This is an absorbing book, beautifully written.” —Wall Street Journal“Leavy has hit it out of the park…A lot more than a biography. It’s a consideration of how we create our heroes, and how this hero’s self perception distinguishes him from nearly every other great athlete in living memory… a remarkably rich portrait.” — TimeThe instant New York Times bestseller about the baseball legend and famously reclusive Dodgers’ pitcher Sandy Koufax, from award-winning former Washington Post sportswriter Jane Leavy. Sandy Koufax reveals, for the first time, what drove the three-time Cy Young award winner to the pinnacle of baseball and then—just as quickly—into self-imposed exile.

    Its rhythms are those of the seasons. Its memories are savored, it losses lamented. Baseball's graceful athleticism, formal strategy, and democratic spirit have ensured the devotion of Americans for generations, and writers have been drawn to this sport as to no other. With Baseball: A Literary Anthology, The Library of America presents a vivid panorama of the game that is, in Roger Angell's words, "one of the reasons that summer exists." It offers a lively mix of stories, memoirs, poems, news reports, and insider accounts about all aspects of the great American game, from its pastoral 19th-century beginnings to its apotheosis as the undisputed national pastime. Here are the major leaguers and the bush leaguers, the umpires and broadcasters, the wives and girlfriends and would-be girlfriends, fans meticulously observant and lovingly, fanatically obsessed. Here too are the teams of storied greatness--the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Red Sox--and the luminaries who made them legendary.Unforgettable portraits of icons such as Christy Matthewson, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Jackie Robinson are joined by glimpses of lesser-known characters such as the erudite Moe Berg, who could speak a dozen languages "but couldn't hit in any of them." Poems included in Baseball: A Literary Anthology include indispensable works whose phrases have entered the language--Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" and Franklin P. Adams's "Baseball's Sad Lexicon"--as well as more recent offerings from May Swenson, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Martin Espada. Testimonies from classic oral histories offer insights into the players who helped enshrine the sport in the American imagination. Spot reporting by Heywood Broun and Damon Runyon stands side by side with journalistic profiles that match baseball legends with some of our finest writers: John Updike on Ted Williams, Gay Talese on Joe DiMaggio, Red Smith on Lefty Grove.

    They have provided the very definition of a dynasty. Pinstripes and pennants. Aprils and Octobers. The House That Ruth Built in the city that never sleeps. A century of greatness embodied in one city and its team. But it hasn't always been that way, and it has never been easy. Yankees Century is the full history of this storied franchise, with the most compelling and authoritative narrative of the team ever written, more than 250 stunning photographs, and essays by the game's colorful scribes. On an unforgettable journey through time, you'll read about the unlikely scheme to build a ballpark in Manhattan atop solid rock, the magic of the Bambino rounding the bases, the stately DiMaggio taking the field, Lou Gehrig's poignant goodbye, Yogi Berra's hilarious verbal gaffes, Jack Chesbro's legendary spitball, Derek Jeter's mind-bending plays, and much more.

    Each spread features statistics, a brief profile of the player, and a full-page illustration.

    He plays for the fabled Seapuit Seawolves and dreams of making the Big Show. But a new coach, the scowling Bruno Riazzi, a former pro catcher, resents the kid's celebrity status and decides to knock him down a peg or two. And he stops at nothing to make it happen.Humiliated, Jack loses his lifelong art, and with it his passion for the game, as well as, mysteriously, his ability to throw. A devastated Jack Faber is released from the St. Charles College roster. But the Seawolves coaches won't give up on him. They bring Jack back to Cape Marlin, determined to help him rediscover his lost talent. He finds himself again under the summer sun, coaches and old friends standing by him. But in the end it will be up to Jack.Based on a true story, Slider celebrates the national pastime, a game that can break grown men's hearts — as well as make them whole again.

    The book is divided into sections by subject. Within each chapter, Major League ballplayers analyze different aspects of the game, such as "The Art of Pitching" with Pedro Martinez, or "The Art of Clutch Hitting, " with Mo Vaughn. Each feature includes an in-depth interview with the athlete, a glossary of baseball terms, a historical anecdote, and an example of a real-life game situation and the solution for handling it. Best of all, the players share their childhood baseball memories.More than just a how-to guide for playing baseball, Big League Baseball Tips for Kids is an intimate look at how professionals do what they do, and how the struggles and influences of their early years informed their later successes.Major League ball players featured:-- Boston Red Sox -- Nomar Garciaparra, Pedro Martinez, John Valentin, Darren Lewis, Jason Varitek, and former MVP Wade Boggs-- New York Yankees -- Derek Jeter and Scott Brosius-- Baltimore Orioles -- Jerry Hairston and Brady Anderson-- Tampa Bay Devil Rays -- John Flaherty-- Seattle Mariners -- Aaron Sele-- Cinncinnati Reds -- Sean Casey-- Texas Rangers -- Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez-- Cleveland Indians -- Roberto Alomar-- Anaheim Angels -- Mo Vaughn--Kansas City Royals -- Luis Alicea-- New York Mets -- Matt Lawton-- Toronto Blue Jays -- Paul Quantrill and Carlos Delgado

    We loved the game and we liked to play it. But we thought that we should have and could have made the major leagues." The Negro Leagues had some of the best talent in the game, but from their earliest days they were segregated from those leagues that received all the recognition. This complete history of the Negro Leagues begins with the second half of the nineteenth century, discussing the early attempts by African American players to be allowed to play with white teammates, and progressing through the creation of the "Gentleman�s Agreement" in the 1890s which kept baseball segregated. It then discusses the establishment of the first successful Negro League in 1920 and examines various aspects of the game for the players (lodgings, travel accommodations, families, off-season jobs, play and life in Latin America, difficulties encountered because of race). The history ends in 1960, when the Birmingham Black Barons went out of business and took the Negro Leagues with them. Also included are stories of individual players, owners, umpires, and others involved with the Negro Leagues in the United States and in Latin America.

    Highlights of every decade, plus a summary of each season's World Series Special "Season's Best" list and "Player of the Year" section for every year. More than 1,000 photos.

    We re-create what we have known and we imagine what we are going to do next. Maybe that’s what poets do, too.” Poetry and baseball are occasions for well-put passion and expressive pondering, and just as passionate attention transforms the prose of everyday life into poetry, it also transforms this game we write about, play, or watch. Editors Brooke Horvath and Tim Wiles unite their own passion for baseball and poetry in this collection, Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems, providing a forum for ninety-two poets. Line after line, like baseball itself game after game and season after season, these poems manage to make the old and the familiar new and surprising.The poems in these pages invite interrogation, and the reader—like the true baseball fan—must be willing to play the game, for these poems are fun, fresh, angry, nostalgic, meditative, and meant to be read aloud. They are keen on taking us deeply into baseball as sport and intent on offering countless metaphors for exploring history, religion, love, family, and self-identity. Each poem delivers images of pure beauty as the poets speak of murder and ghost runners and old ball gloves, of baseball as a tie that binds families—and indeed the nation—together, of the game as a stage upon which no-nonsense grit and skill are routinely displayed, and of the delight experienced in being one amid a mindlessly happy crowd. This book is true to the game’s long season and to the lives of those the game engages.

    To commemorate this historic year, Ray Robinson and Christopher Jennison, who collaborated on Yankee Stadium, have pulled together a striking volume illuminating all of the greatest moments of the Bronx Bombers. All the great Yankee luminaries are here, from Babe Ruth to Bernie Williams, Lou Gehrig to Reggie Jackson, Mickey Mantle to Derek Jeter-with every Tom (Tresh), Dick (Howser), and Harry (Howell, the franchise's first winning pitcher) thrown in. Featuring more than 150 photographs, contributions from experts such as Hall-of-Famer Yogi Berra and commentator Bob Costas, and picks for the "all-time Yankee team," "Pennants and Pinstripes" will be the ultimate tribute to the century's ultimate ball club-and a must-have for any baseball fan.

    In this richly enjoyable collection of O'Rourke's work—the first in nearly fifty years and including six stories never before in book form—his heroes compete alongside such real baseball greats as Roy Campanella, Joe DiMaggio, and Willie Mays, while confronting the all-too-human limitations of injury, age, and envy. In "The Catcher," the longtime star of the St. Louis Blues returns for a game facing his old team and the heartless owner who traded him away. "One Ounce of Common Sense" portrays a dramatic pennant race in which a veteran shortstop counsels a young teammate at odds with the team owner during contract negotiations, only to be benched for this so-called insubordination. And in "Nothing New," a player modeled on the young Jackie Robinson strides across the color line and makes history with an unforgettable dash around the bases. O'Rourke captures the essence of baseball in elegiac, unsentimentalized fiction that will endure as long as fans of the national pastime love the game.

    Charles P. Korr also draws on interviews with ballplayers, journalists, and labor executives to construct an insider's view of the successful sports union's formative years.

    The PROSPECTUS gives the final word on what the players did, why they did it, and what they're going to do in the future. Readers will get the in-depth statistics covering every crack of the bat from the 2001 season that they would expect. They'll also find entertaining essays on every team and articles on special-interest topics not found anywhere else. Sprinkled throughout are the same touches of irreverent humor that BASEBALL PROSPECTUS readers enjoy and expect. The exclusive Davenport Translations again compare performances across leagues and ballparks, and the PROSPECTUS provides new ways to analyze everything, from starting pitchers' win-loss records to pitcher workloads to bullpen effectiveness. Find out why ESPN's Peter Gammons says, "BASEBALL PROSPECTUS's rankings are an invaluable tool. If more general managers understood them, they wouldn't do some of the trades they do."

    This book is a celebration of a century of a sport, which, while never losing its pre-eminent place, has seen a remarkable surge of popularity in recent years.

    In an era that saw the likes of players such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Satchel Paige and other legends of the game such as Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and John McGraw, baseball easily maintained its place as the nation's foremost athletic pastime. In this history, noted baseball historian Charles C. Alexander conveys a sense of what baseball was like in the Depression years and what it meant to millions of Americans who could no longer afford to attend games on a regular basis.

    With characteristic panache, Graham tells us how it was: “This was New York in the elegant eighties and these were the Giants, fashioned in elegance, playing on the Polo Grounds. . . . It was the New York of the brownstone house and the gaslit streets, of the top hat and the hansom cab, of oysters and champagne and perfecto cigars, of [actress] Ada Rehan and Oscar Wilde and the young John L. Sullivan. It also was the New York of the Tenderloin and the Bowery.”            One of fifteen team histories commissioned by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in the 1940s and 1950s, The New York Giants was first published in 1952. Some of the most colorful characters in the game pass through these pages as well as some of baseball’s brightest legends, many of whom appear in the book’s twenty-three photographs.            Hall of Famers Christy Mathewson, Mel Ott, Frankie Frisch, Carl Hubbell, and Bill Terry star among the headliners in the illustrious history of the Giants. Other Hall of Famers include John McGraw, “Beauty” Dave Bancroft, “Iron Man” Joe McGinnity, Leo Durocher, Buck Ewing, Amos Rusie, John Montgomery Ward, and Ross Youngs.            In his foreword, Ray Robinson gives his impression of Frank Graham: “I had been reading Graham’s warm ‘conversation pieces’ for some years, first in the New York Sun, then in the Journal-American, but I had no idea how kind and modest he was. The columnist Red Smith, Graham’s good friend, once referred to him as ‘a digger for truth, a reporter of facts . . . with an incredibly accurate ear and an implausibly retentive memory.’ To Smith, Graham was the finest sports columnist of his time.”

    To mark the 100th anniversary, one of baseball's most remarkable team's meets one of the country's most respected newspapers in an an authoritative, colorful history. Five outstanding sports journalists of The New York Times have written original chapters that cover the Yankee saga in fine detail and revealing anecdote. Along with 150 (CK) photographs from the library of the Baseball Hall of Fame and The Times's own extensive archives the combination is a uniquely thorough and engrossing story of the Yankee century-truly a book that lives up to the unbeatable record. With decades of experience, award-winning sports journalists Dave Anderson, Murray Chass, Robert Lipsyte, Buster Olney, and George Vescey, provide a shrewdly informed perspective on the Yankees and their place in the annals of baseball. Through the stories and photographs of the New York Yankees Illustrated History fans can enjoy-once again or for the first time---the many unforgettable moments in Yankee history of the game and the legendary players who made them happen. With great reporting and fine writing, this beautiful book is the perfect gift for every baseball lover.

    For some, baseball means one heartbreaking or heroic moment. And for others, it means a father, a friend, or an old flame who shared a game for a day or for a lifetime. To create this marvelous book, more than 150 writers, athletes, celebrities, politicians, presidents, and pundits were asked what baseball means to them. The answers came back with richness, wonder, insight, and poetry. A fascinating portrait of baseball's beautiful nuances, What Baseball means to me marks the greatest collection of original essays ever written about the game. Accompanied by more than 200 classic baseball photographs, the voices in this book bring alive the game in all its venues-in the past and present, in wartime and hard times, in Cuba, in Wrigley Field or Yankee Stadium. We meet players in a different light: including Paul Molitor returning a baseball to a trusting boy named Dan Jansen, Derek Jeter as depicted by his dad, the Toledo Mud Hens as seen through the eyes of Christine Brennan, and Pedro Martinez talking about baseball as a way of life in his native Dominican Republic. Most of all, we meet ordinary Americans, like the kids Rudy Giuliani grew up with in Brooklyn, or the man in Philadelphia who transforms himself for every home game from mild-mannered Tom Burgoyne to the Phillie Phanatic. Funny, moving, and each one a diamond in the rough of the American consciousness, the essays in this book are the ultimate baseball conversation. Paying homage to the perfect sport, here is the perfect companion for all our personal baseball journeys.

    A biography of the Seattle Mariners hitting and fielding star who won the MVP and Rookie of the Year Award in 2001 and became the first successful Japanese player in the Major Leagues.

    Newly revised and fully updated through the 2002 season, THE WORLD SERIES combines lively discussion with thorough statistics to tell the story of every World Series ever played, from the 1903 battle between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Detroit Tigers to the Subway Series of 2000 that pitted the Yankees against the Mets as well as the eagerly awaited battle for the pennant in October 2002. The author's historical research uncovers all the little-known facts and stories from each game, along with baseball legends and unforgettable moments. In addition, detailed box scores and line scores include the statistics that baseball fans covet, with every number for every player who ever appeared in a World Series game. Beautiful photographs bring every game to life, illustrating the evolution of the game.

    This story begins in the 1930s, when black baseball was gaining popularity, and goes through to the 1980s.

    And these Dodgers produced their share of legends: Wee Willie Keeler, Mickey Owen, Dazzy Vance, Babe Herman, Charles H. Ebbets, Wilbert Robinson, Charles Byrne, Casey Stengel, Leo Durocher, Zack Wheat, Burleigh Grimes, Steve McKeever, Ed McKeever, Larry MacPhail, Max Carey, Dixie Walker, Branch Rickey, Dolph Camilli, Hugh Casey, Nap Rucker, Van Lingle Mungo, and the voice of the Dodgers, Red Barber.            Dealing with the various executives, Graham notes that in the beginning, Charles Ebbets did everything from selling tickets and scorecards to helping out in the front office. In the 1930s, the inept Dodgers provoked laughter until Larry MacPhail moved from Cincinnati to Brooklyn in 1938; one year later, the Dodgers were contenders. When MacPhail departed for the Army after the 1942 season, Branch Rickey succeeded him. Rickey’s scouts signed every youngster who could hit, run, or throw, even though many of them were headed for the war. “When they came back in 1946,” Lang explains, “Rickey had cornered the market on the nation’s young talent—more than six hundred ballplayers.”            This history of the Brooklyn Dodgers contains eighteen black-and-white illustrations.

    These famous Cardinals are known by baseball fans around the world. But who and what were the predecessors of these modern-day players and their team? In Before They Were Cardinals, Jon David Cash examines the infancy of major-league baseball in St. Louis during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. His in-depth analysis begins with an exploration of the factors that motivated civic leaders to form the city’s first major-league ball club. Cash delves into the economic trade rivalry between Chicago and St. Louis and examines how St. Louis’s attempt to compete with Chicago led to the formation of the St. Louis Brown Stockings in 1875. He then explains why, three years later, despite its initial success, St. Louis baseball quickly vanished from the big-league map. St. Louis baseball was revived with the arrival of German immigrant saloon owner Chris Von der Ahe. Cash explains how Von der Ahe, originally only interested in concession rights, purchased a controlling interest in the Brown Stockings. This riveting account follows the team after Von der Ahe’s purchase, from the formation of the American Association, to its merger in 1891 with the rival National League. He chronicles Von der Ahe’s monetary downturn, and the club’s decline as well, following the merger. Before They Were Cardinals provides vivid portraits of the ball players and the participants involved in the baseball war between the National League and the American Association. Cash points out significant differences, such as Sunday games and beer sales, between the two Leagues. In addition, excerpts taken from Chicago and St. Louis newspapers make the on-field contests and off-field rivalries come alive. Cash concludes this lively historical narrative with an appendix that traces the issue of race in baseball during this period. The excesses of modern-day baseball—players jumping contracts or holding out for more money, gambling on games, and drinking to excess; owners stealing players and breaking agreements—were all present in the nineteenth-century sport. Players were seen then, as they are now, as an embodiment of their community. This timely treatment of a fascinating period in St. Louis baseball history will appeal to both baseball aficionados and those who want to understand the history of baseball itself.

    The Southern Association, which was formed in 1901 and had teams in several prominent Southern cities, was part of that group. In the mid 1930s, league directors decided to make the old Southern League, which had enjoyed an off-and-on existence since 1885, part of the Southern Association. This work is a complete history of the Southern Association, beginning with 1885, the year the Southern League began, and ending with 1961, the year it went out of business. Each chapter covers one year of the Southern Association's history and contains an essay describing a team, player, or trend in that particular year, and a list of teams in order of winning percentage. Details provided for each team include its record, winning percentage, the number of games it finished behind first place, its manager, and a list of its known players, their positions and statistics. The statistics for hitters include games played, at bats, runs, hits, RBIs, doubles, triples, home runs, walks, strikeouts, stolen bases, and batting average. Pitchers are listed separately and listed in order of games won. Statistics for pitchers include wins, losses, winning percentage, games played and started, complete games, shutouts, innings pitched, hits allowed, walks, strikeouts, and ERAs.

    His major league debut was on August 31, 1996 and he hit a home run in his first at-bat. This phenomenal start was a sign of the sort of play to come from Nomar the following seasons. Since then, he has played on numerous All-Star teams, annihilated major league records, and become a fan favorite. This book, with its full-color photography and award-winning writing, illustrates what makes Nomar Garciaparra one of baseball's most recognizable and popular superstars.