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.

    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.

    In October 1908, though, no one would have laughed: The Cubs were, without doubt, baseball's greatest team—the first dynasty of the 20th century.Crazy '08 recounts the 1908 season—the year when Peerless Leader Frank Chance's men went toe to toe to toe with John McGraw and Christy Mathewson's New York Giants and Honus Wagner's Pittsburgh Pirates in the greatest pennant race the National League has ever seen. The American League has its own three-cornered pennant fight, and players like Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and the egregiously crooked Hal Chase ensured that the junior circuit had its moments. But it was the National League's—and the Cubs'—year.Crazy '08, however, is not just the exciting story of a great season. It is also about the forces that created modern baseball, and the America that produced it. In 1908, crooked pols run Chicago's First Ward, and gambling magnates control the Yankees. Fans regularly invade the field to do handstands or argue with the umps; others shoot guns from rickety grandstands prone to burning. There are anarchists on the loose and racial killings in the town that made Lincoln. On the flimsiest of pretexts, General Abner Doubleday becomes a symbol of Americanism, and baseball's own anthem, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," is a hit.Picaresque and dramatic, 1908 is a season in which so many weird and wonderful things happen that it is somehow unsurprising that a hairpiece, a swarm of gnats, a sudden bout of lumbago, and a disaster down in the mines all play a role in its outcome. And sometimes the events are not so wonderful at all. There are several deaths by baseball, and the shadow of corruption creeps closer to the heart of baseball—the honesty of the game itself. Simply put, 1908 is the year that baseball grew up.Oh, and it was the last time the Cubs won the World Series.Destined to be as memorable as the season it documents, Crazy '08 sets a new standard for what a book about baseball can be.

    During his 27-year career, “The Ryan Express” was named an eight-time All-Star and amassed seven no-hitters and more than 5,700 strikeouts—more than any other pitcher in major-league history. This comprehensive biography of Nolan Ryan follows the baseball legend’s journey from the start of his professional career in 1965 to his retirement in 1993. Hall of Famers, journeymen, clubhouse workers, coaches, and trainers offer their own unique take on Ryan in this book filled with never-before-told anecdotes and personal recollections and peppered with eyewitness accounts of his greatest games. In the pages of this history, readers will discover what made Nolan Ryan one of the most revered and respected athletes and citizens of his time.

    The author of "Beyond the Shadow of the Senators" explores the life of all-star center fielder Curt Flood and the landmark Supreme Court case that changed professional sports forever.

    They couldn't be more wrong.In this award-winning book, Alan Schwarz - whom bestselling Moneyball author Michael Lewis calls "one of today's best baseball journalists" - provides the first-ever history of baseball statistics, showing how baseball and its numbers have been inseparable ever since the pastime's birth in 1845. He tells the history of this obsession through the lives of the people who felt it most: Henry Chadwick, the 19th-century writer who invented the first box score and harped endlessly about which statistics mattered and which did not; Allan Roth, Branch Rickey's right-hand numbers man with the late-1940s Brooklyn Dodgers; Earnshaw Cook, a scientist and Manhattan Project veteran who retired to pursue inventing the perfect baseball statistic; John Dewan, a former Strat-O-Matic maven who built STATS Inc. into a multimillion-dollar powerhouse for statistics over the Internet; and dozens more.Schwarz paints a history not just of baseball statistics, but of the soul of the sport itself. Named as ESPN's 2004 Baseball Book of the Year, The Numbers Game will be an invaluable part of any fan's library and go down as one of the sport's classic books.

    Johnstone, an outfielder and pinch hitter for the Dodgers, Cubs, Padres, Yankees, Phillies, A's, and White Sox shares humorous stories about his teammates and career.

    Even before their epic pitching duel, Marichal and Spahn already had a lot in common. Future Hall of Famers with high-kicking deliveries, they were shaped into winners by character-building experiences in the military. Spahn had been baseball's most winning pitcher in the 1950s, and Marichal would be equally dominant in the 1960s. The Braves' Spahn and the Giants' Marichal began their duel in San Francisco's cold and windy Candlestick Park. Four hours later, the two pitching legends were deadlocked in a scoreless tie when Willie Mays hit a walk-off home run to end the greatest game ever pitched. In between, Marichal and Spahn each threw more than 200 pitches and went 16 innings without relief. Considering today's culture of pitch counts and coddled arms, it was proved to be a legendary night that won't be repeated ever again.

    The former and latter have been covered extensively. Yet there has never been a book detailing the biggest drug trials in baseball history. The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven tells the whole story in all its shocking details. The MLB participants were among the game's elite, as a virtual all-star team had come to Pittsburgh. Implicated as cocaine users: Keith Hernandez, Dave Parker, Lee Mazzilli, Dusty Baker, Lonnie Smith, Joaquin Andujar, John Milner, Dale Berra. Mentioned as using amphetamines: Willie Mays, Willie Stargell. But the guys who took the fall for these superstars were just average fans, not heavy hitters or major drug dealers, and this book reveals the often comic circumstances of how they set up deals--and how they got busted. In 1985, it seemed the league was poised to implement a drug testing policy for the players. Obviously, that didn't happen, and because of this inaction, the steroid era came along--and with it all of the broken records that transformed the sport. That's what makes this story so relevant today.

    In the wake of that defeat, author and Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy has updated his bewitching story of the curse that has lain over the Red Sox since they sold Babe Ruth to the hated Yankees in 1920. Here he sheds light on classic Sox debacles?from Johnny Pesky?s so- called hesitation throw, to the horrifying dribbler that slithered between Bill Buckner?s legs, to last year?s stunning extra-inning home run that kept the Sox without a World Championship for yet another year. Lively and filled with anecdotes, this is baseball folklore at its best.

    Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the fantastic scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation's leading gamblers to throw the Series in Cincinnati. Mr. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial. Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the motives and backgrounds of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Here, too, is a graphic picture of the American underworld that managed the fix, the deeply shocked newspapermen who uncovered the story, and the war-exhausted nation that turned with relief and pride to the Series, only to be rocked by the scandal. Far more than a superbly told baseball story, this is a compelling slice of American history in the aftermath of World War I and at the cusp of the Roaring Twenties.

    From the Preface:This new enlarged edition of The Glory of Their Times contains the complete text and all the photographs that were in the original book, published in 1966, plus for the first time the first-person stories of four additional major-league players - George Gibson, Babe Herman, Specs Toporcer, and Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg.

    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.

    At seventy-nine, after twenty years of managing and fifty-seven years with one franchise, this Hall of Famer still suits up in Dodger Blue every day. He also keeps a travel schedule that would dizzy the most frequent of frequent fliers. The embodiment of the American dream, Lasorda went from a scrawny, overlooked Italian kid of average ability to become one of the world’s most recognizable baseball faces. And he fought for it every step of the way.In I Live for This Bill Plaschke strips the veneer from one of baseball’s last living legends to show how grit and determination really can transform a life. We think we know this jovial manager from the rah-rah style that has always raised eyebrows in the world of baseball. Some view him as an anachronism. Some love him like Santa Claus. But there’s one thing they all agree on: Lasorda is a success.With gleaming insight and remarkable candor, Plaschke takes us inside the day-to-day world of this baseball great to reveal a side of Lasorda that few people really know. And along the way, we’re treated to some of the most outrageous stories in sports. We also discover Lasorda’s unshakable opinions about what plagues baseball today.Bravely and brilliantly, I Live for This dissects the personality to give us the person. In the end we’re left with an indelible portrait of a legend that, if Lasorda has anything to say about it, we won’t ever forget.

    It was Jackie Robinson's first Series, a postwar spectacle featuring Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway and President Harry Truman in supporting roles. It was also the first televised World Series - sportswriters called it "Electric October."But for all the star power on display, the outcome hinged on role players: Bill Bevens, a journeyman who knocked on the door of pitching immortality; Al Gionfriddo and Cookie Lavagetto, bench players at the center of the Series' iconic moments; Snuffy Stirnweiss, a wartime batting champion who never got any respect; and managers Bucky Harris and Burt Shotton, each an unlikely choice to run his team. Six men found themselves plucked from obscurity to shine on the sport's greatest stage. But their fame was fleeting; three would never play another big-league game, and all six would be forgotten.Kevin Cook brings the '47 Series back to life, introducing us to men whose past offered no hint they were destined for extraordinary things. For some, the Series was a memory to hold onto. For others, it would haunt them to the end of their days. And for us, Cook offers new insights--some heartbreaking, some uplifting--into what fame and glory truly mean.