When Jose Bautista homered and flipped his bat in the 2015 playoffs, Blue Jays frenzy reached a fever pitch not seen since Joe Carter’s 1993 World Series home run.Those two home runs still bring tears and chills to Jays fans. And each season, each game, each at bat holds triumphs, heartbreaks and surprises of its own.In Bat Flip, editor Keith McArthur curates the very best writing about the Toronto Blue Jays, from the tragic postscript to Doug Ault’s 1977 opening day heroic...

"One of the best baseball—and management—books out....Deserves a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame."—ForbesMoneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only "the single most influential baseball book ever" (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what "may be the best ...

“Football is force and fanatics, basketball is beauty and bounce. Baseball is everything: action, grace, the seasons of our lives. George Vecsey’s book proves it, without wasting a word.”—Lee Eisenberg, author of The NumberIn Baseball, one of the great bards of America’s Grand Old Game gives a rousing account of the sport, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day. George Vecsey casts a fresh eye on the game, illuminates its foibles a...

Pitchers are the heart of baseball, and John Feinstein tells the story of the game today through one season and two great pitchers working in the crucible of the New York media market. Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina have seen it all in the Major Leagues and both entered 2007 in search of individual milestones and one more shot at The World Series-Glavine with the Mets, Mussina five miles away with the Yankees. The two veterans experience very different seasons -- one on a team dealing with t...

The New York Times bestseller by the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, capturing the 1964 World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals."Compelling . . . [ October ] 1964 is a chronicle of the end of a great dynasty and of a game, like the country, on the cusp of enormous change." — Newsweek

The Rivals marks the first joint project from the top sports writers of New York Times and the Boston Globe--and what better subject than the two baseball teams whose crossed fortunes obsess and define each city.**A Struggle for the Ages. . .BOSTON GLOBE JANUARY 6, 1920RED SOX SELL RUTH FOR $100,000 CASH--------Demon Slugger of American League, Who Made 29 Home Runs Last Season, Goes to New York Yankees--------...

This volume by members of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) presents the 50 greatest games in Montreal Expos history. The games described here recount the exploits of the many great players who wore Expos uniforms over the years — Bill Stoneman, Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Steve Rogers, Pedro Martinez, and others.The book details games from the earliest days of the franchise, to the glory years of 1979-81, the what-might-have-been years of the early 1990s, and the sa...

Today the baseball catcher is a familiar but uninspiring figure. Decked out in the so-called tools of ignorance, he stolidly goes about his duty without attracting much attention. But it wasn't always that way, as Peter Morris shows in this lively and original study. In baseball's early days, catchers stood a safe distance behind the batter. Then the introduction of the curveball in the 1870s led them to move up directly behind home plate, even though they still wore no gloves or protectiv...

The man Newsweek once called "the guru of baseball" offers profiles of top managers, sidebars, statistics, and snapshots of each decade.Widely considered to be one of the greatest minds in the history of the game, Bill James has changed the way we think about the sport of baseball. In this chronicle of field generals, strategists, and occasional cannon fodder, James writes with piercing insight about the men who hold what may be the most important spot in ...

"One of the best and truest books about baseball, and about coming to maturity in America." — TimeIn the late 1950s, acclaimed sportswriter Pat Jordan was a young pitching phenom, blowing away opposing batters for his Fairfield, Connecticut, high school baseball team. Fifteen major league clubs offered him a contract, but it was the Milwaukee Braves who won out, signing Jordan to a $45,000 bonus—one of the largest paid to any new player by the organization—...

In modern baseball history, only one team not named the New York Yankees has ever won three consecutive World Series. That team was the Oakland Athletics, who captured major league baseball's crown each year from 1972 through 1974.Led by such superstars as future Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers, in the final years before free agency and the movement of players from one team to another forever changed the game, the Athletics were a largely homegrown ...

A legendary New York Yankees PR man offers readers an inside look at one of baseball's greatest teams.Starting as a college student sorting Mickey Mantle's fan mail and rising to become the youngest director of public relations in baseball history, Marty Appel offers a unique behind-the-scenes memoir of life with the New York Yankees from 1968 to 1977. Appel stood shoulder-to-shoulder with both the benchwarmers and the superstars of the past and present, from tempe...