Cal and Bill Ripken understand this like few others.From their father, Cal Sr., a legend in the Baltimore Orioles organization for 37 years, they learned to play the game the right way. Those lessons, paired with their combined 33 years of big league experience, helped develop the Ripken Way, a method of teaching the game through simple instruction, solid explanations, encouragement, and a positive atmosphere. In Coaching Youth Baseball the Ripken Way, Cal and Bill share this approach to coaching and development.Whether you're teaching your children at home, managing the local travel team, or working with high school-level players, Coaching Youth Baseball the Ripken Way will help you make a difference both on and off the field, with these features:More than 50 drills covering defense, hitting, pitching, and baserunningAge-specific practice plans for players ranging from 4 to 15+Strategies for setting goals and reasonable expectations for your players and teamAdvice on communicating with parents, players, and staffMethods for creating a positive and fun environment in which kids can learn the skills and strategies of the gameBill Ripken was once voted by his peers as one of the big league players most likely to become a manager. Cal Ripken, Jr., known as baseball's Iron Man, is a member of the game's All-Century Team and a future Hall of Famer. Together, they are proof positive that the Ripken Way is the right way to teach the game of baseball.

    He could run, throw, field and he had a sweet swing. But during his twelve years in the major leagues, Pepi devoted most of his energy to swinging off the field. He blew his career, he destroyed two marriages, he lost three children and he came very close to a nervous breakdown. At age 33 he gave up a $70,000 contract in Japan and quit baseball for good. He finally admitted that most of his life he had been living a lie, acting the carefree clown to cover up his inner pain. It was time to close the act. In Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud, Pepitone attempts to show what was behind his berserk behavior. He does so in the most devastatingly honest terms, holding back none of the embarrassment, the anguish, the guilt he kept accumulating. He tells of the father he loved so much, "Willie Pep" Pepitone, the toughest man in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood. Obsessed with making his son a baseball star, Willie constantly beat hell out of Joe. One night, enraged at his father, Joe said,"Mom- I wish he'd die!" The next day Willie died. He tells how he demolished two marriages by trying to ball American, of how he was haunted by the words of his first child - "Daddy, don't leave me" - and of the nights when the guilt left him impotent. Despite the travail, though, there is much humor in Joe's story. Such as the time he was staying at Frank Sinatra's home, and Joe has a $350 pool shot line up. Just as he shot, Sinatra knocked the ball away. "All right, Frank... I won the money." Sinatra, grinning, said, "Joe, this is my game, this is my table - and we are playing my rules." Usually Joe Pepitone played only by his rules, and those rules maimed him. Yet his regrets are not for what he did to himself... "You do what you have to do, and you pay the price - but you pay it double when you see how it has hurt others you love." - from book's dustjacket

    The result is this book, in which Kahn reports on a small college team’s successes and hopes, a young New England ball club, a failing major league franchise, and a group of heroes on the national stage.

    

    In Slap Shot Original, Dave Hanson gives readers not only a behind the scenes look at what life was like on the set during the filming of the classic movie, but also treats them to stories from the actors and players themselves.

    Victory at the World Cycling Championship in Austria completed a near-unprecedented ‘triple crown’ that included triumphs in the same year at the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia. In April, against all odds, he fought his own team and an angry, partisan Italian crowd who spat at him on his way to taking the Giro. In July a superhuman effort at La Plagne saw him secure the yellow jersey just before he blacked out. Roche’s victory in Austria confirmed his virtuosity.Born to Ride, Stephen Roche’s first full autobiography, uses his best year as the starting point to explore the rest of his life. He doesn’t hold back as he examines the many ups and downs of his time on and off the bike, scrutinising victories, defeats, rivals, serious injury, doping allegations and agonizing family breakdown. At the heart of the book lies an enigma. For all his charm and rare, natural talent, beneath the surface lies an incredible tenacity and determination. Roche finally reveals himself as a smiling assassin; a master-strategist who lives to attack.

    They did not talk about their mom's extended absences or why their dad put Scotch tape on the backdoor frame. To cover up the chaos, they kept their clothes neat and got good grades. But when they were teenagers, an arson fire destroyed their home and killed their parents. Rumors were thick that summer that smart, angry, fourteen-year-old Lisa set the blaze. Then, adult powers they did not understand squelched the investigation. As teenagers accustomed to keeping silent, they packed up and moved on.Forty years later, Leigh, the oldest, decided it was time to find out who killed their parents. She obtained copies of the police and fire investigations and began unwrapping the past. This memoir is the story of that investigation as Leigh tried to piece together the truth, but found more lies instead. With the help of her sisters, Leigh was able to reconstruct much of what happened to them in the beach towns around Atlantic City in the early 1970s. After the fire, one sister turned to heroin and another to alcohol; Leigh became Miss Atlantic City. Then, one by one, they each moved to California and shut the door on their past, even though they privately wondered whether one of them killed Frank and Nancy Overton. It's funny. They never wondered whether one of their parents was trying to kill them.

    Richard Bedard was a journalist in his mid-40s, living abroad, when he was diagnosed with patellofemoral pain syndrome, or chondromalacia patella. His burning joints made his life so miserable that he fantasized about hacking off his kneecaps. Four doctors failed to help; one said he would never get better. His physical therapist finally gave up too.Unable to sit normally, he quit his job. Unemployed and desperate, he launched a year-long, round-the-clock experiment to save his knees. He read from scores of clinical studies, medical textbooks, health newsletters. What he discovered left him stunned. There was a familiar story about what patellofemoral pain syndrome was and how to treat it: The advice to focus on strengthening the quads. To stretch. To take glucosamine. To forget about cartilage healing, because that never happened.And that story was completely wrong.Armed with this knowledge, he fashioned a plan to get better. Within two years, he fully recovered. This compelling story chronicles a long journey of healing and discovery. It shows that a patient’s true ally isn’t simply hope, but informed hope.

    It offers: • In-depth, insightful essays on all 30 Major League Baseball clubs, with no-holds-barred evaluations of at least 50 players per organization • Baseball Prospectus’s exclusive (and deadly accurate) PECOTA projection system, forecasting the chances that a player will break out, improve, or collapse • In-depth features on the true costs of injuries, adventures in win expectancy, the limitations of statistical analysis—plus all our stats explained! The Baseball Prospectus team of cutting-edge analysts includes Mark Armour, Andrew Baharlias, Jim Baker, James Click, Clifford J. Corcoran, Clay Davenport, John Erhardt, Gary Gillette, Steven Goldman, Thomas Gorman, Gary Huckabay, Jay Jaffe, Rany Jazayerli, Christina Kahrl, Jonah Keri, Mark McClusky, Dave Pease, Dayn Perry, Nate Silver, and Keith Woolner. Check out www.baseballprospectus.com for year-round baseball coverage.

    Sort of. As the back-up for several legendary goalies, he saw everything - except much playing time. In this book, McLennan looks back on his career, from breaking into the NHL, to working with the legends, to life on the road and in the league.

    Baseball is John Schuerholz's world--everyone is just playing in it. Now, in BUILT TO WIN, the legendary manager takes readers behind the scenes of the most successful franchise in recent history--and shows how his unique philosophies and leadership have helped the Atlanta Braves achieve something no team has ever come close to accomplishing. He candidly peels back the curtain, from his first World Series with the Kansas City Royals to his departure for the struggling Braves. No sooner did Schuerholz arrive than they won their first title in 1991...and the rest is history.

    The chafing restrictions of a typical upbringing in upper-class, small town Alabama simply did not apply to Zelda, who was described as an unusual child and permitted to roam the streets with little supervision. Zelda refused to blossom into a typical 'Southern belle' on anyone's terms but her own and while still in high school enjoyed the status of a local celebrity for her shocking behavior. Everybody in town knew the name Zelda Sayre. Queen of the Montgomery social scene, Zelda had a different beau ready and willing to show her a good time for every day of the week. Before meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda's life was a constant pursuit of pleasure. With little thought for the future and no responsibilities to speak of, Zelda committed herself fully to the mantra that accompanied her photo in her high school graduation book: "Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow. Let's think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow." But for now Zelda was still in rehearsal for her real life to begin, a life she was sure would be absolutely extraordinary. Zelda Sayre married F. Scott Fitzgerald on the 3rd of April 1920 and left sleepy Montgomery behind in order to dive headfirst into the shimmering, glamourous life of a New York socialite. With the publication of Scott's first novel, This Side of Paradise, Zelda found herself thrust into the limelight as the very epitome of the Flapper lifestyle. Concerned chiefly with fashion, wild parties and flouting social expectations, Zelda and Scott became icons of the Jazz Age, the personification of beauty and success. What Zelda and Scott shared was a romantic sense of self-importance that assured them that their life of carefree leisure and excess was the only life really worth living. Deeply in love, the Fitzgeralds were like to sides of the same coin, each reflecting the very best and worst of each other. While the world fell in love with the image of the Fitzgeralds they saw on the cover of magazines, behind the scenes the Fitzgerald's marriage could not withstand the tension of their creative arrangement. Zelda was Scott's muse and he mercilessly mined the events of their life for material for his books. Scott claimed Zelda's memories, things she said, experiences she had and even passages from her diary as his possessions and used them to form the basis of his fictional works. Zelda had a child but the domestic sphere offered no comfort or purpose for her. The Flapper lifestyle was not simply a phase she lived through, it formed the very basis of her character and once the parties grew dull, the Fitzgeralds' drinking became destructive and Zelda's beauty began to fade, the world held little allure for her. Zelda sought reprieve in work and tried to build a career as a ballet dancer. When that didn't work out she turned to writing but was forbidden by Scott from using her own life as material. Convinced that she would never leave her mark on the world as deeply or expressively as Scott had, Zelda retreated into herself and withdrew from the people she knew in happier times. The later years of Zelda's life were marred by her detachment from reality as, diagnosed with schizophrenia, Zelda spent the last eighteen years of her life living in and out of psychiatric hospitals. As Scott's life unraveled due to alcohol abuse, Zelda looked back on the years they had spent together, young and wild and beautiful, as the best of her life. She may have been right but she was wrong about one thing, Zelda did leave her mark on the world and it was a deep and expressive mark that no one could have left but her. Zelda Fitzgerald: The Biography

    Turning The Tables is the first published history of the company which grew from a run-down bingo hall to become a national pay-per-view competitor... then crashed in a sea of debt. John Lister (author of Slamthology) gives an independent, objective and informative account that reveals hidden secrets and shatters common myths. From a little-known truth about ECW's most famous feud to a blow-by-blow account of what really happened in Revere, this book will give you the true story behind America's most controversial wrestling group.

    He lost his sight forever. To cheer him up, his mother wrote letters to baseball superstars of the day, explaining her son’s condition. Soon Ed was invited into their clubhouses and dugouts, as the players and coaches personally made him feel at home. Despite the warm reception he got from his heroes, Ed was told repeatedly by others that he would never be able to accomplish anything worthwhile because of his limitations. But Hall-of-Famer Phil Rizzuto became Ed’s mentor and encouraged him to pursue his passion—broadcasting. Ed then overcame hundreds of barriers, big and small, to become a pioneer—the first blind person covering baseball on a regular basis, a career he has successfully continued for six decades. Ed may have lost his sight, but he never lost his faith, which got him through many pitfalls and dark days. When Ed’s two sons were very young, his wife walked out and left him to raise them all by himself, which he did. Six years later, Ed’s ex-wife returned and sued him for full custody, saying that a blind man shouldn’t have her kids. The judge agreed, tearing Ed's sons away from their father's loving home. Ed fought the heartbreaking decision with appeals all the way up to the highest level of the court system. Eventually, he prevailed, marking the very first time in US history that a disabled person was awarded custody over a non-disabled spouse. Even in his later years, Ed is still enjoying a remarkably blessed life. In 2006, he married his second wife, Allison, at home plate in old Yankee Stadium, the only time that such a thing ever happened on that iconic spot. Yankee owner George Steinbrenner himself catered the whole affair, which was shown live on national television. Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story is truly a magical read and a universally uplifting and inspirational tale for everyone, whether or not you happen to be a sports fan. Over his long and amazing life, Ed has collected hundreds of anecdotes from his personal relationships and encounters with everyone, from kings and presidents to movie stars and sports Hall-of-Famers, many of which he shares in this memoir, using his trademark humorous and engaging style, cowritten with his youngest son, Christopher.

    From Gibson's early days in the Jim Crow South to his glory days as a World Series-winning pitcher, Stranger to the Game is the candid memoir of one of the game's greatest pitchers and most outspoken black players.