Where's Harry?: Steve Stone Remembers 25 Years with Harry Caray


Steve Stone - 1999
    In Where's Harry?, Steve Stone pays tribute to one of baseball's biggest legends never to take the field, remembering the unique baseball commentator who was also the game's biggest fan.

The Captain: A Memoir


David Wright - 2020
      David Wright played his entire fourteen-year Major League Baseball career for the New York Mets.   And when he came back time and again from injury, he demonstrated the power of hard work, commitment, and love of the game.   Wright was nicknamed "Captain America" after his performance in the 2013 World Baseball Classic. He is a seven-time All-Star, a two-time Gold Glove Award winner, a two-time Silver Slugger Award winner, and a member of the 30-30 club. He holds Mets franchise records for most career RBIs, doubles, total bases, runs scored, walks, sacrifice flies, times on base, extra base hits, strikeouts, double plays, and hits. He was named captain of the Mets in 2013, becoming the fourth captain in the team's history.   Now the widely admired, beloved New York Mets third baseman and captain tells it from his perspective.

The Zen of Zim: Baseball, Beanballs and Bosses


Don Zimmer - 2004
    His first book, Zim-A Baseball Life, was a New York Times bestseller and one of the best baseball memoirs ever published. Now, in The Zen of Zim, one of baseball's most beloved figures offers readers an insightful look into the baseball of yesterday and today. Baseball fans will love hearing Zim's positions on such things as pitching inside, managing, bosses, and more.With more than fifty-six years in baseball, Don Zimmer had seen it all, or so he thought before he ran into George Steinbrenner. Here Zimmer provides a revealing account of his eight years as Joe Torre's right-hand man-and the jealousy, vindictiveness, and pettiness that ultimately destroyed a twenty-five-year friendship with Steinbrenner.Zim will also discuss the circumstances that led to his charging onto the field at Fenway Park and throwing a haymaker at Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez. He'll share with readers what it was like to work for other baseball owners; shed new light on general managers like Branch Rickey and Dan Duquette; and critique the managing styles of some of the most famous and notorious skippers of the twentieth century, from Casey Stengel and Earl Weaver to Gene Mauch and Billy Martin.In a chapter called "What Have They Done to My Game?," Zim will offer a crash course in baseball anthropology, describing how the game and its players have changed over the past fifty years and showing how big money and free agency have destroyed clubhouse camaraderie and turned a team sport into a transient game. In contrast, he celebrates his close-knit teammates on the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers team and the lifelong friendships that were made.Zim has seen it all, and here readers learn even more of his life and dreams and of baseball through a half century of experience. It is a story jam-packed with laughs and anecdotes, with excitement and comedy. And it is superbly told.

Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes


John Rosengren - 2013
    Hank Greenberg, one of the most exciting sluggers in baseball history, gave the people of Detroit a reason to be proud.But America was facing more than economic hardship. With the Nazis gaining power across Europe, political and social tensions were approaching a boiling point. As one of the few Jewish athletes competing nationally, Hank Greenberg became not only an iconic ball player, but also an important and sometimes controversial symbol of Jewish identity and the American immigrant experience.When Hank joined the Detroit Tigers in 1933, they were headed for a dismal fifth-place season finish. The following year, with Hank leading the charge, they were fighting off the Yankees for the pennant. As his star ascended, he found himself cheered wherever he went. But there were other noises also. On and off the field, he met with taunts and anti-Semitic threats. Yet the hardship only drove him on to greater heights, sharing the spotlight with the most legendary sluggers of the day, including Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, and Lou Gehrig.Hank Greenberg offers an intimate account of the man’s life on and off the field. It is a portrait of integrity, triumph over adversity, and one of the greatest baseball players to ever grace the field.

Pedro


Pedro Martinez - 2015
    Now in Pedro, the charismatic and always colorful pitcher opens up for the first time to tell his remarkable story. Martinez entered the big leagues a scrawny power pitcher with a lightning arm who they said wasn’t “durable” enough, who they said was a punk. But what they underestimated about Pedro Martinez was the intensity of the fire inside. Like no one before or since, Martinez willed himself to become one of the most intimidating pitchers to have ever played the game. In Pedro we relive it all in Technicolor brightness, from his hardscrabble days in the minor leagues clawing for respect; to his early days in lonely Montreal, where he first struggled with the reputation of being a headhunter; to his legendary run with the Red Sox when start after start he dazzled with his pitching genius; to his twilight years on the mound as he put the finishing touches on a body of work that made him an icon. Bold, outspoken, intimate in its details, and grand in ego and ambition, this new memoir by one of baseball’s most enigmatic figures will entertain and inspire generations of fans to come.

Stengel: His Life and Times


Robert W. Creamer - 1984
    Here is the brilliant manager stripped naked—the person underneath all the clowning, mugging, and double-talking. Robert Creamer shows us Casey at twenty-two, famous from his very first day in the big leagues. We see Casey’s playing career fall apart as he is traded, shunted to last-place teams, hampered by injuries, considered finished—until he bats a glorious home run in the 1923 World Series. Here are Casey’s managing successes and failures—dismissed by the Yankees, he returns to the limelight with his new and inept New York Mets, the team he single-handedly lifts into the nation’s consciousness.“I’m a man that’s been up and down,” Casey said in a serious moment. Certainly his knack for bouncing back made him a legend in our national pastime. Here are the stories and gags, the Stengelian style, the full dimensions of the man.

Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season


Stewart O'Nan - 2004
    They would sit together at Fenway. They would exchange emails. They would write about the games. And, as it happened, they would witness the greatest comeback ever in sports, and the first Red Sox championship in eighty-six years. What began as a Sox-filled summer like any other is now a fan's notes for the ages.

Ball Four


Jim Bouton - 1970
    The commissioner, executives, and players were shocked. Sportswriters called author Jim Bouton a traitor and "social leper." Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force him to declare the book untrue. Fans, however, loved the book. And serious critics called it an important social document. Today, Jim Bouton is still not invited to Oldtimer's Days at Yankee Stadium. But his landmark book is still being read by people who don't ordinarily follow baseball.

I Ain't Scared of You: Bernie Mac on How Life Is


Bernie Mac - 2001
    The Chicago-bred performer and royal king of the Original Kings of Comedy, Bernie Mac, has won over countless fans of cutting comedy and family humor with an edgy show that tells it like it is but never loses heart. No surprise, Mac has earned a reputation as perhaps the truest voice of modern humor. Here, in his debut book, Mac brilliantly captures the R-rated side of his comedic genius in print. Touring through a wide range of topics with equal parts insight and irreverence, Bernie presents a way of looking at the world guaranteed to make you laugh. Tackling superstar athletes, the movie business, his fellow comedians, his marriage, and, of course, his friends and family, Mac offers side-splitting riffs on sex, religion, hygiene, money, and more. Nobody is safe; nothing is sacred. Not even Bernie himself. Throughout I Ain't Scared of You, Mac turns his humor inward, firing off hilarious self-deprecating salvos about his golf game and his own hypocrisies. Bernie Mac's hit show and his vital live performances have earned him critical acclaim and international popularity. Now, I Ain't Scared of You reveals his humor whole—unpretentious, unafraid, and unbelievably funny and raw.

Me and My Dad: A Baseball Memoir


Paul O'Neill - 2003
    O'Neill epitomized the team's motto of hard work and good sportsmanship, traits instilled in him by his friend, confidant, lifelong model, and biggest fan: his dad, Chick O'Neill.In Me and My Dad, O'Neill writes from the heart about the man who inspired in him a love for the game and a determination to always play his best. O'Neill remembers the highlights of his own amazing career: the Cincinnati Reds calling him up to the majors, his first World Series, being traded to the Yankees -- and taking part in their recent championship wins. He also reflects on his father's untimely death during the 1999 World Series and on the farewell tribute his fans gave him during his last game in Yankee Stadium.

I Live for This! Baseball's Last True Believer


Bill Plaschke - 2007
    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.

Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards


Josh Wilker - 2010
    It also captures the experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what it means to be a fan of the game. Along the way, as we get to know Josh, his family, and his friends, we also get Josh’s classic observations about the central artifacts from his life: the baseball cards themselves. Josh writes about an imagined correspondence with his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski; he uses the magical bubble-blowing powers of journeyman Kurt Bevacqua to shed light on the weakening of the powerful childhood bond with his older brother; he considers the doomed utopian back-to-the-land dreams of his hippie parents against the backdrop of inimitable 1970s baseball figures such as “Designated Pinch Runner” Herb Washington and Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. Cardboard Gods is more than just the story of a man who can’t let go of his past, it’s proof that — to paraphrase Jim Bouton — as children we grow up holding baseball cards but in the end we realize that it’s really the other way around.

Straw: Finding My Way


Darryl Strawberry - 2009
    A National League Rookie of the Year, eight-time MLB All Star, and four-time World Series Champion, Strawberry’s baseball achievements were often overshadowed by his struggles off the field. In Straw, he tells it all: his boyhood in Crenshaw, Los Angeles; his rise to baseball superstardom; the high life and low life; his brushes with the law; his triumphant battle over cancer; his religious awakening, and his marriage to the love of his life.

Always By My Side: A Father's Grace and a Sports Journey Unlike Any Other


Jim Nantz - 2008
    Vividly written in exciting, you-are-there replay, Always by My Side gives readers an insider’s look into an unprecedented sixty-three-day stretch from February to April of 2007 when Jim Nantz became the first broadcaster to call the Super Bowl, the Final Four, and the Masters. Because Nantz was unable to share the voyage with his dad, however, this remarkable journey through America’s premier sporting events took on a bittersweet tinge. Nonetheless, the devoted son felt his father’s presence every step of the way, and used this championship odyssey to celebrate the people, venues, and moments that tapped into all the goodness that his dad—and his dad’s generation— represent. In recounting the highlights of more than two thrilling decades with CBS Sports, this broadcasting hall of famer recalls the legends of the industry—Dick Enberg, Curt Gowdy, Jim McKay, Chris Schenkel, Pat Summerall, Jack Whitaker, and others—who sparked his imagination and shaped his style. Always by My Side traces Nantz’s career, from creating his own imaginary studio as a boy to his college days rooming with future PGA Tour golfers Fred Couples and Blaine McCallister to his successful network audition at age twenty-six. Along the way, readers are treated to an array of memories, including Nantz’s special relationship with the former president George H. W. Bush, as well as his friendships with such sports royalty as Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Peyton Manning, Tony Dungy, Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, Mike Krzyzewski, John Wooden, and many others. Poignant stories that explore the theme of fathers and sons who have bonded through a common love of sports complete this sparkling narrative. Always by My Side promises to be the most cherished Father’s Day gift of the year.

If These Walls Could Talk: Boston Red Sox


Jerry Remy - 2019
    In If These Walls Could Talk: Boston Red Sox, former player and longtime broadcaster Jerry Remy provides insight into the team's inner sanctum as only he can. Readers will gain the perspective of players, coaches, and personnel in moments of greatness as well as defeat, making for a keepsake no fan will want to miss.