The right girl would slide into his life as seamlessly as a ball into his glove. That’s what he wanted. A typical boy meets girl, girl falls for jock story. But that’s not what he got. He had to fall for the one girl he couldn’t have. The one girl he shouldn’t want. His best friend Aaron's younger sister, Charlee.How could he not? She breathed fresh life back into his empty soul just by existing. Loving her was as simple as existing. He just did and nothing would change that.If only he could convince her of that. Charlee Cooper isn't interested in starting another relationship. The scars from her past left her feeling like it would be impossible to ever truly love someone. It was a part of her life she had come to accept. She has her daughter and that is all the love she will ever need. When secrets from the past are revealed, the subtle sparks between Lucas and Charlee ignite into a fiery passion neither can ignore. Will the heat destroy everything she is? Or will a chance at love prove the greatest victory of all?You decide.Yours truly, Saylor

    As the new clubhouse attendant for the Aberdeen IronBirds, a Minor League affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles, Larson assumed he’d entered a familiar world. He thought wrong. He quickly discovered the bizarre rituals of life in the Minors: fights between players, teammates quitting in the middle of the games, doomed relationships, and a negligent parent organization. All the while, Larson, fresh out of college, harbored a secret wish. Despite the team’s struggles and his own lack of baseball talent, he yearned to join the exclusive fraternity of professional ballplayers.   Instead, Larson fell deeper into his madcap venture as the scheming clubbie. He moved into the clubhouse equipment closet, his headquarters to swing deals involving memorabilia, booze, and loads of cash. By his second season, Larson had transformed into a deceptive, dip-spitting veteran, now fully part of a system that exploited players he considered friends. Like most Minor Leaguers, the gravitational pull of baseball was still too strong for Larson—even if chasing his private dream might cost him his girlfriend, his future, and, ultimately, his love of the game. That is, until an unlikely shot at a championship gives Larson and the IronBirds one final swing at redemption.Clubbie is a hilarious behind-the-scenes tale of two seasons in the mysterious world of Minor League Baseball. With cinematic detail and a colorful cast of characters, Larson spins an unforgettable true story for baseball fans and nonfans alike. An unflinching look at the harsh experience of professional sports, Clubbie will be a touchstone in baseball literature for years to come.

    His career in baseball spanned forty years and two eras—from the game’s raucous early days to its emergence as big business.Charles C. Alexander, a professor of history at Ohio University, Athens, and the author of Ty Cobb, calls John McGraw “perhaps the single most significant figure in baseball’s history before Babe Ruth transformed the game with his mammoth home runs and unparalleled showmanship.”

    As told by Dr. Rock Positano, DiMaggio’s closest confidante in New York during the final years of his life, Dinner with DiMaggio is an intimate portrait of one of America’s most enduring heroes.This memoir of a decade-long friendship reveals the very private DiMaggio as he really was—sometimes demanding, sometimes big-hearted, always impeccable, loyal, and a true stand-up guy—while serving up illuminating stories and rare insights about the people in his life, including his teammates, Muhammad Ali, Sandy Koufax, Woody Allen, and more. In 1990, Dr. Rock Positano, the thirty-two-year-old foot and ankle specialist, was introduced to DiMaggio, the pair brought together by a career-ending heel spur injury. Though Dr. Positano was forty years younger, an unlikely friendship developed after the doctor successfully treated the baseball champ’s heel. At the start, Joe mentored Rock but came to rely on his young friend to show him a good time in New York, the town that made him a legend. In time, the famously reserved DiMaggio opened up to Dr. Positano and talked about his joys, his disappointments, and his sorrows as he reflected on his extraordinary life. The stories and experiences shared with Dr. Positano comprise an intimate portrait of one of the great stars of baseball and icon of the twentieth century.

    If you love watching "Major League," you’ll be fascinated by this inside story. Based on interviews with all major cast members plus crew and producers, it tells how writer/director David S. Ward battled the Hollywood system to turn his own love of the underdog Cleveland Indians into a classic screwball comedy. Learn how a tight-knit group of rising young stars (and a few wily veterans) had a blast pretending to play ball while creating several iconic characters. Filled with little-known facts and personal recollections about outtakes and inside jokes, batting practice and script changes, all-night location shoots, bar hopping and more, this is the ultimate guide to the film that reinvented the baseball movie and inspired a generation of belly laughs. Includes rare photos, storyboard illustrations, script excerpts, and more. With a foreword by Charlie Sheen.

    This highly visual, non- technical survey emphasizes broad, up-to-date coverage of basic topics and principles in geology, oceanography, meteorology, and astronomy. The text's flexible design lends itself to the diversity of Earth science courses in both content and approach. As in previous editions, the main focus is to foster student understanding of basic earth science principles.

    It includes three entirely new chapters on the Internet, computer graphics, and multimedia. Thorough yet flexible, Introduction to Computers is appropriate for a full-semester course -- with or without a hands-on lab. The text is available with a student CD-ROM that contains interactive multimedia materials for each chapter. Also available are an Electronic Study Guide on CD-ROM, HyperGraphics package, and an Instructor's Productivity Center on CD-ROM.

    . . . This account of his experience is a frank and fascinating one."-Chicago Sunday Tribune "The story of a man who became mentally 'sick, ' and how, through competent medical care, the help of a sympathetic and most understanding wife, the patience and encouragement of manager, teammates and fans, and above all his own splendid courage, he made a complete recovery and resumed his baseball career. . . .. How we overcame his fears is a dramatic, heart-warming story."-Library Journal Jim Piersall played baseball in the 1950s and 1960s for the Boston Red Sox, the Cleveland Indians, the Washington Senators, the New York Mets, and the California Angels. After brief forays into professional football and wrestling businesses, he has worked for many years in broadcasting and minor league player development for the Chicago Cubs. He lives in Arizona during the off-season and in Chicago during the season.

    But for some, the experience can be less sensory. Some, such as Ryan Spaeder and Kevin Reavy, live for baseball statistics. Stats give the game historical context and measurables for past, present, and predictive analysis.Incredible Baseball Stats helps tell unique baseball stories, showcasing extraordinary stats and facts in baseball history, through the 2015 season. For example, in 2015, the Nationals’ Bryce Harper broke out in a major way. He batted .330/.460/.649 with 42 home runs en route to his first MVP Award. It was his fourth MLB season, but he was still younger than NL Rookie of the Year Kris Bryant. He became the youngest player to lead the league in both on-base percentage and homers in the same season since Ty Cobb in 1909. Through 2015, he has a career .902 OPS (143 OPS+), the same OPS and adjusted OPS that Henry Aaron had through his first four seasons—and Hammerin’ Hank was nearly a year older!The authors have scoured the records for untold tales and looked at familiar ones with new statistical insights, to create Incredible Baseball Stats, a perfect book for baseball fans from coast to coast.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team.Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

    At last, his path is destined for one last stop: the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.Long before he cemented his status as one of the finest players of his generation, Martinez honed his batting skills by hitting rocks in his backyard and swinging for hours at individual raindrops during storms. Loyal and strong-willed from a young age, he made the difficult decision at only 11 to remain behind with his grandparents while his family relocated to New York, attending school and then working multiple jobs until a chance Mariners try-out at age 20 changed everything.In this illuminating, highly personal autobiography, Martinez shares these stories and more with candor, characteristic humility, and surprising wit. Highlights include the memorable 1995 and 2001 seasons, experiences playing with stars like Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez, and life after retirement as a family man, social advocate, and Mariners hitting coach. Martinez even offers practical insight into the mental side of baseball and his training regimen, detailing how he taught himself to see the ball better than so many before and after him.Interwoven with Martinez’s own words throughout are those of his teammates, coaches, and contemporaries, contributing a distinctive oral history element to this saga of a remarkable career.

    With a repertoire of masterful pitches wielded with impeccable command, he piled up accolades during his 16 major league seasons, the very image of stability and dominance whenever he took the mound. Doc is a celebration and a profound remembrance of a beloved player, friend, and family man. Todd Zolecki traces Halladay's remarkable journey, from garnering the attention of major league scouts as a teenager in Colorado, to Halladay's methodical reinvention and ascent to ace status in Toronto, to the signature no-hitter he authored in his playoff debut with the Philadelphia Phillies. Also examined are Halladay's distinctive, disciplined approach to pitching, his impact as a teammate and community member, and the baseball world's honoring of these qualities in Cooperstown in 2019. Thoroughly and thoughtfully reported, with input and reflections from Halladay's teammates, coaches, competitors, and more, this is an essential biography for baseball fans everywhere.

    No hits, no walks, no men reaching base. In nearly four hundred thousand contests in more than 130 years of Major League Baseball, it has only happened twenty times. On June 2, 2010, Armando Galarraga threw baseball’s twenty-first perfect game. Except that’s not how it entered the record books.That’s because Jim Joyce, a veteran umpire with more than twenty years of big league experience, the man voted the best umpire in the game in 2010 by baseball’s players, missed the call on the final out at first base. “No, I did not get the call correct,” Joyce said after seeing a replay. But rather than throw a tantrum, Galarraga simply turned and smiled, went back to the mound and took care of business. “Nobody’s perfect,” he said later in the locker room.In Nobody’s Perfect, Galarraga and Joyce come together to tell the personal story of a remarkable game that will live forever in baseball lore, and to trace their fascinating lives in sports up until this pivotal moment. It is an absorbing insider’s look at two lives in baseball, a tremendous achievement, and an enduring moment of sportsmanship.

    K. C. Cole's "Fun with Physics" is a profile of astrophysicist Janet Conrad that blends her personal life with professional activity. In "Desperate Measures," the doctor and writer Atul Gawande profiles the surgeon Francis Daniels Moore, whose experiments in the 1940s and '50s pushed medicine harder and farther than almost anyone had contemplated. Also included is a poem by the legendary John Updike, "Mars as Bright as Venus." The collection ends with Diane Ackerman's "ebullient" essay "We Are All a Part of Nature."Together these twenty-three articles on a wide range of today's most current topics in science -- from biology, physics, biotechnology, and astronomy, to anthropology, genetics, evolutionary theory, and cognition‚ represent the full spectrum of scientific writing from America's most prominent science authors, proving once again that "good science writing is evidently plentiful" (Scientific American).

    An all-around superstar, he plays the game with a single-minded ferocity that makes his New York Mets team all but invincible. Yet Barr himself is a mystery with no past, no friends, no women, and no interests outside hitting a baseball as hard and as far as he can. Not even Ellie Jay, the jaded sportswriter who can out-think, out-drink, and out-write any man in the press box. She wants to think she admires Barr's skill on a ballfield, but suspects she might be in love with a man who isn't really there.Barr leads the Mets to one championship after another. Then chaos arrives in the person of new manager Charli Stanzi, well-known psychopath. Under Stanzi's tutelage, the team simply falls apart. Then Barr himself inexplicably starts to unravel. For the first time in his life, his formidable skills fail him, and only Ellie Jay and another can help - if he will let them. Hanging in the balance are his sanity, the World Series, and true love.

    Nathanael "Crybaby" Isbister was once the greatest baseball player in the world, but now he's a down-on-his-luck drifter on the road to oblivion.  That is until he wanders into a circus sideshow troupe stranded in a tiny Michigan town dominated by a hellfire-and brimstone religious sect.  The sect vows to drive the troupe out, but give them one unlikely chance to remain--the baseball game to end all baseball games.A funny, moving novel, Home Game walks the straight but delicate line between absurdity and compassion with dazzling style and expertise.