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Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas
By Jesse Cole. 2023
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.
The Baseball Mysteries: Challenging Puzzles for Logical Detectives (AK Peters/CRC Recreational Mathematics Series)
By Jim Henle, Jerry Butters. 2023
The Baseball Mysteries: Challenging Puzzles for Logical Detectives is a book of baseball puzzles, logical baseball puzzles. To jump in,…
all you need is logic and a casual fan’s knowledge of the game. The puzzles are solved by reasoning from the rules of the game and a few facts. The logic in the puzzles is like legal reasoning. A solution must argue from evidence (the facts) and law (the rules). Unlike legal arguments, however, a solution must reach an unassailable conclusion. There are many puzzle books. But there’s nothing remotely like this book. The puzzles here, while rigorously deductive, are firmly attached to actual events, to struggles that are reported in the papers every day. The puzzles offer a unique and scintillating connection between abstract logic and gritty reality. Actually, this book offers the reader an unlimited number of puzzles. Once you’ve solved a few of the challenges here, every boxscore you see in the papers or online is a new puzzle! It can be anywhere from simple, to complex, to impossible. For anyone who enjoys logical puzzles. For anyone interested in legal reasoning. For anyone who loves the game of baseball. Jerry Butters has a BA in mathematics from Oberlin College, and an MS in mathematics and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. He taught mathematics for two years at Mindanao State University in the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer. He taught economics for five years at Princeton University. For most of his career, he worked on consumer protection cases and policy issues at the Federal Trade Commission. In his retirement, he has become a piano teacher and performer. He enjoys hobbies ranging from reading Chinese to practicing Taiji. This book is an outgrowth of another of his hobbies—his love of designing and solving puzzles of all sorts. Jim Henle has a BA in mathematics from Dartmouth College and a PhD from M.I.T. He taught for two years at U. P. Baguio in the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer, two years at a middle school as alternative service, and 42 years at Smith College. His research is primarily in logic and set theory, with additional papers in geometry, graph theory, number theory, games, economics, and music. He edited columns for The Mathematical Intelligencer. He authored or co-authored five books. His most recent book, The Proof and the Pudding, compares mathematics and gastronomy. He has collaborated with Jerry on puzzle papers and chamber music concerts.
This book brings into dramatic relief the dilemma, or devil's bargain, that faced the black press in first building up…
black baseball, then crusading for the sport's integration and, as a result of that largely successful campaign, ultimately encouraging and even ensuring the demise of those same black leagues. Taking a thematic approach, this book focuses each of its chapters on a singular event or phenomenon from and for each decade of the period covered, a period that spans the roughly four decades of the black leagues' existence. Thus, the book drills down on a handful of representative events and phenomena to present a history of the black press and black baseball. Themes include the many ways team owners and the weekly newspapers' editors and writers worked in concert to build up the leagues, the paired fortunes of black players and black writers, the desperation to save the Negro leagues when it became clear integration threatened their survival, and finally the black press’s response to the residues of baseball's decades of segregation.
Baseball's Best Excuses: Hilarious Excuses Every Baseball Player Should Know
By Joshua Shifrin. 2023
Explain away your bad at-bats and imperfect pitches—and have your friends laugh at the same time! In Baseball's Best Excuses, author…
Joshua Shifrin takes a witty approach in helping baseball players make sense of their worst days on the diamond. The next time a player leads his or her team in defeat, he or she can always explain the woeful performance with &“The guy batting after me is terrible.&” Or after a bad pitching outing, players might try to explain the mishap with, &“I couldn&’t control my fastball." Shifrin has crafted loads of funny—but all-too-real—excuses for pros and amateurs alike. Examples include: The pitcher was taking too much time between pitches. The fans behind home plate were distracting. I&’m not used to the dimensions in this park. The manager had me playing out of position. And many more! Whether you want to motivate the amateur in your life or laugh away embarrassing mistakes in your own game, Baseball's Best Excuses is a must-read. Complete with laugh-out-loud full-color cartoons, this book makes for the perfect gift.
The 1998 Yankees: The Inside Story of the Greatest Baseball Team Ever
By Jack Curry. 2023
"The 1998 Yankees were a perfectly constructed team. Jack Curry does an amazing job of telling the tales of that…
phenomenal group." —David ConeDiscover 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.
Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins: Inside Early Baseball in Illinois
By Robert D. Sampson. 2023
Baseball’s spread across Illinois paralleled the sport’s explosive growth in other parts of the country. Robert D. Sampson taps a…
wealth of archival research to transport readers to an era when an epidemic of “base ball on the brain” raged from Alton to Woodstock. Focusing on the years 1865 to 1869, Sampson offers a vivid portrait of a game where local teams and civic ambition went hand in hand and teams of paid professionals displaced gentlemen’s clubs devoted to sporting fair play. This preoccupation with competition sparked rules disputes and controversies over imported players while the game itself mirrored society by excluding Black Americans and women. The new era nonetheless brought out paying crowds to watch the Rock Island Lively Turtles, Fairfield Snails, and other teams take the field up and down the state. A first-ever history of early baseball in Illinois, Ballists, Dead Beats, and Muffins adds the Prairie State game’s unique shadings and colorful stories to the history of the national pastime.
Daybreak at Chavez Ravine: Fernandomania and the Remaking of the Los Angeles Dodgers
By Erik Sherman. 2023
Fernando Valenzuela was only twenty years old when Tom Lasorda chose him as the Dodgers&’ opening-day starting pitcher in 1981.…
Born in the remote Mexican town of Etchohuaquila, the left-hander had moved to the United States less than two years before. He became an instant icon, and his superlative rookie season produced Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards—and a World Series victory over the Yankees. Forty years later, there hasn&’t been a player since who created as many Dodgers fans. After the Dodgers&’ move to Los Angeles from Brooklyn in the late 1950s, relations were badly strained between the organization and the Latin world. Mexican Americans had been evicted from their homes in Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles—some forcibly—for well below market value so the city could sell the land to team owner Walter O&’Malley for a new stadium. For a generation of working-class Mexican Americans, the Dodgers became a source of great anguish over the next two decades. However, that bitterness toward the Dodgers vanished during the 1981 season when Valenzuela attracted the fan base the Dodgers had tried in vain to reach for years. El Toro, as he was called, captured the imagination of the baseball world. A hero in Mexico, a legend in Los Angeles, and a phenomenon throughout the United States, Valenzuela did more to change that tense political environment than anyone in the history of baseball. A new fan base flooded Dodger Stadium and ballparks around the United States whenever Valenzuela pitched in a phenomenon that quickly became known as Fernandomania, which continued throughout a Dodger career that included six straight All-Star game appearances.Daybreak at Chavez Ravine retells Valenzuela&’s arrival and permanent influence on Dodgers history while bringing redemption to the organization&’s controversial beginnings in LA. Through new interviews with players, coaches, broadcasters, and media, Erik Sherman reveals a new side of this intensely private man and brings fresh insight to the ways he transformed the Dodgers and started a phenomenon that radically altered the country&’s cultural and sporting landscape.
Road to Nowhere: The Early 1990s Collapse and Rebuild of New York City Baseball
By Chris Donnelly. 2023
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.
Swing and a Hit: Nine Innings of What Baseball Taught Me
By Jack Curry, Paul O'Neill. 2022
The fun and fiery memoir of All Star Yankee and five-time World Champion, Paul O&’Neill.In SWING AND A HIT, O&’Neill…
elaborates on his most important hitting principles, lessons, and memories—exploring those elements across ten chapters (to align with the nine innings of a baseball game and one extra inning). Here, O&’Neill, with his intense temperament, describes what he did as a hitter, how he adjusted to pitchers, how he boosted his confidence, how he battled with umpires (and water coolers), and what advice he would give to current hitters. O&’Neill has always been a tough out at the plate. Recalling how he started to swing at bat as a two-year-old and kept swinging it professionally until he was thirty-eight, O&’Neill provides constant insights into the beauty and frustration of playing baseball. The legendary Ted Williams said using a round bat to hit a round ball is the most difficult thing to do in sports. Naturally, O&’Neill, who once received a surprise call from Williams that was filled with hitting advice, agrees. SWING AND A HIT features O&’Neill&’s most thoughtful revelations and offers clubhouse stories from some of the biggest names in Major League Baseball—hitters, managers, and teammates like Joe Torre, Derek Jeter, Don Mattingly, Pete Rose, and Bernie Williams. Remember, O&’Neill, ever the perfectionist, was the type of hitter who believed that pitchers didn&’t ever get him out. For that incredible reason and so many others, SWING AND A HIT is essential reading for any baseball fan.
True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson
By Kostya Kennedy. 2022
True is a probing, richly-detailed, unique biography of Jackie Robinson, one of baseball's—and America's—most significant figures.For players, fans, managers, and…
executives, Jackie Robinson remains baseball’s singular figure, the person who most profoundly extended, and continues to extend, the reach of the game. Beyond Ruth. Beyond Clemente. Beyond Aaron. Beyond the heroes of today. Now, a half-century since Robinson’s death, letters come to his widow, Rachel, by the score. But Robinson’s impact extended far beyond baseball: he opened the door for Black Americans to participate in other sports, and was a national figure who spoke and wrote eloquently about inequality.True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson by Kostya Kennedy is an unconventional biography, focusing on four transformative years in Robinson's athletic and public life: 1946, his first year playing in the essentially all-white minor leagues for the Montreal Royals; 1949, when he won the Most Valuable Player Award in his third season as a Brooklyn Dodger; 1956, his final season in major league baseball, when he played valiantly despite his increasing health struggles; and 1972, the year of his untimely death. Through it all, Robinson remained true to the effort and the mission, true to his convictions and contradictions.Kennedy examines each of these years through details not reported in previous biographies, bringing them to life in vivid prose and through interviews with fans and players who witnessed his impact, as well as with Robinson's surviving family. These four crucial years offer a unique vision of Robinson as a player, a father and husband, and a civil rights hero—a new window on a complex man, tied to the 50th anniversary of his passing and the 75th anniversary of his professional baseball debut.
Part reference, part trivia, part brain teaser, and absolutely the most unusual and thorough compendium of baseball stats and facts…
ever assembled—all verified for accuracy by the Baseball Hall of Fame. First created by legendary sportswriter Bert Randolph Sugar, and now updated, here are thousands of fascinating lists, tables, data, and stimulating facts. Inside, you&’ll find all of the big name baseball heroes like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Ernie Banks, Pete Rose, Denny McLain, Ty Cobb, and a lot of information that will be new to even the most devoted fans: Highest batting averages not to win batting titles Home-run leaders by state of birth Players on last-place teams leading the league in RBIs, by season Most triples by position, season Winners of two &“legs&” of triple crown since last winner Oldest pitchers with losing record, leading league in ERA Career pitching leaders under six feet tall Managers replaced wile team was in first place Hall of Famers whose sons played in the majors Players with palindromic surnames And so much more! Not just a collection of facts or records, this is a book of glorious fun that will astound even the most bookish baseball fan. Read up and amaze your friends!
A gloriously funny, nostalgic memoir of a popular ESPN reporter who, in the summer of 1994, was a fresh-out-of-college intern…
for a minor league baseball team. Madness and charm ensue as Ryan McGee spends the season steeped in sweat, fertilizer, nacho cheese sauce, and pure, unadulterated joy in North Carolina with the Asheville Tourists."A sweet and funny book that reminds us it&’s not just the game itself that draws us. It&’s also the people." —Tom Verducci, MLB Network, Fox & Sports Illustrated, and New York Times bestselling author of The Yankee YearsIn the spring of 1994, Ryan McGee (new college graduate) bombed his coveted interview with ESPN--the only place he ever wanted to work. But he did receive one job offer: to work for $100 a week for the Asheville Tourists, a proud minor league baseball team in the heart of North Carolina&’s Blue Ridge Mountains. McCormick Field, home to the Tourists, had once been graced by Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Robinson. What could go wrong?Welcome to the Circus of Baseball is McGee&’s hilarious, charming memoir of his first summer working in the sporting world. He has since risen the ESPN ranks to national TV, radio, and Internet host, but his time in Asheville still looms large. Among the many jewels of his experience. . . McGee recounts one of the most entertaining on-field brawls you&’ll ever witness (between the fourteen league mascots who had assembled for the all-star game--an eight-foot-tall foam-costumed crustacean, a pudgy red fox, a giant skunk . . . and they were really fighting), as well as the nervous moment he oversaw the game-day entertainer known as "Captain Dynamite and His Exploding Coffin of Death." Most important, McGee details a magical summer of baseball, of learning the ropes, of the ins-and-outs of running a minor league team, and of coming to understand how the pulse of a community can beat gloriously through a minor league ball club.Welcome to the Circus of Baseball is a baseball classic in the making.
A Constraints-Led Approach to Baseball Coaching (Routledge Studies in Constraints-Based Methodologies in Sport)
By Rob Gray, Randy Sullivan. 2023
A Constraints-Led Approach to Baseball Coaching presents a new approach to baseball coaching and practice. Applying a CLA to the…
player development process across the skill spectrum from the beginners to elite, this book uses practical examples to demonstrate the theoretical principles of the constraints-led coaching style embedded in research showing the numerous benefits of the approach. This book incorporates case studies and examples of how constraints are manipulated to develop more adaptable players that can perform at a higher level with a reduced risk of injury, shifting the reader’s view of skill acquisition from the concept of the one “correct” solution, acquired through repetition, to the ecological dynamics framework focused on variability, adaptability, and self-organization. Individual chapters cover major topics such as hitting, pitching, and fielding for players from Little League to the pros. This book illustrates the underlying principles so that coaches can develop their own practice activities. A Constraints-Led Approach to Baseball Coaching is a key reading for undergraduate students and practicing sports coaches, physical education teachers and sport scientists alike as well as practicing players and coaches in baseball and related sports.
Baseball's Endangered Species: Inside the Craft of Scouting by Those Who Lived It
By Lee Lowenfish. 2023
Scouting has been called pro baseball&’s personalized way of renewing itself from year to year and a pathway to the…
game&’s past. It takes a very special person to be a baseball scout: normal family life is out of the question because travel is a constant companion. Yet for those with the genuine calling for it, there could be no other life. Hearing the special thwack off the bat that indicates a raw prospect may be the real deal is the dream that keeps true scouts going. Scouts have the difficult task of not only discovering and signing new players but envisioning the trajectory of raw talent into the future. But the place of the traditional scout has become increasingly dire. In 2016 Major League Baseball eliminated the MLB Scouting Bureau that had been created in the 1970s to augment the regular scouting staffs of individual teams. On the eve of the 2017 playoffs that saw the Houston Astros crowned as World Series champions, the team dismissed ten professional scouts and by 2019 halved the number of all their scouts to less than twenty. More and more teams are replacing their experienced talent hunters with people versed in digital video and analytics but who have limited field knowledge of the game, driven by the Moneyball-inspired trend to favor analytics, data, and algorithms over instinct and observation. In Baseball&’s Endangered Species Lee Lowenfish explores in-depth how scouting has been affected by the surging use of metrics along with other changes in modern baseball business history: expansion of the Major Leagues in 1961 and 1962, the introduction of the amateur free agent draft in 1965, and the coming of Major League free agency after the 1976 season. With an approach that is part historical, biographical, and oral history, Baseball&’s Endangered Species is a comprehensive look at the scouting profession and the tradition of hands-on evaluation. At a time when baseball is drenched with statistics, many of them redundant or of questionable value, Lowenfish explores through the eyes and ears of scouts the vital question of &“makeup&”: how a player copes with failure, baseball&’s essential, painful truth.
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.
The Greatest Summer in Baseball History: How the '73 Season Changed Us Forever
By John Rosengren. 2023
"The vivid story of a young Reggie Jackson on Charlie Finley's A's and the veteran Willie Mays on Yogi's Mets,…
both destined for the '73 series." —Library JournalA rousing chronicle of one of the most defining years in baseball history that changed the sport forever.In 1973, baseball was in crisis. The first strike in pro sports had soured fans, American League attendance had fallen, and America's team—the Yankees—had lost more games and money than ever. Yet that season, five of the game's greatest figures rescued the national pastime.Hank Aaron riveted the nation with his pursuit of Babe Ruth's landmark home run record in the face of racist threats.George Steinbrenner purchased the Yankees at a bargain basement price and began buying back their faded glory.The American League broke ranks with the National League and introduced the designated hitter, extending the careers of aging stars such as Orlando Cepeda.An elderly and ailing Willie Mays—the icon of an earlier generation—nearly helped the Mets pull off a miracle with the final hit of his career.Reggie Jackson, the MVP of a tense World Series, became the prototype of the modern superstar.The season itself provided plenty of drama served up by a colorful cast of characters, including the Mets rise from last place to win the division under Yogi Berra's leadership, Pete Rose edging out Willie Stargell as the MVP in a controversial vote, Hank Aaron chasing Babe Ruth's landmark record in the face of racial threats, Reggie Jackson solidifying his reputation as Mr. October, Willie Mays hitting the final home run of his career, and future Hall of Famers Dave Winfield and George Brett playing in their first major league games.That one memorable summer changed baseball forever.Originally published as Hammerin' Hank, George Almighty and the Say Hey Kid."It's a season-ticket to one of the greatest years in baseball history. John Rosengren has given us one of the most enjoyable baseball books to come along in years." –Jonathan Eig, author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season
Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend
By Timothy M. Gay. 2005
A three-time World Series winner and an early inductee into the Hall of Fame, lauded by Babe Ruth as the…
finest defensive outfielder he ever saw and described as "perfection on the field" by the great Grantland Rice, Tris Speaker enjoys the peculiar distinction of being one of the least-known legends of baseball history. Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend is the first book to tell the full story of Speaker&’s turbulent life and to document in sharp detail the grit and glory of his pivotal role in baseball&’s dead-ball era. Playing for the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians in the early part of the twentieth century, Tris &“Spoke&” Speaker put up numbers that amaze us even today: his record for career doubles—792—may never be approached, let alone broken. Tris Speaker explores the colorful life behind the statistics, introducing readers to a complex and contradictory Texan whose cowboy mentality never left him as he brawled his way through two decades in the big leagues. Speaker&’s career put him in the company of Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson, Shoeless Joe Jackson and Honus Wagner, and in describing it Timothy M. Gay gives a rousing account of some of the best baseball ever played—and some of the darkest moments that ever tainted a game and hastened the end of a career. His four years of research on Speaker unearthed a document that suggests that cheating induced by gambling was far more widespread in early baseball than officials have acknowledged. Gay&’s book captures the bygone spirit of the big leagues&’ rough-and-tumble early years and restores one of baseball&’s true greats—and a truly larger-than-life personality—to his rightful place in the American sports pantheon. Purchase the audio edition.
100 Baseball Legends Who Shaped Sports History (100 Series)
By Russell Roberts. 2022
Learn all about the amazing lives and careers of 100 of the greatest baseball players of all time with this…
fact-filled biography collection for kids. Educational and engaging, 100 Baseball Legends Who Shaped Sports History features:Simple, easy-to-read, and freshly updated textIllustrated portraits of each playerFascinating facts and statsA timeline, trivia questions, project ideas and more!From Cy Young to Lou Gherig, Jackie Robinison to Hank Aaron, George Brett to Derek Jeter and many more, readers will be introduced to the lives and feats of the greatest athletes ever to play baseball. Organized chronologically, 100 Baseball Legends Who Shaped Sports History offers a look at the amazing talent and skill of these players and how their accomplishments and careers have influenced the sport from its very beginnings all the way through the present day.
Gioco Senza Regole
By Irene Aprile, Rachelle Ayala. 2016
La ragazza di un giocatore di baseball gli tiene nascosta la figlia per paura che diventi un padre violento. Marcia…
Powers non vuole avere niente a che fare con il giocatore di baseball Brock Carter, specialmente dopo che gli ha detto di andarsene e seguire i suoi sogni. Ha abbastanza cose da gestire con il padre anziano, un’attività da mandare a vanti e una figlia di quattro anni di cui finge di essere la sorella. Brock Carter è tornato in città per riattizzare le braci della sua storia con Marcia e, questa volta, non lascerà che lei lo spinga ad andarsene. Marcia non può resistere a Brock, ma è decisa a tenere il suo segreto. Brock ha già perso il suo cuore per Marcia una volta. Perderà ogni sogno, incluso il baseball, quando scoprirà la vera ragione per cui Marcia lo ha mandato via?
The Boston Globe Story of the Red Sox: More Than a Century of Championships, Challenges, and Characters
By The Boston Globe, Chad Finn. 2023
Experience the illustrious and passionate history of the Boston Red Sox, one of the most storied franchises in baseball, as…
it happened through the articles, features, and lens of their hometown and national news outlet, The Boston Globe. The Boston Red Sox are the most winning baseball team in the 21st century with four World Series titles, and they're not slowing down any time soon. Two of the most prominent organizations in Boston, The Boston Globe and the Boston Red Sox, combine to share a tour de force history of the heralded baseball franchise from the very beginning in 1901, when they were known as the Boston Americans. The Boston Globe Story of the Red Sox includes more than 300 articles chronicling the team's rich history as told through the best sports writing and coverage from the beloved Globe reporters, led by veteran sports columnist and an EPPY Award finalist Chad Finn. Relive some of the biggest moments in franchise history, such as their first baseball title ever in 1901, Carlton Fisk's wave home run in 1975, David Ortiz's postseason heroics, and the most dominant Red Sox team ever in 2018. With a foreword from beloved former Sox pitcher and broadcaster, Dennis Eckersley, and Illustrated throughout with hundreds of photographs through every era, and updated through 2022, this beautiful archive celebrates two beloved organizations, and shares the hometown story of one of the world's most popular baseball teams.