The Splendid Splinter. Teddy Ballgame. One of the greatest figures of his generation, and arguably the greatest baseball hitter of all time. But what made Ted Williams a legend – and a lightning rod for controversy in life and in death? What motivated him to interrupt his Hall of Fame career twice to serve his country as a fighter pilot; to embrace his fans while tangling with the media; to retreat from the limelight whenever possible into his solitary love of fishing; and to become the most famous man ever to have his body cryogenically frozen after his death? New York Times bestselling author Leigh Montville, who wrote the celebrated Sports Illustrated obituary of Ted Williams, now delivers an intimate, riveting account of this extraordinary life. Still a gangly teenager when he stepped into a Boston Red Sox uniform in 1939, Williams’s boisterous personality and penchant for towering home runs earned him adoring admirers--the fans--and venomous critics--the sportswriters. In 1941, the entire country followed Williams's stunning .406 season, a record that has not been touched in over six decades. At the pinnacle of his prime, Williams left Boston to train and serve as a fighter pilot in World War II, missing three full years of baseball. He was back in 1946, dominating the sport alongside teammates Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Bobby Doerr. But Williams left baseball again in 1952 to fight in Korea, where he flew thirty-nine combat missions—crash-landing his flaming, smoke-filled plane, in one famous episode.Ted Willams's personal life was equally colorful. His attraction to women (and their attraction to him) was a constant. He was married and divorced three times and he fathered two daughters and a son. He was one of corporate America's first modern spokesmen, and he remained, nearly into his eighties, a fiercely devoted fisherman. With his son, John Henry Williams, he devoted his final years to the sports memorabilia business, even as illness overtook him. And in death, controversy and public outcry followed Williams and the disagreements between his children over the decision to have his body preserved for future resuscitation in a cryonics facility--a fate, many argue, Williams never wanted. With unmatched verve and passion, and drawing upon hundreds of interviews, acclaimed best-selling author Leigh Montville brings to life Ted Williams's superb triumphs, lonely tragedies, and intensely colorful personality, in a biography that is fitting of an American hero and legend.

    " —Naomi Klein"[Mark Kingwell] illuminates on almost every page. " —Los Angeles Times"Kingwell's musings on angling inevitably lead to in-depth essays on the inherent nature of and reasoning for various aspects of fishing, such as casting, killing, patience, and outdoorsmanship. . . . [Catch and Release is] filled with a sense of joy and awe. " —Publishers WeeklyTaking seriously the idea that baseball is a study in failure—a very successful batter manages a hit only three of every ten attempts—Harper's Magazine contributing editor Mark Kingwell explores ways in which the game teaches us lessons on fragility, contingency, and community.Weaving elements of memoir, philosophical reflection, sports writing, and humour, the book serves as an unofficial follow-up to Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life, which won over readers by offering an intelligent but accessible look into the deep waters of angling.Never pretentious, always entertaining, Fail Better is set to be the homerun non-fiction title of the spring.Mark Kingwell is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author or co-author of eighteen books, including the national bestsellers Better Living (1998), The World We Want (2000), Concrete Reveries (2008), and Glenn Gould (2009). In addition to many scholarly articles, his writing has appeared in more than forty mainstream magazines and newspapers. His most recent books are the essay collections Unruly Voices (2012) and Measure Yourself Against the Earth (2015).

    He was destined to be one of those rare "high-character " superstars. But in 2001, working his way from the minors to the majors, all of the plans for Josh went off the rails in a moment of weakness. What followed was a 4-year nightmare of drugs and alcohol, estrangement from friends and family, and his eventual suspension from baseball. BEYOND BELIEF details the events that led up to the derailment. Josh explains how a young man destined for fame and wealth could allow his life to be taken over by drugs and alcohol. But it is also the memoir of a spiritual journey that breaks through pain and heartbreak and leads to the rebirth of his major-league career.Josh Hamilton makes no excuses and places no blame on anyone other than himself. He takes responsibility for his poor decisions and believes his story can help millions who battle the same demons. "I have been given a platform to tell my story" he says. "I pray every night I am a good messenger."

    With four World Series championships in five seasons and a deep bench of legends and comers -- Clemens, Rivera, Williams, Soriano, Jeter, O'Neill -- they dominated the major leagues.For the members of the team, though, baseball Yankees-style was a pressure cooker of anxiety, expectation, and infighting. As the spending and emotion spiraled, careers were made and broken, friendships began and ended, and a sports dynasty rose and fell.In The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, Buster Olney tracks the Yankees through these tumultuous seasons and into the scandals and disappointments of 2004, providing insightful portraits of the stars, the foot soldiers, the coaches, the manager, and the Boss himself. With unparalleled knowledge of the game and an insider's familiarity with the team, Olney also advances a compelling argument that the philosophy that made the Yankees great was inherently unsustainable, ultimately harmful to the sport, and led inevitably to that warm autumn night in Arizona -- the last night of the Yankee dynasty.

    He spoke out against player trading. He banned Pete Rose from baseball for gambling. He even asked sports fans to clean up their acts. Bart Giamatti was baseball's Renaissance man and its commissioner. In A GREAT AND GLORIOUS GAME, a collection of spirited, incisive essays, Giamatti reflects on the meaning of the game. Baseball, for him, was a metaphor for life. He artfully argues that baseball is much more than an American "pastime." "Baseball is about going home," he wrote, "and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need." And in his powerful 1989 decision to ban Pete Rose from baseball, Giamatti states that no individual is superior to the game itself, just as no individual is superior to our democracy. A GREAT AND GLORIOUS GAME is a thoughtful meditation on baseball, character, and values by one of the most eloquent men in the world of sport.

    As a young woman, her worst childhood fears were confirmed when her fiance broke off their engagement without an explanation. Heartbroken and vulnerable, Sheila was easy prey to the worst type of man - a man who turned his back on her when she told him she was carrying his child. In Fifties Britain, an unmarried, pregnant girl received,not sympathy but censure and contempt. Shunned by most of her family, Sheila ended up in a Church of England home for unmarried mothers, with no apparent alternative than to give up her child for adoption. But when she held her newborn daughter in her arms for the first time, Sheila knew she had to do the unthinkable: bring up her baby on her own in a society that would condemn her for it. Sheila Tofield is a proud grandmother living in Chichester and The Unmarried Mother is her first book. Her touching story was picked up by Penguin when she entered the hugely successful life story competition with Saga Magazine.

    After all, he has secretly had a vasectomy. This is just the first of a series of blows that start to rain upon him. His chain of dress shops that was intended to lift him to the heights of prosperity that he had always dreamed about is feeling the chill winds of recession, and his teenage son has decided to make a mysterious trip to Spain instead of launching himself on the career that his parents expected. 'Life is a tease, ' Max decides, 'a series of receding targets designed to keep you on the move, like a laboratory experiment with rats.' His two drinking companions, Alec, a headmaster, and Laurie, a swashbuckling businessman, also find that middle age doesn't bring peace. Alec for years has secretly being living in sin; putting the matter right doesn't bring its expected happiness. And Laurie is married to an aggressive lady who thinks nothing of clipping off his moustache while he sleeps, or serving him a dog-food omelette. Worst of all, the three of them discover that the years spent being devoted parents have not produced the fine young offspring that they had set their hearts on. So what can the future hold for Max, with a child of unknown provenance on the way? At least there is always the solace of the Comedy Hotel.

    

    Play to win. Play like a champion.In Winning Fantasy Baseball, Larry Schechter discloses the secrets of his proven methods. Packed with commonsense, easy-to-use strategies for beginners through experienced players, Schechter supplies readers with a toolkit to achieve the most important thing in fantasy ball--winning! Some have called Schechter one of the best fantasy baseball players in the world. He is the only two-time winner of the CDM Sports national salary-cap challenge, having defeated 7,500 competitors in 2002 and 6,000 in 2005. He is also a five-time winner of the renowned Tout Wars experts league and a member of the USA Today-sponsored League of Alternative Baseball Reality (LABR).Readers will learn directly from the champ everything they need to know about:- how to project player stats;- how to convert those stats into a specific value;- strategy for snake drafts, and mono-league and mixed auctions;- selecting teams using a salary cap;- playing in keeper leagues;- and performing in-season management.Although the book is primarily about fantasy baseball, many of the concepts also apply to fantasy football and other fantasy sports.

    Before the 27 World Series titles -- before Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Derek Jeter -- the Yankees were New York's shadow franchise. They hadn't won a championship, and they didn't even have their own field, renting the Polo Grounds from their cross-town rivals the New York Giants. In 1921 and 1922, they lost to the Giants when it mattered most: in October. But in 1923, the Yankees played their first season on their own field, the newly-built, state of the art baseball palace in the Bronx called "the Yankee Stadium." The stadium was a gamble, erected in relative outerborough obscurity, and Babe Ruth was coming off the most disappointing season of his career, a season that saw his struggles on and off the field threaten his standing as a bona fide superstar. It only took Ruth two at-bats to signal a new era. He stepped up to the plate in the 1923 season opener and cracked a home run to deep right field, the first homer in his park, and a sign of what lay ahead. It was the initial blow in a season that saw the new stadium christened "The House That Ruth Built," signaled the triumph of the power game, and established the Yankees as New York's -- and the sport's -- team to beat. From that first home run of 1923 to the storybook World Series matchup that pitted the Yankees against their nemesis from across the Harlem River -- one so acrimonious that John McGraw forced his Giants to get to the Bronx in uniform rather than suit up at the Stadium -- Robert Weintraub vividly illuminates the singular year that built a classic stadium, catalyzed a franchise, cemented Ruth's legend, and forever changed the sport of baseball.

    His lifetime batting average is still the highest of all time, and when he retired in 1928, after twenty-one years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than ninety records. But the numbers don't tell half of Cobb's tale. The Georgia Peach was by far the most thrilling player of the era: "Ty Cobb could cause more excitement with a base on balls than Babe Ruth could with a grand slam," one columnist wrote. When the Hall of Fame began in 1936, he was the first player voted in.But Cobb was also one of the game's most controversial characters. He got in a lot of fights, on and off the field, and was often accused of being overly aggressive. In his day, even his supporters acknowledged that he was a fierce and fiery competitor. Because his philosophy was to "create a mental hazard for the other man,"; he had his enemies, but he was also widely admired. After his death in 1961, however, something strange happened: his reputation morphed into that of a monster - a virulent racist who also hated children and women, and was in turn hated by his peers. How did this happen? Who is the real Ty Cobb? Setting the record straight, Charles Leerhsen pushed aside the myths, traveled to Georgia and Detroit, and re-traced Cobb's journey, from the shy son of a professor and state senator who was progressive on race for his time, to America's first true sports celebrity. In the process, he tells of a life overflowing with incident and a man who cut his own path through his times - a man we thought we knew but really didn't.

    In the hard-knuckled thirties, he was the immigrant boy who made it big—and spurred the New York Yankees to a new era of dynasty. He was the Yankee Clipper, the icon of elegance, the man who wooed and won Marilyn Monroe—the most beautiful girl America could dream up. Joe DiMaggio was a mirror of our best self. And he was also the loneliest hero we ever had.In this groundbreaking biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer presents a shocking portrait of a complicated, enigmatic life. The story that DiMaggio never wanted told, tells of his grace—and greed; his dignity, pride—and hidden shame. It is a story that sweeps through the twentieth century, bringing to light not just America's national game, but the birth (and the price) of modern national celebrity.

    In his years spent interviewing and profiling celebrities, politicians, and top businesspeople, popular sportscaster and Fox & Friends cohost Brian Kilmeade has discovered that nearly everyone shares a love of sports and has a story about how a game, a coach, or a single moment of competition changed his or her life. These vignettes have entertained, surprised, and inspired readers nationwide with their insight into America's most respected and well-known personalities. Kilmeade presents more than seventy stories straight from the men and women themselves and those who were closest to them. From competition to camaraderie, individual achievement to teamwork, failure to success, the world of sports encompasses it all and enriches our lives. The Games Do Count reveals this simple and compelling truth: America's best and brightest haven't just worked hard -- they've played hard -- and the results have been staggering!

    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.

    It wasn't a cry, or even a sob. It came from deep in my soul... It was the sound of a mother helpless to save her child from danger. I asked the same unanswered questions over and again. Where was he? Where was my Damien?On 2 November 1996, sixteen-year-old Damien Nettles went out for the evening in his home town of Cowes on the Isle of Wight. CCTV recorded him in a chip shop at 23:40 and on the High Street just after midnight. He has never been seen since.His mother, Valerie, has spent over two decades desperately trying to find out what happened to her son. Arrests have been made, and suspects released without charge. Despite years of research by journalists and a private investigator, Damien's vanishing remains a mystery.In this hugely moving and compelling account, Valerie Nettles tells the full, perplexing story of her son's disappearance. Someone must know what happened to Damien. Will the truth ever emerge from the shadows?