The bestselling annual baseball preview from the smartest analysts in the business
The essential guide to the 2012 baseball season is on deck now, and whether you're a fan or fantasy player-or both-you won't be properly informed without it. Baseball Prospectus 2012 brings together an elite group of analysts to provide the definitive look at the upcoming season in critical essays and commentary on the thirty teams, their managers, and more than sixty...
Explains how Billy Beene, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, is using a new kind of thinking to build a successful and winning baseball team without spending enormous sums of money
“A warm, sentimental look at a baseball icon” (The Tampa Tribune).
Driving Mr. Yogi is the story of a unique friendship between two New York Yankees legends—a pitcher and catcher—who share rides, meals, and a bond that transcends the twenty-five-year difference in their ages.
The story begins in 1999, when Hall of Famer Yogi Berra is reunited with the Yankees after a...
"Lupe Wong is going to be the first female pitcher in the Major Leagues. She's also championed causes her whole young life. Some worthy ... like expanding the options for race on school tests beyond just a few bubbles. And some not so much...like complaining to the BBC about the length between Doctor Who seasons. Lupe needs an A in all her classes in order to meet her favorite pitcher, Fu Li Hernandez, who's Chinacan/Mexinese just like her. So when...
“A line-drive hit of a book” about the Iron Horse and the Iron Man—two legends from two eras of baseball—and the nature of human endurance (The Wall Street Journal).
When Cal Ripken Jr. began his career with the Baltimore Orioles at age twenty-one, he had no idea he would someday beat the historic record of playing 2,130 games in a row, a record set forty-two years before by the fabled “Iron Horse”
Keeping track of all the fascinating baseball facts and statistics can make your head spin faster than a curveball. You hear about blazing speeds (the average Major League fastball is 92 miles per hour), huge numbers (Barry Bonds hit 762 home runs), and powerful dynasties (the New York Yankees have won the World Series 27 times). Engaging infographics relate facts and key concepts about baseball, from how pitchers throw a curve ball to the crucial...
David "Big Papi" Ortiz is a baseball icon and one of the most popular figures ever to play the game. As a key part of the Boston Red Sox for 14 years, David has helped the team win 3 World Series, bringing back a storied franchise from "never wins" to "always wins." He helped them upend the doubts, the naysayers, the nonbelievers and captured the imagination of millions of fans along the way, as he launched balls into the stands again, and again,...
Ben, a sports analytics wizard, loves baseball. Eric, his best friend, hates it. But when Ben writes an algorithm for the optimal baseball road trip, an impossible dream of every pitch of 30 games in 30 stadiums in 30 days, who will he call on to take shifts behind the wheel, especially when those shifts will include nineteen hours straight from Phoenix to Kansas City? Eric, of course. Will Eric regret it? You might ask, Are Dodger Dogs the same thing...
Big league baseball would seem to have been a hard sell in 1942. World War II was not going well for the United States in the Pacific and not much better in Europe. Moreover, the country was in drastically short supply of ships, planes, submarines, torpedoes, and other war materials, and Uncle Sam needed men, millions of them, including those from twenty-one through thirty-five years of age who had been ordered to register for the draft, the age range...
This story, based on the Cubs and Mets 1973 season follows the divergent paths of Joe Castle, a rookie hitter for the Chicago Cubs and Warren Tracey, a hard-throwing Mets pitcher.
"Yahoo’s lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports—the pitching arm—and how its vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors. Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers—five times more than the salary of every NFL quarterback combined. Pitchers are the game’s lifeblood. Their import is exceeded...
A baseball star at a small college near Lake Michigan launches a routine throw that goes disastrously off course and inadvertently changes the lives of five people, including the college president, a gay teammate, and the president's daughter.
"The legendary Willie Mays shares the inspirations and influences responsible for guiding him on and off the field in this reflective and inspirational memoir. "It's because of giants like Willie that someone like me could even think about running for President." -President Barack Obama Widely regarded as the greatest all-around player in baseball history because of his unparalleled hitting, defense and baserunning, the beloved Willie Mays offers...
"Noah and his best friend Walt want to become cool, make the baseball team, and win over Sam, the girl Noah has loved for years. When Noah finds old love letters, Walt hatches a plan to woo Sam. But as Noah's love life and Walt's baseball career begin, the letters alter everything"--
In The Science of Baseball, sportswriter and injury expert Will Carroll shows how understanding the science behind the Great American Pastime helps fans appreciate its nuances and that it enhances not detracts from the greatest game ever invented. Carroll, as well as, several experts via interviews, covers topics like what makes the ball break, bounce, and fly; how material science and physics work together to make the bat function; how hitters use...
For more than 35 years, the very best in baseball predictions and statistics
The industry's longest-running publication for baseball analysts and fantasy leaguers, Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster, published annually since 1986, is the first book to approach prognostication by breaking performance down into its component parts.
Rather than predicting batting average, for instance, this resource looks at the elements of skill that make up...
From Jane Leavy, the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Boy and Sandy Koufax, comes the definitive biography of Babe Ruth
He lived in the present tense-in the camera's lens. There was no frame he couldn't or wouldn't fill. He swung the heaviest bat, earned the most money, and incurred the biggest fines. Like all the new-fangled gadgets then flooding the marketplace-radios, automatic clothes washers, Brownie cameras, microphones...
O'Connor draws on unique access to Derek Jeter and more than 200 new interviews to reveal how a biracial kid from Michigan became New York's most beloved sports figure and the face of the steroid-free athlete.
The legendary New York Yankee catcher tells the incredible story of his personal journey, offering an unexpected, and behind-the-plate view of his career, his past, and the father-son bond that fueled his love of the game. For seventeen seasons, the name Jorge Posada was synonymous with New York Yankees baseball. A fixture behind home plate throughout the Yankees biggest successes, Jorge became the Yankees' star catcher almost immediately upon his...
