With a Foreword by Roger Kahn, author of the legendary baseball book The Boys of Summer, here are words of wisdom and whimsey by players, managers, writers, and sportscasters, that will entertain and educate any baseball fan. The Little Red Book of Baseball Wisdom unearths a treasury of quotes reflecting more than a century's worth of history from our national pastime. Featuring contributions from: Hank AaronWalt WhitmanLeo DurocherTy CobbTed WilliamsYogi BerraJohn UpdikeDizzy DeanLou GehrigCas...
The first book to tell the entire story of why the Red Sox are now a dynasty and what kept them from winning for more than eight decades. For years, Red Sox fans were told that their team was cursed because the Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. But as Jerry Gutlon reveals in It Was Never About the Babe, what really happened is far more unsettling. With the thorough research of a seasoned journalist and the zeal of a lifelong Red Sox fan, Gutlon details the rampant favoritism and racism tha...
Longtime sportswriter and baseball fan Stan Fischler goes beyond the generic sports tale, recounting the funniest, most incredible stories from throughout the Great American Pastime's long history. Covering teams from across the league, Fischler details the following feats, and 95 more: Joe DiMaggio committed a case of outfield robbery against Hank Greenberg A spectator made a pitching change for the Dodgers Reggie Jackson earned the nickname "Mister October" One-armed Pete Gray plays cente...
Stubble scruffed up their chins. Tobacco wads ballooned their cheeks. The 1993 Philadelphia Phillies had the look of a slow-pitch softball team itching to kick some serious butt. They did kick butt, too, on and off the field. "They lived the life of professional baseball players as fully as it can be done," manager Jim Fregosi said. Though they weren't a photogenic bunch, their mugs were everywhere, on Baseball Today, on David Letterman, and on Saturday Night Live. Even President Clinton quipped...
"It took me a day to learn [the knuckleball] and a lifetime to learn how to throw it for a strike." This quote, by pitcher and coach Charlie Hough, is the best way to understand baseball's most baffling and mysterious pitch. Not even the best practitioners of the art of throwing a knuckleball know where it is going most of the time. As a pitch that floats and comes into the plate in what appears to be slow motion, it is miraculous that those who employ the pitch don't get creamed all over the p...
2018 marks 115 years since the inception of the New York Yankees--and what a 115-year period it's been! But how did the team that has since won a league-leading 27 world championships get started? In A Franchise on the Rise, veteran sportswriter Dom Amore takes readers back in time to the first twenty years of the team's existence, from 1903 to 1923, focusing on all the major players and events, including their first ten years as the Highlanders, their move to Yankee Stadium, and their subsequen...
So You Think You're a New York Yankees Fan? tests and expands your knowledge of Yankee baseball. Rather than merely posing questions and providing answers, you'll get details behind each stories that bring to life players and coaches, games and seasons. This book is divided into multiple parts, with progressively more difficult questions in each new section. Along the way, you'll learn more about the great Yankee players and coaches of the past and present, from Babe Ruth to Joe DiMaggio, Micke...
To baseball fans of today, the name "Dodgers" is synonymous with Hollywood, the warm California sun, and names like Tommy Lasorda, Kirk Gibson, Steve Garvey, and Orel Hershiser. The Dodgers mean much more than that to fans of baseball history, however. Namely, these fans remember the famed "Boys of Summer," otherwise known as the Brooklyn Dodgers, a team that included some of the most storied players in baseball history, such as Hall of Famers Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Ree...
Max Scherzer (Ballpark Greats: Pro Baseball's Best Players)
by Donald Parker
No doubt, you've heard about the Cubs' decades-long run of futility. They hadn't won a pennant in seventy-one years or a World Series in a record 108 years. To the frustration of Cubs fans everywhere, the team often missed chances with soul-crushing defeats. But after a complete teardown that resulted in a 100-loss season in 2012, Theo Epstein and his baseball staff reversed that with the Cubs of 2016, a team that was not only supremely talented, but cared nothing for all the media narratives o...
Tales from the Kansas City Royals Dugout (Tales from the Team)
by Denny Matthews and Matt Fulks
Amos Otis, Frank White, George Brett, Hal McRae, Dan Quisenberry, Bret Saberhagen, Paul Splittorff one mention of any of those names can bring about visions of great baseball, determination, and winning. However, one vision outweighs all others: the boys in blue the Kansas City Royals. The Kansas City Royals, an expansion club in the American League in 1969, struggled during their early existence. It didn't take long, however, before the Royals established themselves as one of the most success...
At 6-foot-7 and 285 pounds, Aaron Judge emerged as the biggest story in baseball in 2017 with his monstrous home runs and record-breaking ability. A three-sport athlete in high school and a Division I ballplayer at Fresno State, the Californian was drafted by the New York Yankees in the first round in 2013 and made it to the majors by August 2016. Homering in his first major league at-bat and starting in right field straight out of spring training in 2017, he gave Yankees fans hope for the futur...
Dwan listens to rock music, uses big words, and can't dance very well. So her friends - even her own family - accuse her of not being black enough. Rana, an Arab American, became a target of hate after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Nadishia is harassed because she doesn't wear the latest designer clothes, Jennifer because she's overweight. Yen gets teased for being Chinese, Jeremiah for being gay, Jamel because he won't smoke marijuana. In 26 first-person stories, real teens write about...
With a country in turmoil, Americans rally around a ballclub for the hope of a miracle. In 1957, the Dodgers and Giants left New York for the West Coast, leaving a huge void in a city of National League baseball fans. Five years later, headed by the seventy-one-year-old Casey Stengel, NL baseball was back in the Big Apple in the form of the New York Metropolitans. However, it was anything but smooth sailing. In their first season of 1962, the Mets went 40-162, a record of futility. While Ste...
For Stanley Cohen, baseball is the prism through which he views the events of the last seventy years. In The Man in the Crowd, Cohen chronicles America's changing mood and lifestyle from the years of World War II through the silent generation of the fifties, the revolutionary turmoil of the sixties through the social decay of the seventies, the excess of the eighties through the technological transformation of the nineties, up through the sobering uncertainty of the post- 9/11 present day. His n...
The Story of the Greatest Yankees Team-and Baseball Team-of All Time New York, 1936. Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez, Bill Dickey, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, and rookie Joe DiMaggio-with these six future Hall of Fame players, the Yankees embarked on a four-year run that would go down in the history books as the greatest Yankees team, if not, the greatest baseball team of all time. Over the next four years, the Yankees won four straight pennants, finishing an average of nearly fifteen games ahead of t...
Tales from the Cincinnati Reds Dugout (Tales from the Team)
by Tom Browning and Dann Stupp
Reds Hall of Famer Tom Browning and sportswriter Dann Stupp bring the Reds last championship era to life in Tales from the Cincinnati Reds Dugout. Fans of this historic and storied franchise will read legendary tales of victory, rivalry, and a bit of eccentricity. A must-have for any Reds fan.
The Baseball Maniac's Almanac (Baseball Maniac's Almanac: Absolutely, Positively & Without)
An addictive read that is sure to spark conversation wherever baseball is spoken, this updated edition of The Baseball Maniac's Almanac is 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. In its pages, renowned sportswriter Bert Randolph Sugar presents thousands of fascinating lists, tables, data, and stimulating facts. Inside, you'll find: Hi...
Questions and answers about all of your favorite baseball players--newly updated! Taking a cue from the legendary TV game show Name That Tune, Wayne Stewart's Name That Ballplayer, now newly updated with a bonus section on active players in 2019, is a unique baseball quiz book. This is not just a list of questions followed by the answers. Each question offers the reader three “pitches,” or clues. Guess the identity of the player in question on the first clue and you’ve hit a homer. Guess right a...
Professional baseball was barely into its adolescence in 1884 when a hard-playing, hard-drinking minor league club out of tiny Wilmington, Delaware-the Quicksteps-got the opportunity of a lifetime. Led by archetypal stars Tommy "Oyster" Burns and Edward "The Only" Nolan, the Quicksteps attacked opponents with a spike-sharpened, rough-and-tumble approach to the game that was only then coming into style, including Nolan's revolutionary delivery, the curveball. Managed by a wise cricket veteran an...
Like Jimmy Breslin's classic Can't Anyone Here Play This Game? on the 1962 Mets, author Ron Snyder discusses how the Baltimore Orioles became infamous for having the worst start of any team in Major League Baseball history. "I covered all 21 losses during the unforgettable 0-21 start by the 1988 Orioles. Ron Snyder brought back a lot of memories, good and bad, in his fascinating book, A Season to Forget. I still can't believe that season happened."-Tim Kurkjian, senior writer, analyst, ESPN Be...
Do you think you have what it takes to be a Major League umpire? Well, now you can test your knowledge of the game with Wayne Stewart's You're the Umpire. Divided into four sections, this unusual handbook, now in its second edition, offers "Routine Calls," which deal with scenarios and rules that typically come up in games and deal with clear cut rules-fair and foul, strike zone questions, and the like. The next section, "Basic Situations," deals with umpiring matters and rules that are just a...