Book by Meltzer, Dave

    Frommer paints Shoeless Joe as a baseball natural ("Joe Jackson hit the ball harder than any man ever to play baseball"-Ty Cobb), an illiterate hick (his table untemsils consisted of knife and fingers), and an innocent man snared by the greatest scandal in baseball history.

    He is close to eclipsing the winning records of two of the greatest pitchers to have played the game, yet few realize the full measure of his success. That his career can be characterized by such words as dependability and consistency defies all odds because he has achieved this with baseball’s most mercurial weapon—the knuckleball.Knuckler is the story of how a struggling position player bet his future on a fickle pitch that would define his career. The pitch may drive hitters crazy, but how does the pitcher stay sane? The moment Wakefield adopted the knuckleball, his career sought to answer that question. With the Red Sox, Wakefield began to master his pitch only to find himself on the mound in 2003 for one of the worst post-season losses in history, followed the next year by one of the most vindicating of championships. Even now, as Wakefield battles, we see the twists and turns of a major league career pushed to its ultimate extreme.A remarkable story of one player’s success despite being the exception to every rule, Knuckler is also a lively meditation on the dancing pitch, its history, its mystique, and all the ironies it brings to bear.

    Midway through the season, a game-changing strike ripped baseball apart, the first time a season had ever been stopped in the middle because of a strike. Marvin Miller and the MLB Players Association squared off against Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and the owners in a fight to protect players rights to free agency and defend America's pastime.Though a time bomb was ticking as the 1981 season began, the game rose to impressive---and now legendary---heights. Pete Rose chased Stan Musial's National League hit record and rookie Fernando Valenzuela was creating a sensation as the best pitcher in the majors when the stadiums went dark and the players went on strike.For the first time in modern history, there were first- and second-half champions; the two teams with the overall best records in the National League were not awarded play-off berths. When the season resumed after an absence of 712 games, Rose's resumption of his pursuit, the resurgence of Reggie Jackson, the rise of the Montreal Expos, and a Nolan Ryan no-hitter became notable events. The Dodgers bested their longtime rivals in a Yankees-Dodgers World Series, the last classic matchup of those storied opponents.Sourcing incredible and extensive interviews with almost all of the major participants in the strike, Split Season: 1981 returns us to the on- and off-field drama of an unforgettable baseball year.

    As the St. Louis Cardinals battle their archrival Chicago Cubs, we watch from the dugout through the eyes of legendary manager Tony La Russa, considered by many to be the shrewdest mind in the game today. In his twenty-seven years of managing, La Russa has been named Manager of the Year a record-making five times and now stands as the third-winningest baseball manager of all time. A great leader, he's built his success on the conviction that ball games are won not only by the numbers but also by the hearts and minds of those who play.Drawing on unprecedented access to a major league manager and his team, Buzz Bissinger brings a revelatory intimacy to baseball and offers some surprising observations. Bissinger also furthers the debate on major league managerial style and strategy in his provocative new afterword.

    Rocketed to popularity by the 2003 bestseller Moneyball and the film of the same name, the use of sabermetrics to analyze player performance has appeared to be a David to the Goliath of systemically advantaged richer teams that could be toppled only by creative statistical analysis. The story has been so compelling that, over the past decade, team after team has integrated statistical analysis into its front office. But how accurately can crunching numbers quantify a player's ability? Do sabermetrics truly level the playing field for financially disadvantaged teams? How much of the baseball analytic trend is fad and how much fact?The Sabermetric Revolution sets the record straight on the role of analytics in baseball. Former Mets sabermetrician Benjamin Baumer and leading sports economist Andrew Zimbalist correct common misinterpretations and develop new methods to assess the effectiveness of sabermetrics on team performance. Tracing the growth of front office dependence on sabermetrics and the breadth of its use today, they explore how Major League Baseball and the field of sports analytics have changed since the 2002 season. Their conclusion is optimistic, but the authors also caution that sabermetric insights will be more difficult to come by in the future. The Sabermetric Revolution offers more than a fascinating case study of the use of statistics by general managers and front office executives: for fans and fantasy leagues, this book will provide an accessible primer on the real math behind moneyball as well as new insight into the changing business of baseball.

    What begins as a fun-filled stunt, for the "average man" to pitch in the Big Leagues, comes to a nearly humiliating end. This honest and hilarious tale features Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Whitey Ford, Ralph Houk, Richie Ashburn, and other baseball greats. What happens when America's favorite sports dilettante tries his arm against the likes of hall-of-fame baseball players recalls every young boy's forgotten dream of heroics on a baseball diamond; and for that fact alone, OUT OF MY LEAGUE remains one of George Plimpton's most beloved works.

    and Lou Gehrig, who each achieved the coveted and sometimes confounding record of most consecutive games played When Cal Ripken Jr. began his career with the Baltimore Orioles at age twenty-one, he had no idea he’d beat the historic record of 2,130 games played in a row set by Lou Gehrig, the fabled “Iron Horse” of the New York Yankees. When Ripken beat that record by 502 games, the baseball world was floored. Few feats in sports history have generated more acclaim. But the record that Ripken now owns, quite possibly forever, spawns an array of questions. Was his streak or Gehrig’s the more difficult achievement? Who owned the record before Gehrig? When did someone first think it was a good idea to play in so many games without taking a day off?   Through probing research, meticulous analysis, and colorful parallel storytelling, The Streak delves into this impressive but controversial milestone, unraveling Gehrig’s at times unwitting pursuit of that goal and Ripken’s fierce determination to play the game his way, which resulted in his seizing of the record decades later. Along the way Eisenberg dives deep into the history of the record and offers a portrait of the pastime in different eras, going back more than a century.   The question looms: Was it harder for Ripken or Gehrig to play every day for so long? The length of seasons, the number of teams in the major leagues, the inclusion of non-white players, travel, technology, and even media are all part of the equation. Larger than all of this, however, is a book that captures the deeply American appreciation—as seen in the sport itself, its players, and its fans—for that workaday mentality and that desire to be there for the game they love, the job they are paid to do.

    S.L. Price, award-winning writer for Sports Illustrated and author of Pitching Around Fidel, gives a tragic but ultimately uplifting account of the death of minor league baseball coach Mike Coolbaugh, and in doing so, illustrates the many reasons and myriad ways in which baseball still has a hold on America. A Friday Night Lights for baseball fans, Heart of the Game reveals the classic heart of small-town America.

    In October of 1912, seven years before gambling nearly destroyed the sport, the world of baseball got lucky. It would get two teams-the Boston Red Sox and the New York Giants, winners of a combined 208 games during the regular season-who may well have been the two finest ball clubs ever assembled to that point. Most importantly, during the course of eight games spanning nine days in that marvelous baseball autumn, they would elevate the World Series from a regional October novelty to a national obsession. The games would fight for space on the front pages of the nation's newspapers, battling both an assassin's bullet and the most sensational trial of the young century, with the Series often carrying the day and earning the "wood." In "The First Fall Classic," veteran sports journalist and author Mike Vaccaro brings to life a bygone era in cinematic and intimate detail-and gives fans a wonderful page-turner that re-creates the magic and suspense of the world's first "great" series.

    With players Bobby Bonilla, Vince Coleman, Bret Saberhagen, and Howard Johnson, winning another championship seemed a mere formality. The 1992 New York Mets never made it to Cooperstown, however. Veteran newspapermen Bob Klapisch and John Harper reveal the extraordinary inside story of the Mets’ decline and fall—with the sort of detail and uncensored quotes that never run in a family newspaper. From the sex scandals that plagued the club in Florida to the puritanical, no-booze rules of manager Jeff Torborg, from bad behavior on road trips to the downright ornery practical “jokes” that big boys play, The Worst Team Money Could Buy is a grand-slam classic.

    In this resoundingly acclaimed bestseller, Tom Adelman tells the story of the season that led up to that classic Series and then delivers the inside pitch on those amazing seven games.

    Underneath the crew cut and behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks lurked a maverick with a signature style. Whether it was his frank talk about player salaries and mistreatment by management, his passionate advocacy of progressive politics, or his efforts to convince the United States to boycott the 1968 Olympics, Bouton confronted the conservative sports world and compelled it to catch up with a rapidly changing American society.                Bouton defied tremendous odds to make the majors, won two games for the Yankees in the 1964 World Series, and staged an improbable comeback with the Braves as a thirty-nine-year-old. But it was his fateful 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and his resulting insider’s account, Ball Four, that did nothing less than reintroduce America to its national pastime in a lasting, profound way. In Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original, Mitchell Nathanson gives readers a look at Bouton’s remarkable life. He tells the unlikely story of how Bouton’s Ball Four, perhaps the greatest baseball book of all time, came into being, how it was received, and how it forever changed the way we view not only sports books but professional sports as a whole. Based on wide-ranging interviews Nathanson conducted with Bouton, family, friends, and others, he provides an intimate, inside account of Bouton’s life. Nathanson provides insight as to why Bouton saw the world the way he did, why he was so different than the thousands of players who came before him, and how, in the cliquey, cold, bottom‑line world of professional baseball, Bouton managed to be both an insider and an outsider all at once.

    But it happens every game. Baseball’s rules, it seems, were made to be broken. And they are, by the players, the front office, and even sometimes the fans. Like it or not, cheating has been an integral part of America’s favorite pastime since its inception. The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball will show you how cheating is really done. In this lively tour through baseball’s underhanded history, readers will learn how to cork a bat, steal signs, hurl a spitball, throw a World Series, and win at any cost!They’ll also see the dirty little secrets of the game’s greatest manipulators: John McGraw and Ty Cobb; Billy Martin and Gaylord Perry; Graig Nettles and Sammy Sosa; and, yes, even Barry Bonds. They’ll find out how the Cleveland Indians doctored their basepaths to give new meaning to the term home field advantage. They’ll delight in a hilarious examination of the Black Sox scandal, baseball’s original sin. And, in the end, they’ll come to understand that cheating is as much a part of baseball as pine tar and pinch hitters. And it’s here to stay.

    The anticipation, memories, and celebrated relief of the season when it finally came together are captured in this chronicle of the World Series season of the Giants. Written in entertaining prose, the book is as much an enjoyable story to be reread through the years as it is a factual account of the events that brought the elusive title to the Giants.