Showing titles in Baseball & Softball

From acclaimed journalist Ben Bradlee Jr. comes the epic biography of Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams that baseball fans have been waiting for. Williams was the best hitter in baseball history. His batting average of .406 in 1941 has not been topped since, and no player who has hit more than...

For the modern major-league team, player evaluation is a complex, multipronged, high-tech pursuit. But far from becoming obsolete in this environment - as Michael Lewis' Moneyball once forecast - the role of the scout in today's game has evolved and even expanded. Rather than being the antithesis of a data-driven approach, scouting now represents an essential analytical component in a team's arsenal. Future Value is a thorough dive into the world of the contemporary scout - a world with its own language, methods, metrics, and madness.

The definitive account of the life and tragic death of baseball legend Lou Gehrig. Lou Gehrig was a baseball legend—the Iron Horse, the stoic New York Yankee who was the greatest first baseman in history, a man whose consecutive-games streak was ended by a horrible disease that now bears his...

The reporter who broke the Houston Astros' cheating scandal reveals how a baseball team could so dramatically descend into corruption, with never-before-told details of a broken management culture, the once-revered leaders who enabled it and the scandal itself. Baseball, that old romantic game...

An ex–Wall Street trader improved on Moneyball’s famed sabermetrics to place bets that would beat the Vegas odds on Major League Baseball games—with a 41 percent return in his first year. Trading Bases explains how he did it. After the fall of Lehman Brothers, Joe Peta was out of a job. He...

This umpire manual is the definitive resource for professional and amateur umpires alike. It is the official umpire manual and rulebook for Minor League Baseball Umpire Development (formerly PBUC). This MiLB manual contains over six hours of narration of the official rule interpretations and clarifications used throughout Minor League Baseball.Changes in the 2019 edition include the numbering of interpretations. These have changed from previous editions due to the addition of 20 new interpretations for this season.

Want to know what really happened? Stan Isaacs knows. He was there! "The Shot Heard Round the World," in 1951. "The Fight of the Century," in 1971. The horror of the 1972 Munich Olympics. Secretariat's legendary win at the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Stan Isaacs saw them all live. Isaacs covered thousands of sports stories in his more than fifty years as a journalist. But ten moments stand out in his memory. Ten Moments That Shook the Sports World offers Isaacs' eyewitness accounts of the events that changed sports history.

Essential for armchair umpires and scorekeepers, this guide challenges aficionados on every significant part of the Official Baseball Rules. Few sports lovers are as obsessed with rules and statistics as baseball fans. In So You Think You Know Baseball?, lifelong baseball enthusiast Peter E. Meltzer catalogues every noteworthy baseball rule from the Major League rulebook and illustrates its application with actual plays, from the historical to the contemporary. You can listen to the book from start to finish or consult it while watching a game to understand the mechanics of a play or how it should be scored.

Michael Lewis talks about his books Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game and Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life. Moneyball looks at A's General Manager Billy Beane and the strategies he uses to compete in MLB as a small market team GM. Coach is a book talking about Lewis' high school baseball coach and the lessons that he learned from him.

The Baseball Historian hosted by Dennis Humphrey were the past comes alive through podcasting baseballs greatest moments.

Hailed by Leo Durocher as “The most significant Chicago Cubs catcher since Gabby Hartnett” and known as “The Rebel” by legions of fans, Randy Hundley was one of the premier catchers in the major leagues of the '60s and '70s. He holds the MLB record for the most games caught-160-in a single season in 1968. After an incredible career that includes a Gold Glove and All-Star status, Hundley invented the Fantasy Camp concept.

“One of sports’ most storied championship teams gets its proper due” (Tom Verducci) in this definitive history of the 1969 Miracle Mets from the New York Times bestselling author of The Boys of Winter. “If you want to know what it was like to live and witness a baseball miracle in...

Step into the batter’s box of history with The Grand American Game, a sweeping narrative of baseball’s evolution from humble beginnings to a global pastime. Author Oliver Greyson takes listeners on an accessible and richly told journey through the roots of the game—from dusty 19th-century sandlots to roaring stadiums of the modern era. Blending first-hand accounts, cultural context, and fascinating anecdotes, this nonfiction chronicle captures how baseball mirrored—and shaped—American life across generations.

Geddy Lee, the beloved, iconic Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Rush bassist, and New York Times bestselling author of My Effin’ Life, shares the stories behind some of the special pieces in his lovingly curated and extensive baseball collection. One of the greatest bass players of all time, Geddy...

As a boy in the 1890s he went looking for thrills in a rural Georgia that still burned with humiliation from the Civil War. As an old man in the 1960s he dared death, picked fights, refused to take his medicine, and drove off all his friends and admirers. He went to his deathbed alone, clutching a loaded pistol and a bag containing millions of dollars worth of cash and securities. During the years in between, he became, according to Al Stump, "the most shrewd, inventive, lurid, detested, mysterious, and superb of all baseball players." He was Ty Cobb. In Cobb, Stump tells how he was given a fascinating window into the Georgia Peach's life and times when the dying Cobb hired him in 1960 to ghostwrite his autobiography.

From 1900 to 1919, a host of great players ushered in a century of groundbreaking baseball. Many exceptional diamond icons during this period established single-season modern era records that have acted as a litmus test for players throughout history to try to surpass. The old adage that records are made to be broken isn't necessarily a practical conclusion when it comes to the great players in this book. Some of these records, set over a century ago, still haven't been broken.

A straightforward yet inspiring story of what it took to be the first man of color to break into the white world of professional sports. Jackie Robinson's story is more than a telling of his tremendous talent; it is also a recollection that showcases his tenacious spirit, bravery and the courage of his ideals.

Louis "Pete" Rogers Browning was one of the greatest baseball players of the nineteenth century. His skills with the bat made the difficult art of hitting a baseball appear easy. Over his thirteen-year career, he won three batting titles, finished in the top three nine times, and was one of the premodern era's greatest hitters. Browning is recognized as not only the namesake but also the genesis for the famed Louisville Slugger, as the Hillerich & Bradsby Company shaped the first ever custom-made bat based on his instructions.

The fascinating, true origin story of baseball - how America’s first great sport developed and how it conquered a nation.

The only Major League ballplayer whose baseball card is on display at the headquarters of the CIA, Moe Berg has the singular distinction of having both a 15-year career as a catcher for such teams as the New York Robins and the Chicago White Sox and that of a spy for the OSS during World War II. Here, Dawidoff provides "a careful and sympathetic biography" ( Chicago Sun-Times) of this enigmatic man.