"One of the most enjoyable, satisfying sports books I have ever had the pleasure to read." —Jeff Pearlman author, Boys Will Be Boys and The Bad Guys Won!Yogi Berra once said: “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” But for lifelong baseball aficionado Emma Span, it hasn’t always been that simple. Now, in this winning collection of essays, Span chronicles her love of the sport, from childhood hobby to full-blown obsession, from big break (bec...

Baseball's best writer offers an extraordinarily candid and thorough exploration of the inner craft of pitching from one of the game's best, David Cone.There is no big league pitcher who is more respected for his skill than David Cone.In his stellar career Cone has won multiple championships andcountless professional accolades. Along the way, the perennial all-star has had to adjust to five different ballclubs, recover from a career-threatening arm aneurysm, ...

Bryce Harper's unprecedented ascent to the major leagues, from a 17-year-old first overall draft pick to a headline-creating, 19-year-old rookie center fielder for the Washington Nationals, dropped him into the middle of the best season of D.C. baseball since the Great Depression. Washington Post sports reporters chronicled each moment on and off the field, from his first press conference in Washington, to watching him wash dishes after dinner at his parents' house, to his debut at Dodger ...

A collection of essays for ardent seamheads and casual baseball fans alike, The Utility of Boredom is a book about finding respite and comfort in the order, traditions, and rituals of baseball. It’s a sport that shows us what a human being might be capable of, with extreme dedication—whether we're eating hot dogs in the stands, waiting out a fog delay in our living rooms, or practising the lost art of catching a stray radio signal from an out-of-market broadcast. From learning about Americ...

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 ...

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 play...

“If we could have scored one more run than the White Sox in each game, I think we would have won the series”---so opined Boston manager Terry Francona. Sharp observations such as this have brightened the Red Sox Nation through the years. “All literary men are Red Sox fans,” said John Cheever. And while the Red Sox made it to the top of the baseball world in 2004 after a long and tortured history, presidential hopeful John Kerry remarked, “If anything prepares you to be president, it’s bein...

THE MAN WHO BATTED A THOUSANDA spectacular major-league debut—then obscurity.On the final day of the 1963 major-league baseball season, Houston Colt .45s teen sensation John Paciorek—in his one and only big-league game—went three-for-three, giving him a career batting average of 1.000. He also notched three RBI and scored four times. In the outfield John played magnificently, cleanly fielding all four balls hit to him. His was, truly, a perfect game—the most...

From its winners to its sinners, two bestselling sportswriters chronicle a dizzying trip through more than a century of baseball lore and legend.Some of the stories are celebrated—from Ruth's called shot to DiMaggio's streak to Mays's catch. Some of the men are titans of the game—Mantle, Williams, Koufax. But alongside those stories passed from generation to generation, Daniel Okrent and Steve Wulf have assembled tales both hard-to-believe and a pleasure to read. F...

The closer is the ace reliever who specializes in closing out the game without surrendering the lead. Facing a power hitter in the ninth inning with a man on base and no outs takes nerves of steel. The pressure on the mound is intense. It takes a special breed to hold it together in these situations. Legendary manager Tony LaRusso said "Sure, games can get away from you in the seventh and eighth, but those last three outs in the ninth are the toughest."It wasn't until the creation ...

When authors Billy Staples and Rich Herschlag are asked to write a baseball column for The Trentonian, they decide to put their own stamp on it. Covering primarily Philadelphia and New York, they forego the dirt and seek out baseballs role models, well known and not so well known. They sidestep the steroids and find the stories of courage, dedication and humanity the mainstream press so often misses. Shortly after the All-Star break, another storyline develops. In Philadelphia, the 2008 Wo...