDaniel & Keith Law

An unprecedented look inside the world of baseball scouting and evaluation from two of the industry's top prospect analysts For the modern Major League team, player evaluation is a complex, multi-pronged, high-tech pursuit. But far from becoming obsolete in this environment—as Michael Lewis' Moneyball once forecast—the role of the scout in today's game has evolved and even expanded. Rather than being the antithesis of a data-driven approach, scouting now represents an essential analytical component in a team's arsenal. Future Value is a thorough dive into baseball's changing world of talent acquisition and development, a world with its own language, methods, metrics, and madness. From rural high schools to elite amateur showcases, from the back fields of spring training to major league draft rooms, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel break down the key systems and techniques used to assess talent. It's a process that has moved beyond the quintessential stopwatches and radar guns to include statistical models, countless measurable indicators, and a broader international reach. ?Practical and probing, discussing wide-ranging topics from tool grades to front office politics, this is an illuminating exploration of how to watch baseball and see the future.

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Fifty-nine in '84 - Edward Achorn Cover Art

Fifty-nine in '84

Fifty-nine in '84 Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had by Edward Achorn

"First-class narrative history that can stand with everything Steven Ambrose wrote. . . . Achorn's description of the utter insanity that was barehanded baseball is vivid and alive." —Boston Globe “A beautifully written, meticulously researched story about a bygone baseball era that even die-hard fans will find foreign, and about a pitcher who might have been the greatest of all time.” — Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer prize-winning historian In 1884 Providence Grays pitcher Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn won an astounding fifty-nine games—more than anyone in major-league history ever had before, or has since. He then went on to win all three games of baseball's first World Series. Fifty-nine in '84 tells the dramatic story not only of that amazing feat of grit but also of big-league baseball two decades after the Civil War—a brutal, bloody sport played barehanded, the profession of uneducated, hard-drinking men who thought little of cheating outrageously or maiming an opponent to win. Wonderfully entertaining, Fifty-nine in '84 is an indelible portrait of a legendary player and a fascinating, little-known era of the national pastime.

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Little League Confidential - Bill Geist Cover Art

Little League Confidential

Little League Confidential One Coach's Completely Unauthorized Tale of Survival by Bill Geist

A journalist dad tells of his exhilarating experiences coaching his son’s Little League team with anecdotes about a ballerina batter, an unfair umpire uncle, and other stories that provide a fresh perspective on an American institution.

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Nolan Ryan - Rob Goldman Cover Art

Nolan Ryan

Nolan Ryan The Making of a Pitcher by Rob Goldman

To any baseball fan, Nolan Ryan’s name still conjures up images of blistering 100-mile-per-hour fastballs and knee-buckling curveballs. During his 27-year career, “The Ryan Express” was named an eight-time All-Star and amassed seven no-hitters and more than 5,700 strikeouts—more than any other pitcher in major-league history. This comprehensive biography of Nolan Ryan follows the baseball legend’s journey from the start of his professional career in 1965 to his retirement in 1993. Hall of Famers, journeymen, clubhouse workers, coaches, and trainers offer their own unique take on Ryan in this book filled with never-before-told anecdotes and personal recollections and peppered with eyewitness accounts of his greatest games. In the pages of this history, readers will discover what made Nolan Ryan one of the most revered and respected athletes and citizens of his time.

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Mike Schmidt - Rob Maaddi Cover Art

Mike Schmidt

Mike Schmidt The Phillies' Legendary Slugger by Rob Maaddi

In Mike Schmidt author Rob Maaddi provides fans the first detailed look into Schmidt's life and how he became such a reliable rock at third base as well a slugger to be feared.. All baseball fans know of his exploits between the lines, but they have also become increasingly aware of his intelligent commentary. Maaddi skillfully transports readers back to key events in Schmidt's life and career that make him come alive and create an understanding of the man, his love for the game, and what motivated him to become one of the best players of all time

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Baseball America 2023 Prospect Handbook Digital Edition - The Editors at Baseball America Cover Art

Baseball America 2023 Prospect Handbook Digital Edition

Baseball America 2023 Prospect Handbook Digital Edition by The Editors at Baseball America

The 2023 Prospect Handbook is your guide to the next wave of MLB stars The 2023 Prospect Handbook is your guide to the next wave of MLB stars. With complete scouting reports on more than 900 prospects, the Prospect Handbook is a must-have for superfans as well as fantasy players. Dominate your dynasty league and be the first to know about the stars of the 2020s and early 2030s.

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Game of Edges: The Analytics Revolution and the Future of Professional Sports - Bruce Schoenfeld Cover Art

Game of Edges: The Analytics Revolution and the Future of Professional Sports

Game of Edges: The Analytics Revolution and the Future of Professional Sports by Bruce Schoenfeld

The story of how a new generation of tech-savvy franchise owners is reshaping every aspect of professional sports. In the last two decades, innovation, data analysis, and technology have driven a tectonic shift in the sports business. Game of Edges is the story of how sports franchises evolved, on and off the field, from raggedly run small businesses into some of the most systematically productive companies around. In today’s game, everyone from the owners to the marketing staff are using information—data—to give their team an edge. For analysts, an edge is their currency. Figuring out that bunting hurts your offense? That’s an edge. So is discovering metrics that can predict the career arc of your free agent shooting guard. Or combing through a decade of ticket-buying data to target persuadable fans. These small, incremental steps move a sports franchise from merely ordinary to the leading edge. Franchises today are more than just sports; they integrate a whole suite of other businesses—television and digital content, gambling and real estate, fashion and apparel, entertainment, catering and concessions, and much more. But an optimized franchise has no room for error. Teams must do what the numbers say, reducing the element of chance, limiting those random moments of athletic heroism that make sports thrilling to watch. Optimization also means the franchise’s main goal isn’t championships anymore; it’s keeping you, the viewer, engaged with the product. Drawing on extensive interviews with franchise owners, general managers, executives, and players, Bruce Schoenfeld introduces dynamic leaders who are radically reimagining the operations of these decades-old teams—and producing mind-boggling valuations. He joins the architects of the Golden State Warriors dynasty for an exclusive reception before tip-off. He stands among the faithful at Anfield, watching Liverpool’s analytics guru size up a prized midfielder. And he watches the president of the Chicago Cubs break ground on a new DraftKings gambling parlor at Wrigley Field, not ten miles from the site of the original Black Sox betting scandal. Essential reading for anyone interested in sports, business, or technology, Game of Edges explores a world where winning the game is only the beginning.

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Winning Fixes Everything - Evan Drellich Cover Art

Winning Fixes Everything

Winning Fixes Everything How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich

The reporter who broke the Houston Astros' cheating scandal reveals how a baseball team could so dramatically descend into corruption, with never-before-told details of a broken management culture, the once-revered leaders who enabled it and the scandal itself. Baseball, that old romantic game, has been defaced and consumed by corporate America. As Moneyball-thinking and Ivy League graduates grabbed hold of the sport, the Astros set out to build a cost-efficient winning machine on the principles of the outside business world, squeezing every dollar out of every transaction, player and employee. In less than a decade, ex-Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow helped revolutionize the game. He created an environment that led to one of the worst cheating scandals in baseball history, a Shakespearean tragedy of innovation and failed change management. Through years of extensive interviews, former Houston Chronicle beat writer Evan Drellich, now a national writer for The Athletic, delivers the definitive account of baseball’s most controversial franchise and how a modern baseball team truly works—without the usual myth-spinning. Drellich reveals the rise and fall of the Astros to be a collision of subcultures. The team’s top boss was a former McKinsey consultant who lived on the bleeding edge with no guardrails. He hired outsider after outsider to change the organization as quickly and cheaply as possible. The wins piled up, and so did the cash for the billionaire owner with a checkered business past. But not even a World Series title could cover up the rot. All of it came at a cost to fans, employees, and the sport on a whole. But as Winning Fixes Everything makes clear, “The Astros Way” isn’t going anywhere. Drellich uses the saga of the Astros’ scandal to detail the evolution of baseball itself.

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The Mental Game of Baseball - H.A. Dorfman Cover Art

The Mental Game of Baseball

The Mental Game of Baseball A Guide to Peak Performance by H.A. Dorfman

In this book, authors H.A. Dorfman and Karl Kuehl present their practical and proven strategy for developing the mental skills needed to achieve peak performance at every level of the game.

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The Shift - Russell Carleton & Jeff Passan Cover Art

The Shift

The Shift The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking by Russell Carleton & Jeff Passan

With its three-hour-long contests, 162-game seasons, and countless measurable variables, baseball is a sport which lends itself to self-reflection and obsessive analysis. It's a thinking game. It's also a shifting game. Nowhere is this more evident than in the statistical revolution which has swept through the pastime in recent years, bringing metrics like WAR, OPS, and BABIP into front offices and living rooms alike. So what's on the horizon for a game that is constantly evolving? Positioned at the crossroads of sabermetrics and cognitive science, The Shift alters the trajectory of both traditional and analytics-based baseball thought. With a background in clinical psychology as well as experience in major league front offices, Baseball Prospectus' Russell Carleton illuminates advanced statistics and challenges cultural assumptions, demonstrating along the way that data and logic need not be at odds with the human elements of baseball—in fact, they're inextricably intertwined. Covering topics ranging from infield shifts to paradigm shifts, Carleton writes with verve, honesty, and an engaging style, inviting all those who love the game to examine it deeply and maybe a little differently. Data becomes digestible; intangibles are rendered not only accessible, but quantifiable. Casual fans and statheads alike will not want to miss this compelling meditation on what makes baseball tick.

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The New Ballgame - Russell A. Carleton Cover Art

The New Ballgame

The New Ballgame The Not-So-Hidden Forces Shaping Modern Baseball by Russell A. Carleton

Watching a game of baseball today means witnessing phenomena that would have been novel, if not completely unheard of, not so long ago. Starting pitchers sling 100 mile-per-hour heat for just four or five innings before departing; third basemen often station themselves much closer to second (to say nothing of the shortstop's whereabouts); home runs and strikeouts dominate at-bats; all while the length of contest tips toward the four-hour mark. There's no getting around it: the game looks different now. And as Major League Baseball scrambles with rule changes, equipment modifications, labor negotiations, and more, fans are left grasping for the true essence of this beloved pastime among the moving pieces. In The New Ballgame , Russell Carleton (The Shift) deftly indentifies and examines the many levers and inflection points that have shaped the game into what we see on the field today. Through a singular blend of statistical analysis, history, and cognitive science, readers will trace the rapid evolution of the modern game while contemplating the sport in an entirely new way. Blending incisive research with affable storytelling, Russell Carleton delivers a kaleidoscopic view on modern baseball in this welcome, revelatory work.

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Tales from the Atlanta Braves Dugout - Cory McCartney Cover Art

Tales from the Atlanta Braves Dugout

Tales from the Atlanta Braves Dugout A Collection of the Greatest Braves Stories Ever Told by Cory McCartney

The newest addition to the Tales from the Team series, Tales from the Atlanta Braves Dugout includes stories on the greatest players and coaches to don the Braves uniform. Author Cory McCartney includes stories about Hank Aaron, Dale Murphy, Phil Niekro, Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Bobby Cox, and so many others. Recall the harrowing experience of Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium catching fire on July 21, 1993, overshadowing the debut of Fred McGriff, and read all about Sid Bream's slide and the worst-to-first season of 1991. From the run of 14 consecutive division titles and the 1995 World Series title, to Kent Mercker's 1994 no-hitter; from the arrival of the Baby Braves in Brian McCann, Jeff Francoeur, and others, to the 2014 Hall of Fame–induction of Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and Bobby Cox, the on and off-the-field stories are all here. This is the perfect addition to a Braves fan’s shelf! Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

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All Rise: The Aaron Judge Story - Bill Gutman Cover Art

All Rise: The Aaron Judge Story

All Rise: The Aaron Judge Story by Bill Gutman

New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge burst onto the baseball scene in 2017 like a shooting star of the first magnitude. Standing six feet, seven inches tall and weighing 282 pounds, Judge won the right field job in spring training and proceeded to set the baseball world on fire during the first half of the season. He was not only setting rookie records and hitting more home runs than anyone, but also hitting them higher and farther and with greater velocity than baseball's other sluggers. That wasn't all. Judge quickly proved he was more than just a one-dimensional slugger. Not only was he leading the American League in home runs, batting average, and runs batted in during his early-season splurge, he was also proving himself an outstanding outfielder with great range, a rifle arm, and, despite his great size, even showed the ability to steal bases. He looked to be the total package. He captured the imagination of the league as the leading vote getter in the midseason All-Star Game; Judge also participated in the Home Run Derby and electrified the crowd by hitting 47 homers, including 23 in the first round, to win the competition. His longest home run traveled some 513 feet and several more shots hit the stadium's roof. He was the player people were coming out to see and his jersey was the number one seller in all of baseball. Though his production slowed somewhat after the All-Star Break, he was still having one of the great rookie seasons in many years. Playing for the storied New York Yankees he has begun evoking memories of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle, the team's lineage of all-time greats. So it should be no surprise when you hear the call all around baseball–ALL RISE, HERE COMES AARON JUDGE.

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Relentless Pursuit: Pete Rose's Self-Serving Quest for the All-Time Hits Record - 1983 - 1986 - Kerry Keene Cover Art

Relentless Pursuit: Pete Rose's Self-Serving Quest for the All-Time Hits Record - 1983 - 1986

Relentless Pursuit: Pete Rose's Self-Serving Quest for the All-Time Hits Record - 1983 - 1986 Pete Rose's Self-Serving Quest for the All-Time Hits Record - 1983 - 1986 by Kerry Keene

On September 11, 1985, baseball legend Pete Rose entered his name into the record books by passing Ty Cobb's longstanding record for most hits in a career. Ever since, Rose has embraced the title of "Hit King", and it had been apparent to many that it was a goal on which he had fixated for many years. By the early 1980's, after he had played major league baseball for two decades, Rose's hitting skills had begun to decline noticeably. In his early forties at the time, he was going through a natural decline, and was simply not capable of collecting hits to anywhere near the degree he once could. When he was unceremoniously released by the Philadelphia Phillies in October of 1983, he found himself at the age of forty-two, shopping his faded skills around to any team that would have him. Just 201 hits shy of Cobb's record, he needed to convince a team that he could still supply value on the field, a winning attitude, and help to put fans in the seats. After being passed over by several teams, he was finally signed by the Montreal Expos in late January of 1984, less than a month before spring training was scheduled to begin. Unfortunately for Rose, he did very little to justify Montreal's confidence, and it appeared that his decline as a player was continuing. By mid-season, Rose was spending more time on the bench, and knew that at that rate, his quest for the all-time hits record was coming to a grinding halt. He put his agent to work to find another team that would take him, and discussions began that would bring Rose back to his old team, the Cincinnati Reds. Rose had grown up in that city, had spent the first sixteen years of his career there, and was still a beloved figure. The Reds at that time were struggling badly, and desperately needed something to reverse their fortunes. Initially, the team was willing to bring Rose on as a manager, as they weren't confident that he could still hit at a quality level. After several discussions Rose convinced the team that he could still perform, and would take on the role of manager while continuing to play. He specified that he would only play occasionally, and that he would never put his pursuit of the Hits record above what was best for the team. The city of Cincinnati was thrilled to have Rose back with the team, and he immediately took advantage of the situation by putting himself in the lineup far more than he had indicated he would. By the following season, 1985, as he was inching closer to passing the record, the situation became more obvious. Rose had long stretches where he was an extremely ineffective hitter, yet he continued to place himself in the lineup, ignoring several potentially better options. A strong case is made in "Relentless Pursuit" that Rose may well have cost his team a spot in the 1985 playoffs due to his insistence on continuing to play and pursue the record. As many times as Rose would tell reporters that he would not place his personal goal above what the team was trying to achieve, he did so repeatedly. He was so admired by Reds' fans in the region, he simply felt he could do what he pleased - and upper management of the team was complicit. While Rose did ultimately break the record late in the 1985 season, it was unfathomable that the team allowed him to come back and continue to play in 1986. His hitting skills had declined so noticeably, he was among the very least effective hitters in the game - yet he was able to continue adding to the record. Several players, managers, and executives who were close to Rose during this period were interviewed for this project, and shed light on their feelings as to how Rose went about his businees in the game at that time. It surely has the potential for baseball aficionados to view Pete Rose and his all-time hits record in a very different manner.

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Swing Kings - Jared Diamond Cover Art

Swing Kings

Swing Kings The Inside Story of Baseball's Home Run Revolution by Jared Diamond

"The best baseball book I’ve read in years." — Sam Walker • "An exhilarating story of innovation."  — Ben Reiter • "Swing Kings feels like a spiritual successor to Moneyball." — Baseball Prospectus From the Wall Street Journal’s national baseball writer, the captivating story of the home run boom, following a group of players who rose from obscurity to stardom and the rogue swing coaches who helped them usher the game into a new age. We are in a historic era for the home run. The 2019 season saw the most homers ever, obliterating a record set just two years before. It is a shift that has transformed the way the game is played, contributing to more strikeouts, longer games, and what feels like the logical conclusion of the analytics era. In Swing Kings, Wall Street Journal national baseball writer Jared Diamond reveals that the secret behind this unprecedented shift isn’t steroids or the stitching of the baseballs, it’s the most elemental explanation of all: the swing. In this lively narrative romp, he tracks a group of baseball’s biggest stars—including Aaron Judge, J.D. Martinez, and Justin Turner—who remade their swings under the tutelage of a band of renegade coaches, and remade the game in the process.  These coaches, many of them baseball washouts who have reinvented themselves as swing gurus, for years were one of the game’s best-kept secrets. Among their ranks are a swimming pool contractor, the owner of a billiards hall, and an ex-hippie whose swing insights draw from surfing and the technique of Japanese samurai. Now, as Diamond artfully charts, this motley cast has moved from the baseball margins to its center of power. They are changing the way hitting is taught to players of all ages, and major league clubs are scrambling for their services, hiring them in record numbers as coaches and consultants. And Diamond himself, whose baseball career ended in high school, enlists the tutelage of each swing coach he profiles, with an aim toward starring in the annual Boston-New York media game at Yankee Stadium. Swing Kings is both a rollicking history of baseball’s recent past and a deeply reported, character-driven account of a battle between opponents as old as time: old and new, change and stasis, the establishment and those who break from it. Jared Diamond has written a masterful chronicle of America’s pastime at the crossroads.

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A Damn Near Perfect Game - Joe Kelly Cover Art

A Damn Near Perfect Game

A Damn Near Perfect Game Reclaiming America’s Pastime by Joe Kelly

Baseball’s most outspoken fireballer brings the high heat—calling out the hacks, cheats, and ridiculous rules that have tarnished the game—and pitches a-plus stuff on how to make baseball pure, fun, and damn near perfect. Baseball has an image problem. The chorus of nonbelievers gets louder every year, and the Major Leagues have made an art of tuning them out. Enter Joe Kelly: a walking, talking, fast-ball-throwing embodiment of why baseball matters. He and his All-Star team of athletes and celebrities have some things to say about what’s gone wrong with our once great game and how to fix it. A Damn Near Perfect Game is the loudest insider’s exposé of the laws and culture of Major League Baseball since Jim Bouton’s classic Ball Four . From Kelly’s perspective as a two-time World Series champion and baseball’s most memeable player according to ESPN, he takes readers on a house-cleaning tour of the clubhouse, the field of play, the bullpen, the front office, the commissioner’s office, and a ballplayer’s restricted life off the field. Kelly has something to say about baseball’s rule changes (pitch clocks, limiting defensive shifts, the designated hitter); hacks (overused analytics, sign-stealing); stale promotion to new fans; and encouraging players’ emotions (let them fight, bat-flip, and talk sh*t!). Plus, he details how he aired his complaints in an illuminating meeting with commissioner Rob Manfred. And to show what happens when baseball has some piss and vinegar, Kelly gives the inside scoop on his legendary exploits—starting a bench-clearing brawl with the Yankees’ Tyler Austin, his famous “pouty face” scene when calling out the notorious sign-stealing Houston Astros, and wearing a mariachi jacket to visit the White House with his World Series champion LA Dodgers.

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The Curse of Rocky Colavito - Terry Pluto Cover Art

The Curse of Rocky Colavito

The Curse of Rocky Colavito A Loving Look at a Thirty-Year Slump by Terry Pluto

“The year’s funniest and most insightful baseball book.” — Chicago Tribune A classic look at those years of baseball futility and frustration that make the rare taste of success so much sweeter. Any team can have an off-decade. But three in a row? Only in Cleveland. No sports fans suffered more miserable teams for more seasons than Indians fans of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Terry Pluto takes a fond and often humorous look at “the bad old days” of the Tribe and finds plenty of great stories for fans to commiserate with. Other teams lose players to injuries; the Indians lost them to alcoholism (Sam McDowell), a nervous breakdown (Tony Horton), and the pro golf tour (Ken Harrelson). They even had to trade young Dennis Eckersley (a future Hall-of-Famer) because his wife fell in love with his best friend and teammate. Pluto profiles the men who made the Indians what they were, for better or worse, including Gabe Paul, the underfunded and overmatched general manager; Herb Score, the much-loved master of malaprops in the broadcast booth; Andre Thornton, who weathered personal tragedies and stood as one of the few hitting stalwarts on some terrible teams; and Super Joe Charboneau, who blazed across the American League as a rookie but flamed out the following season. Long-suffering Indians fans finally got an exciting, star-studded, winning team in the second half of the 1990s. But this book still stands as the definitive story of that generation of Tribe fans—and a great piece of sports history writing.

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Comeback - Dave Dravecky & Tim Stafford Cover Art

Comeback

Comeback by Dave Dravecky & Tim Stafford

An MLB All-Star’s true story of losing an arm to cancer—and finding strength through his faith—gives “new depth and meaning to the word comeback” ( The New York Times ).   In one of the most memorable moments of Major League Baseball, Dave Dravecky of the San Francisco Giants pitched a winning game less than a year after undergoing cancer surgery on his pitching arm. But his comeback was short-lived. Just five days after his winning game, Dravecky broke his arm—and would later lose it entirely as the cancer returned.   Dravecky’s true comeback would come later, as a bestselling author and inspirational speaker offering strength, hope, and comfort inspired by Christian teachings and his own experience with suffering and loss. This book recounts the thrilling details of Dravecky’s two comebacks—from his early baseball career and brief return to the pitching mound to his ultimate triumph over adversity through unflagging determination and deep faith.   “Dave Dravecky was young, popular, celebrated and at the height of his powers when life threw him a curveball he never could have imagined. . . . There is an inspirational tone to the book, as well as the wit and flavor common to baseball, when Mr. Dravecky gives anecdotes about teammates and managers and offers a few insider’s tips about the sport.” — The New York Times   “This is first a baseball book: details of his career are provided; the description of the comeback victory over the Reds is particularly effective. The other story here is one of a battle with cancer. It will be excellent reading for others battling the disease. Dravecky finds much of his strength in his religious beliefs, and the work is also a testimonial to that faith.” — Library Journal  

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Scabs Heal All Wounds: True Story of a Replacement Player - Edward Porcelli Cover Art

Scabs Heal All Wounds: True Story of a Replacement Player

Scabs Heal All Wounds: True Story of a Replacement Player by Edward Porcelli

On August 12th, 1994, the longest work stoppage in MLB history began. Edward Porcelli, author of "Scabs Heal All Wounds", tells the story of the strike from a replacement player’s perspective during perhaps the darkest time in MLB history. From cancelling the World Series in 1994 and announcing the use of replacement players to President Bill Clinton demanding the executives of MLB and the MLBPA to come to an agreement, Mr. Porcelli gives a detailed chronology of events and how it affected the players, coaches, and management. His true story reveals behind the scenes interaction with minor league players’ views on “crossing the line” and the ramifications of becoming a scab. Ed explains the difficult position of the major and minor league coaches struggling with their loyalty to the owners and empathy for the players during the negotiations. Finally, Porcelli explains the role of the media and how it affected those players participating in games during the exhibition season. Ed plans on staying active in the college coaching community and is involved with other business projects that focus on baseball and sports. He is also marketing the screenplay 30 Pieces of Silver co-written by Shawn Powell that is based on the book Scabs Heal All Wounds.

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October 1964 - David Halberstam Cover Art

October 1964

October 1964 by David Halberstam

The “compelling”  New York Times  bestseller by the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, capturing the 1964 World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals ( Newsweek ).  David Halberstam, an avid sports writer with an investigative reporter’s tenacity, superbly details the end of the fifteen-year reign of the New York Yankees in October 1964 . That October found the Yankees going head-to-head with the St. Louis Cardinals for the World Series pennant. Expertly weaving the narrative threads of both teams’ seasons, Halberstam brings the major personalities on the field—from switch-hitter Mickey Mantle to pitcher Bob Gibson—to life. Using the teams’ subcultures, Halberstam also analyzes the cultural shifts of the sixties. The result is a unique blend of sports writing and cultural history as engrossing as it is insightful.  This ebook features an extended biography of David Halberstam.

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The Mental Game of Baseball - H.A. Dorfman & Karl Kuehl Cover Art

The Mental Game of Baseball

The Mental Game of Baseball A Guide to Peak Performance by H.A. Dorfman & Karl Kuehl

In this book, authors H.A. Dorfman and Karl Kuehl present their practical and proven strategy for developing the mental skills needed to achieve peak performance at every level of the game.The theory and applications are illustrated by anecdotes and insights from major and minor league players, who at some point discovered the importance of mastering the inner game in order to play baseball as it should be played. Intended for players, managers, coaches, agents, and administrators as well as fans who want a more in-depth look at the makeup of the complete baseball player.

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