The Only Rule Is It Has to WorkBen Lindbergh & Sam Miller
- Genre: Baseball
- Publish Date: May 3, 2016
- Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
- Apple Books | $2.99Amazon Kindle
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The Only Rule Is It Has to WorkBen Lindbergh & Sam Miller
"A kind of gonzo Moneyball ": The New York Times –bestseller about two statistics-minded outsiders being allowed to run a professional baseball team ( New York Times Book Review ). 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, in a real playoff race. That's what baseball analysts Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when an independent minor-league team in California, the Sonoma Stompers, offered them the chance to run its baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics. Their story in The Only Rule Is It Has to Work 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 for judging each innovation they try: it has to work. We meet colorful figures like general manager Theo Fightmaster and boundary-breakers like the first openly gay player in professional baseball. Even José Canseco makes a cameo appearance. Will their knowledge of numbers help Lindbergh and Miller bring the Stompers a championship, or will they fall on their faces? Will the team have a competitive advantage or is the sport's folk wisdom true after all? Will the players attract the attention of big-league scouts, or are they on a fast track to oblivion? It's a wild ride, by turns provocative and absurd, as Lindbergh and Miller tell a story that will speak to numbers geeks and traditionalists alike. And they prove that you don't need a bat or a glove to make a genuine contribution to the game.
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Big Hair and Plastic GrassDan Epstein
A wild pop-culture history of baseball's most colorful and controversial decade, the 70s: "A trove of nuggets many of us either never knew . . . or forgot." — The New York Times The Major Leagues witnessed more dramatic stories and changes in the 1970s than in any other era. The American popular culture and counterculture collided head-on with the national pastime, rocking the once-conservative sport to its very foundations. Outspoken players embraced free agency, openly advocated drug use . . . and even swapped wives. Controversial owners such as Charlie Finley, Bill Veeck, and Ted Turner introduced Astroturf, prime-time World Series, garish polyester uniforms, and outlandish promotions such as Disco Demolition Night. Hank Aaron and Lou Brock set new heights in power and speed while Reggie Jackson and Carlton Fisk emerged as October heroes and All-Star characters like Mark "The Bird" Fidrych became pop icons. For the millions of fans who grew up during this time, and especially those who cared just as much about Oscar Gamble's afro as they did about his average, Dan Epstein's Big Hair serves up a delicious, Technicolor trip down memory lane.
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MoneyballMichael 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 • A Kirkus Review Best Book of the 21st Century (So Far) 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 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?
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The Last ManagerJohn W. Miller
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025 “Baseball books don’t get any better than this...Earl Weaver has at last been given his due.” —George F. Will “Vivid...Most sports books are pop flies to the infield. Miller’s is a screaming triple into the left field corner.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times The first major biography of legendary Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver—who has been described as “the Copernicus of baseball” and “the grandfather of the modern game”— The Last Manager is a wild, thrilling, and hilarious ride with baseball’s most underappreciated genius, and one of its greatest characters. Long before the Moneyball Era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History’s feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968 to 1982. When Weaver was hired by the Orioles, managers were still seen as coaches and inspirational leaders, more teachers of the game than strategists. Weaver invented new ways of building baseball teams, prioritizing on-base average, elite defense, and strike throwing. Weaver was the first manager to use a modern radar gun, and he pioneered the use of analytical data. By moving six-foot four-inch Cal Ripken Jr. to shortstop, Weaver paved the way for a generation of plus-sized superstar shortstops, such as Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. He foreshadowed almost everything that Bill James, Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, and hundreds of other big-brain baseball types would later present as innovations. Beyond being a great baseball mind, Weaver was a rare baseball character . Major League Baseball is show business, and Weaver understood how much of his job was entertainment. Weaver’s legendary outbursts offered players cathartic relief from their own frustration, signaled his concern for the team, and fired up fans. In his frequent arguments with umpires, he hammed it up for the crowds, faked heart attacks, ripped bases out of the ground, and pretended to toss umpires out of the game. Weaver also fought with his players, especially Jim Palmer, but that creative tension contributed to stunning success and a hilarious clubhouse. During his tenure as major-league manager, the Orioles won the American League pennant in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1979, each time winning more than 100 games. The Last Manager uncovers the story of Weaver’s St. Louis childhood with a mobster uncle, his years of minor-league heartbreak, and his unlikely road to becoming a big-league manager, while tracing the evolution of the game from the old-time baseball of cross-country trains and “desk contracts” to the modern era of free agency, video analysis, and powerful player agents. Weaver’s career is a critical juncture in baseball history. He was the only manager to hold a job during the five years leading up to and the five years after free agency upended the sport in 1976. Weaver was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. “No manager belongs there more,” wrote Tom Boswell. “Weaver encapsulates the fire, the humor, the brains, the childishness, the wisdom and the goofy fun of baseball.” The Last Manager tells the story of one man—belligerent, genius, infamous—who left his mark on the game for generations.
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The Cubs WayTom Verducci
The New York Times Bestseller With inside access and reporting, Sports Illustrated senior baseball writer and FOX Sports analyst Tom Verducci reveals how Theo Epstein and Joe Maddon built, led, and inspired the Chicago Cubs team that broke the longest championship drought in sports, chronicling their epic journey to become World Series champions. It took 108 years, but it really happened. The Chicago Cubs are once again World Series champions. How did a team composed of unknown, young players and supposedly washed-up veterans come together to break the Curse of the Billy Goat? Tom Verducci, twice named National Sportswriter of the Year and co-writer of The Yankee Years with Joe Torre, will have full access to team president Theo Epstein, manager Joe Maddon, and the players to tell the story of the Cubs' transformation from perennial underachievers to the best team in baseball. Beginning with Epstein's first year with the team in 2011, Verducci will show how Epstein went beyond "Moneyball" thinking to turn around the franchise. Leading the organization with a manual called "The Cubs Way," he focused on the mental side of the game as much as the physical, emphasizing chemistry as well as statistics. To accomplish his goal, Epstein needed manager Joe Maddon, an eccentric innovator, as his counterweight on the Cubs' bench. A man who encourages themed road trips and late-arrival game days to loosen up his team, Maddon mixed New Age thinking with Old School leadership to help his players find their edge. The Cubs Way takes readers behind the scenes, chronicling how key players like Rizzo, Russell, Lester, and Arrieta were deftly brought into the organization by Epstein and coached by Maddon to outperform expectations. Together, Epstein and Maddon proved that clubhouse culture is as important as on-base-percentage, and that intangible components like personality, vibe, and positive energy are necessary for a team to perform to their fullest potential. Verducci chronicles the playoff run that culminated in an instant classic Game Seven. He takes a broader look at the history of baseball in Chicago and the almost supernatural element to the team's repeated loses that kept fans suffering, but also served to strengthen their loyalty. The Cubs Way is a celebration of an iconic team and its journey to a World Championship that fans and readers will cherish for years to come.
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Is This a Great Game, or What?Tim Kurkjian
Stories and observations from the ESPN baseball commentator: "Is this a great book or what? Hilarious, irreverent, informative." —Dan Shaughnessy, author of Reversing the Curse ESPN's Tim Kurkjian has spent over twenty-five years covering almost 3,000 Major League Baseball games—and interviewing about that many players, coaches, managers and executives. In Is This a Great Game, or What? , Kurkjian combines his years of experience and his uncanny knowledge and deep love of the game to create a book filled with some of the most fascinating insight into Major League Baseball this side of Jim Bouton's Ball Four . Whether he's explaining what goes through a ballplayer's mind when he faces a fastball in the chapter "My Face Was Crushed by a Bowling Ball Going 90mph," detailing bizarre rituals and superstitions performed by some of the game's greatest players, or taking us into the locker room to see what transpires in a Major League clubhouse, Kurkjian's tales are at times hilarious, other times horrifying, yet always entertaining. Kurkjian has spoken to some of the greatest ballplayers ever over the years and they have revealed details about themselves and the game they love with a candor that readers won't find anywhere else. Filled with memorable anecdotes, this is an essential book for baseball fans. "Mostly humorous anecdotes collected on the baseball beat, but the standout chapter is a serious examination of the element of fear in the game. . . . Kurkjian also has a wonderful chapter on baseball's unsung heroes, the scouts, underpaid lifers who travel thousands of backroad miles per year to find the next-best version of Mickey Mantle or Roger Clemens . . . Even as they savor every word, readers will be jealous: Why can't we love our jobs as much as this guy does?" — Booklist "Kurkjian has collected more delightful and insightful stories than anyone since Casey Stengel." —George F. Will, #1 New York Times –bestselling author of Men at Work
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Inside Pitch: Insiders Reveal How the Ill-Fated Seattle Pilots Got Played into Bankruptcy in One YearRick Allen
The story of Major League Baseball’s shortest-lived team and its quirky characters—from the dugout to the front office. The year 1969 ushered a new Major League Baseball team into Seattle: the Pilots. After many earlier years of successful minor league ball, the city had high hopes for a similar outcome. With plans for a new ballpark and a temperamental but hot-hitting young player named Lou Piniella in the spring training dugout, Seattle was finally getting their shot in the bigs. But the team lasted only one year before going broke and abruptly moving to Milwaukee to become the Brewers. How did that happen? Jim Bouton’s popular 1970 book, Ball Four, immortalized the Pilots’ colorful cast of clubhouse characters. Inside Pitch goes beyond the gloves and cleats to tell the story of management misfits and administrative mistakes as the team was played into bankruptcy. On the fiftieth anniversary of the team’s 1970 bankruptcy and move to Milwaukee, Inside Pitch takes baseball fans on a behind-the-scenes look into the brief and quirky history of the Seattle Pilots from the unique perspective of two young team administrators. They share their recollections of the team’s seemingly inevitable collapse and the Herculean efforts to save it by many in the organization. These same young men—who moved to Milwaukee with the team—also reveal some of the administrative hiccups and hilarities during the early days with the Brewers and their new owner, Bud Selig.
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Late InningsRoger Angell
The acclaimed New Yorker sportswriter examines the inner working of professional baseball, in these essays from the spring of 1977 to the summer of 1981. Late Innings takes fans far beyond the stadium view of the field and into the substrata of baseball as it is experienced by the people who make it happen. Celebrated as one of the game's finest chroniclers, Roger Angell shares his commentary on the money, fame, power, traditions, and social aspects of baseball during the late seventies and early eighties. Covering monumental events such as Reggie Jackson's three World Series home runs and the bitter ordeal of the 1981 players' strike, Angell offers a timeless perspective on the world of baseball to be enjoyed by fans of all ages.
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Memories from the MicrophoneCurt Smith
Voices of the Game Curt Smith is “…the voice of authority on baseball broadcasting.” — USA Today #1 New Release in Photography, Baseball Statistics, Photo Essays, and Photojournalism In this second in a series of Baseball Hall of Fame books, celebrate the larger-than-life role played by radio and TV baseball announcers in enhancing the pleasure of our national pastime. Commemorate the 100th anniversary of baseball broadcasting. The first baseball game ever broadcast on radio was on August 5, 1921 by Harold Wampler Arlin, a part-time baseball announcer on Pittsburgh’s KDKA, America’s first commercially licensed radio station. The Pirates defeated the Phillies 8-5. An insider’s view of baseball. Now you can own Memories from the Microphone and experience baseball from author Curt Smith. He has spent much of his life covering baseball radio and TV, and previously authored baseball books including the classic Voices of The Game. Relive baseball’s storied past through the eyes of famed baseball announcers. Organized chronologically, Memories from the Microphone charts the history of baseball broadcasting. Enjoy celebrated stories and personalities that have shaped the game—from Mel Allen to Harry Caray, Vin Scully to Joe Morgan, Ernie Harwell to Red Barber. Also discover: Images from the Baseball Hall of Fame’s matchless archiveAnecdotes and quotes from Curt Smith’s original researchInterviews with broadcast greatsLittle-known stories, such as Ronald Reagan calling games for WHO Des Moines in the 1930sAccounts of diversity in baseball broadcasting, including the TV coverage of Joe Morgan and earlier Hispanic pioneers Buck Canel and Rafael (Felo) RamirezA special section devoted to the Ford C. Frick Award and inductees since its inception in 1978 Also take a nostalgic trip down baseball's memory lane with other Baseball Hall of Fame books: Picturing America’s Pastime, So You Think You Know Baseball, and Baseball Memories and Dreams.
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The 34-Ton BatSteve Rushin
An unorthodox history of baseball told through the enthralling stories of the game's objects, equipment, and characters. One of ESPN's Best in Baseball Books No sport embraces its wild history quite like baseball, especially in memorabilia and objects. Sure, there are baseball cards and team pennants. But there are also huge balls, giant bats, peanuts, cracker jacks, eyeblack, and more, each with a backstory you have to read to believe. In The thirty-four-Ton Bat , Sports Illustrated writer Steve Rushin tells the real, unvarnished story of baseball through the lens of all the things that make it the game that it is. Rushin weaves these rich stories—from ballpark pipe organs played by malevolent organists to backed up toilets at Ebbets Field—together in their order of importance (from most to least) for an entertaining and compulsive read, glowing with a deep passion for America's Pastime. The perfect holiday gift for casual fans and serious collectors alike, The thirty-four-Ton Bat is a true heavy hitter. "This is a dangerously funny book, made brilliant by the fact it is also the genuine history of baseball, true as ash. Above all, it is Steve Rushin's love letter to the Great American Game—perfumed with the odor of hot dogs, glove oil, Frosty Malts, and exotic things like splattered grapefruits dropped from the Washington Monument. This is Rushin throwing from the outfield to the plate, at his wordsmith best." ―Award-winning sports columnist Rick Telander " The thirty-four-Ton Bat is full of bits of information that will give even the most knowledgeable fan a new understanding of the game and those who have played it." ― Wall Street Journal
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I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice FliesTim Kurkjian
Hilarious and insightful tales from the world of professional baseball by ESPN baseball analyst Tim Kurkjian The New York Times Bestseller! In the aftermath of the Steroid Era that stained the game of baseball, at a time when so many players are so rich and therefore have a sense of entitlement that they haven't earned, ESPN baseball commentator Tim Kurkjian shows readers how to love the game more than ever, with incredible insight and stories that are hilarious, heartbreaking, and revealing. From what Pete Rose was doing in the batting cage a few minutes after getting out of prison, to why everyone strikes out these days and why no one seems to care, I'm Fascinated By Sacrifice Flies will surprise even longtime baseball fans. Tim explains the fear factor in the game, and what it feels like to get hit by a pitch; Adam LaRoche wanted to throw up in the batter's box. He examines the game's superstitions: Eliot Johnson's choice of bubble gum, a poker chip in Sean Burnett's back pocket. He unearths the unwritten rules of the game, takes readers inside ESPN, and reveals how Tony Gwynn made baseball so much more fun to watch. And, of course, Tim will explain to readers why he is fascinated by sacrifice flies.
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ImperfectJim Abbott & Tim Brown
“Honest, touching, and beautifully rendered . . . Far more than a book about baseball, it is a deeply felt story of triumph and failure, dreams and disappointments. Jim Abbott has hurled another gem.”—Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Man NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Born without a right hand, Jim Abbott dreamed of someday being a great athlete. Raised in Flint, Michigan, by parents who encouraged him to compete, Jim would become an ace pitcher for the University of Michigan. But his journey was only beginning: By twenty-one, he’d won the gold medal game at the 1988 Olympics and—without spending a day in the minor leagues—cracked the starting rotation of the California Angels. In 1991, he would finish third in the voting for the Cy Young Award. Two years later, he would don Yankee pinstripes and pitch one of the most dramatic no-hitters in major-league history. In this honest and insightful book, Jim Abbott reveals the challenges he faced in becoming an elite pitcher, the insecurities he dealt with in a life spent as the different one, and the intense emotion generated by his encounters with disabled children from around the country. With a riveting pitch-by-pitch account of his no-hitter providing the ideal frame for his story, this unique athlete offers readers an extraordinary and unforgettable memoir. “Compelling . . . [a] big-hearted memoir.”— Los Angeles Times “Inspirational.”— The Philadelphia Inquirer Includes an exclusive conversation between Jim Abbott and Tim Brown in the back of the book.
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Banana BallJesse 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.
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Ball FourJim 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
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The Baseball 100Joe 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.
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Planet of the UmpsKen Kaiser & David Fisher
For twenty-five years, Ken Kaiser was the most colorful umpire in the major leagues. Planet of the Umps is his sidesplitting tale of life behind the plate. "Two things nobody wants to grow up to be are an umpire and broke. Thanks to my career in baseball, I got both." After calling balls, strikes, and outs for thirty-six baseball seasons and more than three thousand major-league games, umpire Ken Kaiser finally called it a career. From the first day he hit a minor-league catcher with a pool table to the fateful day baseball called him out on a strike, Kaiser was one of the game's most popular and colorful characters. And in this autobiography--written with the coauthor of Ron Luciano's classic bestseller The Umpire Strikes Back --Kaiser brings to life his wild adventures from the pro-wrestling arena to the baseball diamond. This is the hysterically true story of four decades of baseball as lived and loved on the playing field, from Ted Williams and Billy Martin to Derek Jeter and Mark McGwire, from one-eyed umpires to space-age technology. As he did throughout his long and sometimes controversial career, the larger-than-his-chest-protector Kaiser calls 'em as he saw 'em.
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HomestandWill Bardenwerper
A poignant memoir exploring small town baseball as a lens into what’s right and wrong with modern America—written by an acclaimed journalist and Army Ranger who, after returning from Iraq to a painfully divided country, rediscovered its core values in the bleachers of a minor league ballpark in Batavia, New York. "Bardenwerper finds hope in the people and community around a former minor league baseball team.” —Washington Post "Will reveal more about the prospects for America than 100 news stories about politics, and will be a lot more fun.”—James Fallows, bestselling co-author of Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America What happens when a minor league team—the heart and soul of a Rust Belt town in western New York—is shut down by the billionaires who run Major League Baseball? Batavia, New York—between Rochester and Buffalo—hosted its first professional baseball game in 1897. Despite decades of deindustrialization and evaporating middle-class jobs, the Batavia Muckdogs endured. When Major League Baseball cravenly shut them down in 2020—along with forty-one other minor league teams—the town fought back, reviving the Muckdogs as a summer league team comprised of college players. As MLB considers further cuts and private equity buys up what remains, the mom-and-pop operations once prevalent in baseball are endangered. But for now, the sights and sounds of local baseball live on in Batavia—cheap draft beer and hot dogs, starry-eyed kids seeking autographs, and breathtaking summer sunsets. With a vibrant, unforgettable cast of characters—from a librarian and her best friend whose relationship deepens with every “crepuscular hour” they spend together in the bleachers, to the former hockey brawler-turned team owner who greets regulars while working the concession stand, to the iconoclastic writer with a contagious love for his struggling hometown—Bardenwerper’s Homestand exposes the beating heart of small town America, friends and neighbors coming together as the crack of the bat echoes in the summer twilight.
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My Mets BibleEvan Roberts
A love letter to New York Mets fandom— the triumphs, the heartbreak, and everything in between Childhood for Evan Roberts was defined by outings to the old Shea Stadium with his father, always with a scorebook in hand. What began as a gameday ritual replete with misspelled player names and scrawled symbols turned into an obsession with scoring every game he watched, one which persisted as Roberts rose through the ranks at WFAN. Taken together, those scorebooks form a living, breathing Mets diary spanning 30 years of thrilling— and, at times, tortured— fandom.My Baseball Bible is an exercise in memory and nostalgia, and a meditation on the things that stick with us as sports fans. With his personal scorecards as a guide, Roberts brings to life some of the most unforgettable moments in Mets lore, offering a fresh perspective on the highs and lows of being a die-hard fan. Meticulously kept history mixes with personal recollections and behind-the-scenes anecdotes covering touchstone events such as Johan Santana's no-hitter, Robin Ventura's grand slam "single", and the loss that Roberts has never quite gotten over.By turns heartfelt and hilarious, Roberts delivers a thrilling and wholly unique journey through modern Mets history.
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Why We Love BaseballJoe Posnanski
NEW YORK TIMES bestseller Winner of the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year National Sports Media Association Sports Book of the Year An NPR "Book of the Day" #1 New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game: a countdown of 50 of the most memorable moments in baseball’s history, to make you fall in love with the sport all over again. Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It's Willie Mays’s catch, Babe Ruth’s called shot, and Kirk Gibson’s limping home run; the slickest steals; the biggest bombs; and the most triumphant no-hitters. But these are also moments raw with the humanity of the game, the unheralded heroes, the mesmerizing mistakes drenched in pine tar, and every story, from the immortal to the obscure, is told from a unique perspective. Whether of a real fan who witnessed it, or the pitcher who gave up the home run, the umpire, the coach, the opposing player—these are fresh takes on moments so powerful they almost feel like myth. Posnanski’s previous book, The Baseball 100 , portrayed the heroes and pioneers of the sport, and now, with his trademark wit, encyclopedic knowledge, and acute observations, he gets at the real heart of the game. From nineteenth-century pitchers’ duels to breaking the sport’s color line in the ’40s, all the way to the greatest trick play of the last decade and the slide home that became a meme, Posnanski’s illuminating take allows us to rediscover the sport we love—and thought we knew. Why We Love Baseball is an epic that ends too soon, a one-of-a-kind love letter to the sport that has us thrilled, torn, inspired, and always wanting more.
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Downright Filthy Pitching Book 1 - The Science of Effective VelocityPerry Husband
Downright Filthy Pitching - The Science of Effective Velocity - This is a study of baseball and softball pitching speeds and how location dramatically changes the reaction time of pitches to the hitter. This is the first in a series of three books covering this fascinating new science that has already changed the game at every level. This series is about answering some questions that have been a mystery since the very first at bat in organized baseball. Major League pitchers, hitters, pitching coaches and managers have embraced Effective Velocity to help them enhance their approach to the game sine 2004. Collegiate coaches in both baseball and softball have revamped both their hitting and pitching philosophies based on this exciting new concept. NCAA championships - MLB Division Championships and countless other milestones have been accomplished using the laws that govern the confrontation between pitcher and hitter; Effective Velocity. Discover the reason why pitchers can execute a pitch in what is thought of as a perfect location and it ends up a homerun. Find out why hitters swing and miss belt high fastballs right down the middle of the plate one day and hit out of the park the next. Are taller pitchers really more Filthy? Is outside fastball really the best pitch in baseball? Is movement the most crucial factor in a pitcher's success? These and many other answers await you in this series describing this brand new paradigm for baseball and softball.
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27 Men OutMichael Coffey
The first in-depth look at baseball's nirvana -- a lyrical history of pitching perfection. There have been only fourteen perfect games pitched in the modern era of baseball; the great Cy Young fittingly hurled the first, in 1904, and David Cone pitched the most recent, in 1999. In between, some great pitchers -- Sandy Koufax, Catfish Hunter, Jim Bunning, and Don Larsen in the World Series -- performed the feat, as did some mediocre ones, like Len Barker and the little-known Charlie Robertson. Fourteen in 150,000 games: The odds are staggering. When it does happen, however, the whole baseball world marvels at the combination of luck and skill, and the pitcher himself gains a kind of baseball immortality. Five years ago, Michael Coffey witnessed such an event at Yankee Stadium, and the experience prompted this expansive look at the history of these unsurpassable pitching performances. He brings his skills as a popular historian and poet to an appraisal of both the games themselves and of the wider sport of baseball and the lives of the players in it. The careers of each of the fourteen perfect-game pitchers are assessed, not only as to their on-the-field performances but with a regard for their struggles to persevere in an extremely competitive sport in which, more often than not, the men and women who run the game from the owners' boxes are their most formidable adversaries. Along the way, Michael Coffey brings us right into the ballparks with a play-by-play account of how these games unfolded, and relates a host of fascinating stories, such as Sandy Koufax's controversial holdout with Don Drysdale and its chilling effect on baseball's owners, Mike Witt's victimization by the baseball commissioner, and Dennis Martinez's long struggle up from an impoverished Nicaraguan childhood. Combining history, baseball, and a sweeping look at the changing face of labor relations, 27 Men Out is a new benchmark in sports history.
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Where Nobody Knows Your NameJohn Feinstein
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed bestselling author comes a riveting journey through the world of minor-league baseball “Terrific…Reading this book will make you fall in love with baseball all over again.”— The Denver Post Minor league baseball is quintessentially American: small towns, small stadiums, $5 tickets, $2 hot dogs, the never-ending possibility of making it big. But looming above it all is always the real deal: Major League Baseball. John Feinstein takes the reader behind the curtain into the guarded world of the minor leagues, like no other writer can. Where Nobody Knows Your Name explores the trials and travails of the inhabitants of Triple-A, focusing on nine men, including players, managers and umpires, among many colorful characters, living on the cusp of the dream. The book tells the stories of former World Series hero Scott Podsednik, giving it one more shot; Durham Bulls manager Charlie Montoya, shepherding generations across the line; and designated hitter Jon Lindsey, a lifelong minor leaguer, waiting for his day to come. From Raleigh to Pawtucket, from Lehigh Valley to Indianapolis and beyond, this is an intimate and exciting look at life in the minor leagues, where you’re either waiting for the call or just passing through.
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The Extra 2%Jonah Keri
What happens when three financial industry whiz kids and certified baseball nuts take over an ailing major league franchise and implement the same strategies that fueled their success on Wall Street? In the case of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, an American League championship happens—the culmination of one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history. In The Extra 2% , financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team’s Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. When former Goldman Sachs colleagues Stuart Sternberg and Matthew Silverman assumed control of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2005, it looked as if they were buying the baseball equivalent of a penny stock. But the incoming regime came armed with a master plan: to leverage their skill at trading, valuation, and management to build a model twenty-first-century franchise that could compete with their bigger, stronger, richer rivals—and prevail. Together with “boy genius” general manager Andrew Friedman, the new Rays owners jettisoned the old ways of doing things, substituting their own innovative ideas about employee development, marketing and public relations, and personnel management. They exorcized the “devil” from the team’s nickname, developed metrics that let them take advantage of undervalued aspects of the game, like defense, and hired a forward-thinking field manager as dedicated to unconventional strategy as they were. By quantifying the game’s intangibles—that extra 2% that separates a winning organization from a losing one—they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay something that Billy Beane’s “Moneyball” had never brought to Oakland: an American League pennant. A book about what happens when you apply your business skills to your life’s passion, The Extra 2% is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.
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AstroballBen 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.
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The Best Team Money Can BuyMolly Knight
With a new Afterword covering the 2015 season. The bestselling, inside-the-clubhouse story of two tumultuous years when the Los Angeles Dodgers were re-made from top to bottom, becoming the most talked-about and most colorful team in baseball. “It’s as if Molly Knight ushers you behind the closed clubhouse doors.” (Buster Olney, ESPN) In 2012 the Los Angeles Dodgers were bought out of bankruptcy in the most expensive sale in sports history. Los Angeles icon Magic Johnson and his partners hoped to put together a team worthy of Hollywood: consistently entertaining. By most accounts they have succeeded, if not always in the way they might have imagined. In The Best Team Money Can Buy , Molly Knight tells the story of the Dodgers’ 2013 and 2014 seasons with detailed, previously unreported revelations. She shares a behind-the-scenes account of the astonishing sale of the Dodgers, as well as what the Dodgers actually knew in advance about rookie phenom and Cuban defector Yasiel Puig. We learn how close manager Don Mattingly was to losing his job during the 2013 season—and how the team turned around the season in the most remarkable fifty-game stretch of any team since World War II. Knight also provides a rare glimpse into the in-fighting and mistrust that derailed the team in 2014 and paints an intimate portrait of star pitcher Clayton Kershaw, including details about the record contract offer he turned down before accepting the richest contract any pitcher ever signed. Exciting, surprising, and filled with juicy details, “a must-read for fans of the Dodgers and all Los Angeles sports teams….Knight’s undercover work is like none other” ( Library Journal ). The Best Team Money Can Buy is filled with “fascinating perspectives” ( Los Angeles Times ) and “interesting anecdotes about some of baseball’s most compelling figures” ( The Sacramento Bee ).
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BallplayerChipper Jones & Carroll Rogers Walton
Atlanta Braves third baseman and National Hall of Famer Chipper Jones—one of the greatest switch-hitters in baseball history—shares his remarkable story, while capturing the magic nostalgia that sets baseball apart from every other sport. Before Chipper Jones became an eight-time All-Star who amassed Hall of Fame–worthy statistics during a nineteen-year career with the Atlanta Braves, he was just a country kid from small town Pierson, Florida. A kid who grew up playing baseball in the backyard with his dad dreaming that one day he’d be a major league ballplayer. With his trademark candor and astonishing recall, Chipper Jones tells the story of his rise to the MLB ranks and what it took to stay with one organization his entire career in an era of booming free agency. His journey begins with learning the art of switch-hitting and takes off after the Braves make him the number one overall pick in the 1990 draft, setting him on course to become the linchpin of their lineup at the height of their fourteen-straight division-title run. Ballplayer takes readers into the clubhouse of the Braves’ extraordinary dynasty, from the climax of the World Series championship in 1995 to the last-gasp division win by the 2005 “Baby Braves”; all the while sharing pitch-by-pitch dissections of clashes at the plate with some of the all-time great starters, such as Clemens and Johnson, as well as closers such as Wagner and Papelbon. He delves into his relationships with Bobby Cox and his famous Braves brothers — Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz, among them—and opponents from Cal Ripken Jr. to Barry Bonds. The National League MVP also opens up about his overnight rise to superstardom and the personal pitfalls that came with fame; his spirited rivalry with the New York Mets; his reflections on baseball in the modern era—outrageous money, steroids, and all — and his special last season in 2012. Ballplayer immerses us in the best of baseball, as if we’re sitting next to Chipper in the dugout on an endless spring day.
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Summer of '49David Halberstam
This #1 bestselling baseball classic of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is "dazzling . . . heart-stopping . . . A celebration of a vanished heroic age" ( The New York Times Book Review ). The summer of 1949: It was baseball's Golden Age and the year Joe DiMaggio's New York Yankees were locked in a soon-to-be classic battle with Ted Williams's Boston Red Sox for the American League pennant. As postwar America looked for a unifying moment, the greatest players in baseball history brought their rivalry to the field, captivating the American public through the heart-pounding final moments of the season. This expansive story captures an era, incorporating profiles of the players and their families, fans, broadcasters, baseball executives, and sportswriters. Riveting in its blend of powerful detail and exhilarating narrative, The Summer of '49 is Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam's engrossing look at not only a sports rivalry, but a time when America's very identity was wrapped up in its beloved national game. This ebook features an extended biography of David Halberstam.
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Trading BasesJoe Peta
An ex–Wall Street trader improved on Moneyball ’s famed sabermetrics and beat the Vegas odds with his own betting methods. Here is the story of how Joe Peta turned fantasy baseball into a dream come true. Joe Peta turned his back on his Wall Street trading career to pursue an ingenious—and incredibly risky—dream. He would apply his risk-analysis skills to Major League Baseball, and treat the sport like the S&P 500. In Trading Bases , Peta takes us on his journey from the ballpark in San Francisco to the trading floors and baseball bars of New York and the sportsbooks of Las Vegas, telling the story of how he created a baseball “hedge fund” with an astounding 41 percent return in his first year. And he explains the unique methods he developed. Along the way, Peta provides insight into the Wall Street crisis he managed to escape: the fragility of the midnineties investment model; the disgraced former CEO of Lehman Brothers, who recruited Peta; and the high-adrenaline atmosphere where million-dollar sports-betting pools were common.
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42: A Biography of Jack "Jackie" RobinsonFrank Foster
Jackie Robinson was one of the greatest baseball players of all time--MLB Rookie of the Year, World Series Champion, six-time all-star, MVP, and a lifetime batting average of .311. But he is most remembered for breaking racial barriers by becoming the first African American to play in the major leagues since the 1880s. This book traces Robinsons life, both on the field and his personal life--from his childhood and career in the miltary to his days in the Negro leagues and with the Brooklyn Dodgers; it also covers briefly his life after baseball. LifeCaps is an imprint of BookCaps™ Study Guides. With each book, a lesser known or sometimes forgotten life is recapped. We publish a wide array of topics (from baseball and music to literature and philosophy), so check our growing catalogue regularly to see our newest books.
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The Baseball CodesJason Turbow & Michael Duca
An insider’s look at baseball’s unwritten rules, explained with examples from the game’s most fascinating characters and wildest historical moments. Everyone knows that baseball is a game of intricate regulations, but it turns out to be even more complicated than we realize. All aspects of baseball—hitting, pitching, and baserunning—are affected by the Code, a set of unwritten rules that governs the Major League game. Some of these rules are openly discussed (don’t steal a base with a big lead late in the game), while others are known only to a minority of players (don’t cross between the catcher and the pitcher on the way to the batter’s box). In The Baseball Codes , old-timers and all-time greats share their insights into the game’s most hallowed—and least known—traditions. For the learned and the casual baseball fan alike, the result is illuminating and thoroughly entertaining. At the heart of this book are incredible and often hilarious stories involving national heroes (like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays) and notorious headhunters (like Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale) in a century-long series of confrontations over respect, honor, and the soul of the game. With The Baseball Codes , we see for the first time the game as it’s actually played, through the eyes of the players on the field. With rollicking stories from the past and new perspectives on baseball’s informal rulebook, The Baseball Codes is a must for every fan.
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Fortitude (Enhanced e-Book) (Enhanced Edition)Lyle Spencer, MLB.com Staff & Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
With every step in his journey, Jackie Robinson strived for the high ground, for fairness and impact. He demonstrated courage and patience, purpose and humility. Robinson ventured into unprecedented minefields, believing they should be traversed and knowing it was worth every risk to correct the status woes. Fortitude offers nine snapshots of Jackie Robinson from events famous and obscure, nine examples of victory through dignity, tests of time in which his soul proved consistent and triumphant. The man who made 42 the most significant number in sports, transcending fields of play, had an unsurpassable supply of fortitude from beginning to the too-early end. This enhanced digital edition features more than 25 minutes of video, including rare archival footage, career highlights and some of baseball's current stars sharing their thoughts about Jackie.
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Million Dollar ArmJ. B. Bernstein
From the farmlands of India to the fields of major league baseball, this fascinating memoir tells the story of a man who forever changed the lives of two talented young men through a pitching contest in India. The official tie-in book to Disney’s major motion picture, starring Jon Hamm. A TRUE STORY OF FINDING THE AMERICAN DREAM . . . ABROAD India is a country with more than one billion people, a fanatical national cricket obsession, and exactly zero talent scouts. There, superstar sports agent J. B. Bernstein knew that he could find the Yao Ming of baseball— someone with a strong arm and enough raw talent to pitch in the major leagues. Almost no one in India is familiar with the game, but Bernstein had heard enough coaches swear that if you gave them a guy who throws a hundred miles an hour, they could teach him how to pitch. So in 2007, Bernstein flew to Mumbai with a radar gun and a plan to find his diamond in the rough. His idea was The Million Dollar Arm , a reality television competition with a huge cash prize and a chance to become the first native of India to sign a contract with an American major-league team. The result is a humorous and inspiring story about three guys transformed: Bernstein, the consummate bachelor and shrewd businessman, and Dinesh and Rinku, the two young men from small farming villages whom he brought home to California. Million Dollar Arm is a timeless reflection on baseball and the American dream, as well as a tale of victory over incredible odds. But, above all, it’s about the limitless possibilities inside every one of us.
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Watching Baseball SmarterZack Hample
Zack Hample's bestselling, smart, and funny fan’s guide to baseball explains the ins and outs of pitching, hitting, running, and fielding, while offering insider trivia and anecdotes that will appeal to anyone—whether you're a major league couch potato, life-long season ticket-holder, or a beginner. • What is the difference between a slider and a curveball? • At which stadium did “The Wave” first make an appearance? • Which positions are never played by lefties? • Why do some players urinate on their hands? Combining the narrative voice and attitude of Michael Lewis with the compulsive brilliance of Schott’s Miscellany , Watching Baseball Smarter will increase your understanding and enjoyment of the sport—no matter what your level of expertise. Featuring a glossary of baseball slang, an appendix of important baseball stats, and an appendix of uniform numbers.
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The MVP MachineBen Lindbergh & Travis Sawchik
Move over, Moneyball ―this New York Times bestseller examines major league baseball's next cutting-edge revolution: the high-tech quest to build better players. "A convincing, and faith-restoring, case that genuine, unadulterated miracles can happen in baseball."― Washington Post As bestselling authors Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik reveal in New York Times –bestselling The MVP Machine , the Moneyball era is over. Over twenty years after Michael Lewis brought the Oakland Athletics' groundbreaking team-building strategies to light, every front office takes a data-driven approach to evaluating players. But instead of out-drafting, out-signing, and out-trading their rivals, baseball's best minds have turned to out-developing opponents, gaining greater edges than ever by perfecting prospects and eking extra runs out of older athletes who were once written off. From the latest trends in player development to the fallout from baseball’s sign-stealing scandal, Lindbergh and Sawchik take us inside the transformation of baseball, teaching, and talent. The MVP Machine not only charts the future of a sport but also offers a lesson that goes beyond baseball. Success stems not from focusing on finished products, but from making the most of untapped potential.
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A Nice Little Place on the North SideGeorge Will
Now with bonus material on the Chicago Cubs' World Series win, the New York Times- bestselling history of America's most beloved baseball stadium, Wrigley Field, and the Cubs’ century-long search for World Series glory In A Nice Little Place on the North Side, leading columnist George Will returns to baseball with a deeply personal look at his hapless Chicago Cubs and their often beatified home, Wrigley Field, as it enters its second century. Baseball, Will argues, is full of metaphors for life, religion, and happiness, and Wrigley is considered one of its sacred spaces. But what is its true, hyperbole-free history? Winding beautifully like Wrigley’s iconic ivy, Will’s meditation on “The Friendly Confines” examines both the unforgettable stories that forged the field’s legend and the larger-than-life characters—from Wrigley and Ruth to Veeck, Durocher, and Banks—who brought it glory, heartbreak, and scandal. Drawing upon his trademark knowledge and inimitable sense of humor, Will also explores his childhood connections to the team, the Cubs’ future, and what keeps long-suffering fans rooting for the home team after so many years of futility. In the end, A Nice Little Place on the North Side is more than just the history of a ballpark. It is the story of Chicago, of baseball, and of America itself.
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Loose BallsTerry Pluto
What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association. What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association. The NBA may have won the financial battle, but the ABA won the artistic war. With its stress on wide-open individual play, the adoption of the 3-point shot and pressing defense, and the encouragement of flashy moves and flying dunks, today's NBA is still—decades later —just the ABA without the red, white and blue ball. Loose Balls is, after all these years, the definitive and most widely respected history of the ABA. It's a wild ride through some of the wackiest, funniest, strangest times ever to hit pro sports—told entirely through the (often incredible) words of those who played, wrote and connived their way through the league's nine seasons.
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October 1964David 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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Game of ShadowsMark Fainaru-Wada & Lance Williams
In the summer of 1998 two of baseball leading sluggers, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, embarked on a race to break Babe Ruth’s single season home run record. The nation was transfixed as Sosa went on to hit 66 home runs, and McGwire 70. Three years later, San Francisco Giants All-Star Barry Bonds surpassed McGwire by 3 home runs in the midst of what was perhaps the greatest offensive display in baseball history. Over the next three seasons, as Bonds regularly launched mammoth shots into the San Francisco Bay, baseball players across the country were hitting home runs at unprecedented rates. For years there had been rumors that perhaps some of these players owed their success to steroids. But crowd pleasing homers were big business, and sportswriters, fans, and officials alike simply turned a blind eye. Then, in December of 2004, after more than a year of investigation, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams broke the story that in a federal investigation of a nutritional supplement company called BALCO, Yankees slugger Jason Giambi had admitted taking steroids. Barry Bonds was also implicated. Immediately the issue of steroids became front page news. The revelations led to Congressional hearings on baseball’s drug problems and continued to drive the effort to purge the U.S. Olympic movement of drug cheats. Now Fainaru-Wada and Williams expose for the first time the secrets of the BALCO investigation that has turned the sports world upside down. Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroid Scandal That Rocked Professional by award-winning investigative journalists Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, is a riveting narrative about the biggest doping scandal in the history of sports, and how baseball’s home run king, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants, came to use steroids. Drawing on more than two years of reporting, including interviews with hundreds of people, and exclusive access to secret grand jury testimony, confidential documents, audio recordings, and more, the authors provide, for the first time, a definitive account of the shocking steroids scandal that made headlines across the country. The book traces the career of Victor Conte, founder of the BALCO laboratory, an egomaniacal former rock musician and self-proclaimed nutritionist, who set out to corrupt sports by providing athletes with “designer” steroids that would be undetectable on “state-of-the-art” doping tests. Conte gave the undetectable drugs to 28 of the world’s greatest athletes—Olympians, NFL players and baseball stars, Bonds chief among them. A separate narrative thread details the steroids use of Bonds, an immensely talented, moody player who turned to performance-enhancing drugs after Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals set a new home run record in 1998. Through his personal trainer, Bonds gained access to BALCO drugs. All of the great athletes who visited BALCO benefited tremendously—Bonds broke McGwire’s record—but many had their careers disrupted after federal investigators raided BALCO and indicted Conte. The authors trace the course of the probe, and the baffling decision of federal prosecutors to protect the elite athletes who were involved. Highlights of Game of Shadows include: Barry Bonds A look at how Bonds was driven to use performance-enhancing drugs in part by jealousy over Mark McGwire’s record-breaking 1998 season. It was shortly thereafter that Bonds—who had never used anything more performance enhancing than a protein shake from the health food store—first began using steroids. How Bonds’s weight trainer, steroid dealer Greg Anderson, arranged to meet Victor Conte before the 2001 baseball season with...
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Baseball as a Road to GodJohn Sexton, Thomas Oliphant & Peter J. Schwartz
The president of New York University offers a love letter to America’s most beloved sport and a tribute to its underlying spirituality. For more than a decade, John Sexton has taught a wildly popular New York University course about two seemingly very different things: religion and baseball. Yet Sexton argues that one is actually a pathway to the other. Baseball as a Road to God is about touching that something that lies beyond logical understanding. Sexton illuminates the surprisingly large number of mutual concepts shared between baseball and religion: faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, and even sacredness among many others. Structured like a game and filled with riveting accounts of baseball’s most historic moments, Baseball as Road to God will enthrall baseball fans whatever their religious beliefs may be. In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Sexton elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to enlightenment.
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Intangibles: Big-League Stories and Strategies for Winning the Mental Game—in Baseball and in LifeGeoff Miller
“Intangibles is filled with lessons and tools for helping baseball players in all stages of their development.” —Fredi Gonzalez, Manager, Atlanta Braves “A must read for athletes looking to gain a mental edge or simply better identify their own strengths.” —Bryan Minniti, Assistant General Manager, Washington Nationals Foreword by Vince Gennaro, author of Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball A must read for all baseball players, coaches, and fans: Mental skills coach Geoff Miller has spent years helping professional baseball players improve their mental toughness—both on and off the field. Now, he’s making these invaluable lessons available to everyone who loves the game of baseball. From high school to the Major Leagues, all baseball players struggle with competition, pressure, and their own personal challenges. This book, through inspiring stories about professional baseball players in various stages of their careers, as well as hands-on tips and questionnaires, will help players evaluate and improve the mental skills that are necessary for that competitive edge. In Intangibles, you’ll find stories, instruction, and practical applications that teach players and coaches how to put forth their best mental games—portrayed through the eyes of those who have experienced those learning moments firsthand in their quests to become Major Leaguers. From a local park’s baseball diamond to dusty minor league dugout benches to the musty concrete tunnels under Major League stadiums, Intangibles meets players where they are, offering specific ways to improve performance and outlook. Whether you hope to be a big league player someday, or whether you simply want to play your best game, this book is essential for all athletes who want to learn how to overcome fear, build confidence, and develop a mental framework for success.
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I'm Keith HernandezKeith Hernandez
Legendary first baseman Keith Hernandez tells all in this gripping literary memoir and New York Times bestseller. Keith Hernandez revolutionized the role of first baseman. During his illustrious career with the World Series-winning St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets, he was a perennial fan favorite, earning eleven consecutive Gold Gloves, a National League co-MVP Award, and a batting title. But it was his unique blend of intelligence, humor, and talent -- not to mention his unflappable leadership, playful antics, and competitive temperament -- that transcended the sport and propelled him to a level of renown that few other athletes have achieved, including his memorable appearances on the television show Seinfeld . Now, with a striking mix of candor and self-reflection, Hernandez takes us along on his journey to baseball immortality. There are the hellacious bus rides and south-of-the-border escapades of his minor league years. His major league benchings, unending plate adjustments, and role in one of the most exciting batting races in history against Pete Rose. Indeed, from the Little League fields of Northern California to the dusty proving grounds of triple-A ball to the grand stages of Busch Stadium and beyond, I'm Keith Hernandez reveals as much about America's favorite pastime as it does about the man himself. What emerges is an honest and compelling assessment of the game's past, present, and future: a memoir that showcases one of baseball's most unique and experienced minds at his very best.
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The GameJon Pessah
The incredible inside story of power, money, and baseball's last twenty years. In the fall of 1992, America's National Pastime is in crisis and already on the path to the unthinkable: cancelling a World Series for the first time in history. The owners are at war with each other, their decades-long battle with the players has turned America against both sides, and the players' growing addiction to steroids will threaten the game's very foundation. It is a tipping point for baseball, a crucial moment in the game's history that catalyzes a struggle for power by three strong-willed men: Commissioner Bud Selig, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and union leader Don Fehr. It's their uneasy alliance at the end of decades of struggle that pulls the game back from the brink and turns it into a money-making powerhouse that enriches them all. This is the real story of baseball, played out against a tableau of stunning athletic feats, high-stakes public battles, and backroom political deals -- with a supporting cast that includes Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, Joe Torre and Derek Jeter, George Bush and George Mitchell, and many more. Drawing from hundreds of extensive, exclusive interviews throughout baseball, The Game is a stunning achievement: a rigorously reported book and the must-read, fly-on-the-wall, definitive account of how an enormous struggle for power turns disaster into baseball's Golden Age.
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The Book: Playing the Percentages in BaseballTom 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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K: A History of Baseball in Ten PitchesTyler Kepner
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From The New York Times baseball columnist, an enchanting, enthralling history of the national pastime as told through the craft of pitching, based on years of archival research and interviews with more than three hundred people from Hall of Famers to the stars of today. The baseball is an amazing plaything. We can grip it and hold it so many different ways, and even the slightest calibration can turn an ordinary pitch into a weapon to thwart the greatest hitters in the world. Each pitch has its own history, evolving through the decades as the masters pass it down to the next generation. From the earliest days of the game, when Candy Cummings dreamed up the curveball while flinging clamshells on a Brooklyn beach, pitchers have never stopped innovating. In K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches , Tyler Kepner traces the colorful stories and fascinating folklore behind the ten major pitches. Each chapter highlights a different pitch, from the blazing fastball to the fluttering knuckleball to the slippery spitball. Infusing every page with infectious passion for the game, Kepner brings readers inside the minds of combatants sixty feet, six inches apart. Filled with priceless insights from many of the best pitchers in baseball history--from Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan to Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Clayton Kershaw-- K will be the definitive book on pitching and join such works as The Glory of Their Times and Moneyball as a classic of the genre.
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The New Bill James Historical Baseball AbstractBill James
When Bill James published his original Historical Baseball Abstract in 1985, he produced an immediate classic, hailed by the Chicago Tribune as the “holy book of baseball.” Now, baseball's beloved “Sultan of Stats” (The Boston Globe) is back with a fully revised and updated edition for the new millennium. Like the original, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is really several books in one. The Game provides a century's worth of American baseball history, told one decade at a time, with energetic facts and figures about How, Where, and by Whom the game was played. In The Players , you'll find listings of the top 100 players at each position in the major leagues, along with James's signature stats-based ratings method called “Win Shares,” a way of quantifying individual performance and calculating the offensive and defensive contributions of catchers, pitchers, infielders, and outfielders. And there's more: the Reference section covers Win Shares for each season and each player, and even offers a Win Share team comparison. A must-have for baseball fans and historians alike, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is as essential, entertaining, and enlightening as the sport itself.
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Up, Up, and AwayJonah Keri
The definitive history of the Montreal Expos by the definitive Expos fan, the New York Times bestselling sportswriter and Grantland columnist Jonah Keri. 2014 is the 20th anniversary of the strike that killed baseball in Montreal, and the 10th anniversary of the team's move to Washington, DC. But the memories aren't dead--not by a long shot. The Expos pinwheel cap is still sported by Montrealers, former fans, and by many more in the US and Canada as a fashion item. Expos loyalists are still spotted at Blue Jays games and wherever the Washington Nationals play (often cheering against them). Every year there are rumours that Montreal--as North America's largest market without a baseball team--could host Major League Baseball again. There has never been a major English-language book on the entire franchise history. There also hasn't been a sportswriter as uniquely qualified to tell the whole story, and to make it appeal to baseball fans across Canada AND south of the border. Jonah Keri writes the chief baseball column for Grantland , and routinely makes appearances in Canadian media such as The Jeff Blair Show , Prime Time Sports and Off the Record . The author of the New York Times baseball bestseller The Extra 2% (Ballantine/ESPN Books), Keri is one of the new generation of high-profile sports writers equally facile with sabermetrics and traditional baseball reporting. He has interviewed everyone for this book (EVERYONE: including the ownership that allowed the team to be moved), and fans can expect to hear from just about every player and personality from the Expos' unforgettable 35 years in baseball. Up, Up, and Away is already one of the most anticipated sports books of next year.
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Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?Jimmy Breslin
A "hilarious" look back at the 1962 Mets and their record as the worst baseball team in history by the New York Times –bestselling author ( Newark Star-Ledger ). Five years after the Dodgers and Giants fled New York for California, the city's National League fans were offered salvation in the shape of the New York Mets: an expansion team who, in the spring of 1962, attempted to play something resembling the sport of baseball. Helmed by the sagacious Casey Stengel and staffed by the league's detritus, the new Mets played 162 games and lost 120 of them, making them statistically the worst team in the sport's modern history. It's possible they were even worse than that. Starring such legends as Marvin Throneberry—a first baseman so inept that his nickname had to be "Marvelous"—the Mets lost with swashbuckling panache. In an era when the fun seemed to have gone out of sports, the Mets came to life in a blaze of delightful, awe-inspiring ineptitude—and held a record that would stand for over sixty years. They may have been losers, but a team this awful deserves to be remembered as legends. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author's personal collection.
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The Way of BaseballShawn Green
Shawn Green’s career statistics can be found on the backs of baseball cards in shoe boxes across America: 328 home runs, 1,071 RBIs, .282 career batting average, All-Star, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger. . . . But numbers tell only part of the story. His path to success was as grounded in philosophical study as in ballpark wisdom. Striving to find stillness within the rip-roaring scene of Major League Baseball—from screaming fans to national scandals— Green learned to approach the sport with a clear mind. In the tradition of Phil Jackson’s Sacred Hoops , Green shares the secrets to remaining focused both on and off the field, shedding light on a signature approach to living by using his remarkable baseball experiences to exemplify how one can find full awareness, presence, and, ultimately, fulfillment in any endeavor. Following his development from inconsistent rookie to established All-Star to aging veteran, The Way of Baseball illustrates the spiritual practices that enabled him to “bring stillness into the flow of life.” Requiring mastery of perspective and continual management of ego, the game of baseball afforded Green the opportunity to explore his potential as more than just a ballplayer. A treasure of practical wisdom and an intimate look at what it really means to “let go,” The Way of Baseball illuminates the creative possibilities within us all.
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56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in SportsKostya Kennedy
Seventy baseball seasons ago, on a May afternoon at Yankee Stadium, Joe DiMaggio lined a hard single to leftfield. It was the quiet beginning to the most resonant baseball achievement of all time. Starting that day, the vaunted Yankee centerfielder kept on hitting-at least one hit in game after game after game. In the summer of 1941, as Nazi forces moved relentlessly across Europe and young American men were drafted by the millions, it seemed only a matter of time before the U.S. went to war. The nation was apprehensive. Yet for two months in that tense summer, America was captivated by DiMaggio's astonishing hitting streak. In 56, Kostya Kennedy tells the remarkable story of how the streak found its way into countless lives, from the Italian kitchens of Newark to the playgrounds of Queens to the San Francisco streets of North Beach; from the Oval Office of FDR to the Upper West Side apartment where Joe's first wife, Dorothy, the movie starlet, was expecting a child. In this crisp, evocative narrative Joe DiMaggio emerges in a previously unseen light, a 26-year-old on the cusp of becoming an icon. He comes alive-a driven ballplayer, a mercurial star and a conflicted husband-as the tension and the scrutiny upon him build with each passing day. DiMaggio's achievement lives on as the greatest of sports records. Alongside the story of DiMaggio's dramatic quest, Kennedy deftly examines the peculiar nature of hitting streaks and with an incisive, modern-day perspective gets inside the number itself, as its sheer improbability heightens both the math and the magic of 56 games in a row. Winner of the 2011 CASEY Award from Spitball Magazine
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Odd Man OutMatt McCarthy
A hilairious inside baseball account of year in the minor leagues Odd Man Out captures the gritty essence of our national pastime as it is played outside the spotlight. Matt McCarthy, a decent left-handed starting pitcher on one of the worst squads in Yale history, earned a ticket to spring training as the twenty-sixth-round draft pick of the 2002 Anaheim Angels. This is the hilarious inside story of his year with the Provo Angels, Anaheim's minor league affiliate in the heart of Mormon country, as McCarthy navigates the ups and downs of an antic, grueling season, filled with cross-country bus trips, bizarre rivalries, and wild locker-room hijinks.