2016 Who's Who in Baseball

    He holds the record for the most stolen bases in a single game, and he’s scored more runs than any player ever. “If you cut Rickey Henderson in half, you’d have two Hall of Famers,” the baseball historian Bill James once said.But perhaps even more than his prowess on the field, Rickey Henderson’s is a story of Oakland, California, the town that gave rise to so many legendary athletes like him. And it’s a story of a sea change in sports, when athletes gained celebrity status and Black players finally earned equitable salaries. Henderson embraced this shift with his trademark style, playing for nine different teams throughout his decades-long career and sculpting a brash, larger-than-life persona that stole the nation’s heart. Now, in the hands of critically acclaimed sportswriter and culture critic Howard Bryant, one of baseball’s greatest and most original stars finally gets his due.

    

    

    

    it is an alternate cover edition: ISBN 9780470622070the original entry has no cover photo

    Good began researching Caminiti in 2012 and conducted his first interviews for his biography in 2013. Since then he’s interviewed nearly 400 people, providing him with an exclusive and exhaustive view into Caminiti’s addictions, use of steroids, baseball successes, and inner turmoil.  Decades later, the full truth about Major League Baseball’s steroids era remains elusive, and the story of Caminiti, the player who opened the lid on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball has never been properly told. A gritty third baseman known for his diving stops, cannon arm, and switch-hit power, Caminiti voluntarily admitted in a 2002 Sports Illustrated cover story that he used steroids during his career, including his 1996 MVP season, and guessed that half of the players were using performance-enhancing drugs. “I’ve made a ton of mistakes,” he said. “I don’t think using steroids is one of them.”     Good’s on-the-record sources include Caminiti’s steroids supplier, who has never come forward, discussing in detail his efforts to set up drug programs for Caminiti and dozens of other MLB players during the late 1990s; people who attended rehab with Caminiti and revealed the secret inner trauma that fueled his addictions; hundreds of Caminiti’s baseball teammates and coaches, from Little League to the major leagues, who adored and respected him while struggling to understand how to help him amid a culture that cultivated substance abuse; childhood friends who were drawn to his daring personality, warmth, and athleticism; and the teenager at the center of Caminiti’s October 2004 trip to New York City during which he overdosed and died.

    A legendary collection of Brooklyn and Los Angeles greats describe their favorite day in Dodger Blue. The all-star lineup includes Carl Erskine, Maury Wills, Wes Parker, Willie Davis, Jimmy Wynn, Steve Garvey, Tommy Lasorda, Lou Johnson, Steve Yeager, Jim Gott, longtime executive Buzzie Bavasi, Hall of Fame broadcasters Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrin, even longtime Dodger Stadium organist Nancy Bea Hefley and team physician Dr. Frank Jobe, whose impact on baseball has been felt far beyond just Los Angeles.

    

    Drawing on his experience as a public school teacher, he graded each stadium using letter grades for several categories covering everything from design to food quality. He also shares colorful stories about his adventures (and misadventures) during the epic road trip.

    Which is not surprising, considering not one of them was born in this solar system. The San Francisco Giants, on the other hand, are buried in last place. A man named Belteron wants to help them in the worst way, and he's come a long way to do it. In The Aliens of Summer, we discover that there's more than one way to play the game. By the end of the season, baseball may never be the same! Baseball with a Science Fiction twist. Imagine baseball developing on a distant planet exactly as it did here on Earth - what could be more natural? This book drags just a bit at times, but is definitely worth staying with it. Mr. Ross may not have played much baseball himself but you wouldn't know it from reading this novel. It's got several very memorable characters and the baseball is very real and good

    

    

    

    When he stumbles into an arrangement to coach the Marlins, a softball team of eleven- and twelve-year-old girls, he sets out to accomplish something.But accomplish what? Girls’ little league softball, he’s told, is not about winning. Brad would just as soon win, but just teaching, he quickly realizes, will be hard enough. So Brad sets out to teach. To coax, cajole, and bribe his girls to run the bases aggressively, throw to the cutoffs, cover bases.The season progresses. Through ups and downs, through tears and small triumphs, the Marlins improve. Brad comes to understand and care about his players. But as the playoffs approach, Brad becomes increasingly aware... of rival coaches bending rules; of parents jockeying to advance their ambitions for their daughters; of convoluted off-field politics. Brad struggles to keep his focus on what matters. For it’s all so familiar. The twisted, conflicting agendas that have troubled his paths through life and career: Here they are, once again, penetrating even this small world of girls’ softball.This story about softball is also a story about people searching for meaning; it’s about sorting through the tangles, and learning a thing or two about a game.

    

    During his tenure as the visiting clubhouse manager at Milwaukee's County Stadium, he encountered hundreds of players from both leagues.This one-of-a-kind book celebrates the American pastime with its intriguing stories from behind the clubhouse doors. Poignant and inspiring, raunchy and hilarious, "Jocks and Socks" is baseball as it has never been seen--or heard--before.

    

    

    No team is better positioned to win now and in the future.Yet winning at modern baseball is nothing like it was even twenty years ago. In the years since the famous Moneyball revolution, baseball has grown to look less like a sport than a Wall Street firm that traded its boiler room for a field. Teams relentlessly chase every tiny advantage to win games and make money, even as it hurts fans, TV ratings, and players, courting bigger problems in the long run.This dramatic and insightful book takes you into the clubhouse with the championship players, as well as into the offices where teams constantly seek new ways to win—even when it hurts the game. How to Beat a Broken Game shows not only what it takes to win, but what it will take to save the sport.

    The most effective techniques in hitting a baseball are described by Hank Aaron who is expected to surpass Babe Ruth's home run record in 1974.