Surprisingly, a great many players surveyed did not even know you need to hit down to get the ball up in the air. Hit Down @#!*% ! concisely explains the concept - and the technique - of hitting down at the golf ball for proper trajectory, increased backspin, much improved distance, proper divot taking, and best of all: consistent shotmaking.If you are inadvertently - or intentionally - hitting up at the ball, Hit Down @#!*% ! is for you. (Also available as DVD series, and MP3 download, all on Amazon.)If you are a seasoned amateur who has inexplicably “plateaud” - just cannot seem to get to the next level despite lessons and/or acquiring a library of books and videos - Hit Down @#!*% ! is for you.Symptoms of hitting up include (but are not limited to): - topping the ball- skulling the ball- pushing the ball- slicing the ball- poor distance- difficulty getting off back foot- poor backspin- no divot- fat divots- chunking the ball- thin/fat chip shots- roofing the ball with your driver- inability to hit long irons and/or fairway woods- good shots followed immediately by poor shotsHitting down at the golf ball is not a new concept, but it is a hitherto poorly explained (or completely avoided) concept. All pros agree on the need to hit down, so there is no debate there. Even Tiger Woods, in his 306 page “How I Play Golf”, states the need to hit down at the ball – but does not explain how. Hit Down @#!*% ! does. Learn to hit down, watch the ball go up, and your scores go down. BONUS: At the end of this book you will find a link to purchase the Hit Down @#!*% ! 4 DVD series and receive a full credit for the purchase of this Kindle ebook.

    Along with black-and-white photographs, Katie shares letters written to her mom, who died of cancer before the two of them could go on this adventure of a lifetime together.A Season with Mom reminds readers that in life, as in baseball, sometimes you strike out, but sometimes you hit home runs. Even if the wait is longer than you’d hoped, dreams can come true.

    But when she drops out of vet school to get her jockey’s license in New York, intent on coming back to Ontario to ride Chique in the Queen’s Plate in three years, he’s the obvious choice to keep an eye on the filly. Nate’s content to watch Liv go, even though he’s got similar aspirations – when he’s not talked out of them by voices from his past. His growing bond with Chique might earn him Liv’s approval and give him the fresh start he’s looking for, but that’s as involved as he’s getting with the boss’s daughter. Not that Liv’s been receptive to anything more. Liv’s determined to keep their relationship professional, no matter how much Chique draws them together. Because racetrack romances are messy…and nothing can interfere with getting Chique to the Plate.Set against the backdrop of North America’s greatest racetracks, Good Things Come is a story about the hearts of Thoroughbreds...thepeople who love them...and the allure of Canada’s most prestigious race.

     As a player, he established himself as one of the leading midfielders of his era, being named PFA Player of the Year in 1985 and credited with being the fourth best footballer in the world. He won numerous honours with Everton, including two league titles, one FA Cup and one European Cup Winners’ Cup during the most successful period in the Blues’ history. He also won 13 England caps, playing at the 1986 World Cup – where a date with destiny at the ‘hand’ and feet of Diego Maradona would provide a lasting, painful memory. As a manager, his journey has taken him from Manchester to Sunderland, India to Thailand, each step a voyage into the unknown and sometimes into difficulties and even controversy. This is the unique story of a footballer who got to the top and yet never forgot his roots, who mixed with the powerful but has never been afraid to challenge authority. Told with typical forthrightness, Peter’s book will capture the imagination of football fans far and wide.

    Often called the greatest boxer of all time, he held world titles at four different weights, is the only boxer in history to have fought in five different decades, and his bouts with fellow greats like Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, and Marvin Hagler have gone down in fistic folklore. He finally retired in January of 2002, at age fifty-two, with a professional record of 104 wins (69 by KO) in 120 fights. They called him Manos de Piedra: “Hands of Stone.” Now journalist Christian Giudice has written the first—and definitive—story of Duran’s incredible life both in and out of the ring. He has interviewed the fighter, his family, closest friends, and scores of his opponents to separate truth from myth. Duran was born in utter poverty in Panama and grew up in the streets, fighting to survive. His talent with his fists soon emerged, and he had his first professional fight in 1967. Duran grew into a fighter’s fighter. His hunger to destroy opponents and his willingness to take on anyone, anywhere, made him a huge favorite while his flamboyant lifestyle outside the ring made headline news. Duran was one of the first Latino fighters to become a mainstream sports star in the United States, and his natural talent, unprecedented achievements, and longevity made an indelible mark on the world of sport.

    Ron Darling got to live that dream - only it didn't go exactly as planned. In Game 7, 1986, the award-winning baseball analyst looks back at what might have been a signature moment in his career, and reflects on the ways professional athletes must sometimes shoulder a personal disappointment as his team finds a way to win. Published to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the 1986 New York Mets championship season, Darling's book will break down one of baseball's great "forgotten" games - a game that stands as a thrilling, telling and tantalizing exclamation point to one of the best-remember seasons in Major League Baseball history. Working once again with New York Times best-selling collaborator Daniel Paisner, who teamed with the former All-Star pitcher on his acclaimed 2009 memoir Game 7, 1986, Darling offers a book for the thinking baseball fan, a chance to reflect on what it means to compete at the game's highest level, with everything on the line.

    Elfrink revealed that a Miami clinic, Biogenesis, had been supplying illegal performance enhancing drugs – PEDs – to many of the nation’s top baseball stars. One name stood out among all the others: Alex Rodriguez, the highest-earning player in the game.Over the next year and more the story would unravel with incredible details about tanning salon robberies, coded text messages, and furtive steroid injections in the men’s room. In late 2013 Alex Rodriguez would be hit with the longest suspension in MLB history, prompting an ugly fight between him and top league brass. Fourteen other players, including superstar Ryan Braun, were also given shorter suspensions. Tony Bosch, Biogenesis’s founder, would appear on 60 Minutes in an effort to tell his side of the story.What’s already been reported in the press has been fascinating; but the story behind the headlines that Elfrink and Newsday reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts have unearthed is even more dramatic and full of new, shocking details. Using exclusive documents, never-before-reported records and interviews with top sources, this book takes the reader inside drug deals, athletes’ mansions, and confidential suspension hearings to tell the true story behind the sport’s continuing PED crisis.Both news-breaking sports journalism and wild South Florida noir, Blood Sport is simultaneously a revelatory record of the steroid and PED era’s continuing evolution and a call to arms for how to end it – this time, for good.

    Love them or hate them, they cannot be ignored by anyone who professes to be a fan of the great game of baseball.With Damn Yankees, Rob Fleder, former Executive Editor for Sports Illustrated magazine, offers a timeless collection of original essays by some of the most prominent contemporary writers in America—from Pete Dexter to Jane Leavy, from Roy Blount Jr. to Colum McCann—each piece focusing on one uniquely colorful subject: the fanatically adored/resoundingly despised “Bronx Bombers.”Funny, moving, provocative, insightful appreciations and detractions—from Babe Ruth to Mickey Mantle to Derek Jeter—Damn Yankees offers twenty-four fascinating takes on the most storied franchise of baseball’s Major Leagues.

    . . a riveting journey through the world of minor-league baseball“No one grows up playing baseball pretending that they’re pitching or hitting in Triple-A.” —Chris Schwinden, Triple-A pitcher“If you don’t like it here, do a better job.” —Ron Johnson, Triple-A managerJohn Feinstein gave readers an unprecedented view of the PGA Tour in A Good Walk Spoiled. He opened the door to an NCAA basketball locker room in his explosive bestseller A Season on the Brink. Now, turning his eye to our national pastime, sports journalist John Feinstein explores the colorful and mysterious world of minor-league baseball—a gateway through which all major-league players pass in their careers . . . hoping never to return.      Baseball’s minor leagues are a paradox. For some players, the minors are a glorious launching pad toward years of fame and fortune; for others, a crash-landing pad when injury or poor play forces a big leaguer back to a life of obscure ballparks and cramped buses instead of Fenway Park and plush charter planes. Focusing exclusively on the Triple-A level, one step beneath Major League Baseball, Feinstein introduces readers to nine unique men: three pitchers, three position players, two managers, and an umpire. Through their compelling stories, Feinstein pulls back the veil on a league that is chock-full of gifted baseball players, managers, and umpires who are all one moment away from getting called up—or back—to the majors.      The stories are hard to believe: a first-round draft pick and pitching ace who rocketed to major-league success before finding himself suddenly out of the game, hatching a presumptuous plan to get one more shot at the mound; a home run–hitting former World Series hero who lived the dream, then bounced among six teams before facing the prospects of an unceremonious end to his career; a big-league All-Star who, in the span of five months, went from being completely out of baseball to becoming a star in the ALDS, then signing a $10 million contract; and a well-liked designated hitter who toiled for eighteen seasons in the minors—a record he never wanted to set—before facing his final, highly emotional chance for a call-up to the big leagues.      From Raleigh to Pawtucket, from Lehigh Valley to Indianapolis and beyond, Where Nobody Knows Your Name gives readers an intimate look at a baseball world not normally seen by the fans. John Feinstein gets to the heart of the human stories in a uniquely compelling way, crafting a masterful book that stands alongside his very best works.

    It is my honor to invite you to enter into his world."--John Thorn, Official Historian, Major League BaseballThe fascinating, true, origin story of baseball -- how America's first great sport developed and how it conquered a nation. Baseball's true founders don't have plaques in Cooperstown. The founders were the hundreds of uncredited amateurs -- ordinary people -- who played without gloves, facemasks or performance incentives in the middle decades of the 19th century. Unlike today's pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They worked, built businesses and fought in the Civil War.The wrongness of baseball history can be staggering. You may have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Neither did. You may have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. They didn't. You have read that baseball's color line was uncrossed and unchallenged until Jackie Robinson in 1947. Nope. You have been told that the clean, corporate 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings were baseball's first professional club. Not true. They weren't the first professionals; they weren't all that clean, either. You may have heard Cooperstown, Hoboken, or New York City called the birthplace of baseball, but not Brooklyn. Yet Brooklyn was the home of baseball's first fans, the first ballpark, the first statistics--and modern pitching. Baseball was originally supposed to be played, not watched. This changed when crowds began to show up at games in Brooklyn in the late 1850s. We fans weren't invited to the party; we crashed it. Professionalism wasn't part of the plan either, but when an 1858 Brooklyn versus New York City series accidentally proved that people would pay to see a game, the writing was on the outfield wall. When the first professional league was formed in 1871, baseball was already a fully formed modern sport with championships, media coverage, and famous stars. Professional baseball invented an organization, but not the sport itself. Baseball's amazing amateurs had already done that.Thomas W. Gilbert's history is for baseball fans and anyone fascinating by origin stories and American culture.

    Never been to a movie. Never played baseball with a real team. Never got over feeling guilty for the loss of his brother. But change is in the air. Billy discovers he has a natural talent for baseball, especially as a pitcher. Maybe, just maybe, there's more in store for him than life on the farm. But can Billy convince his father of that? Or is he destined to spend the rest of his life pitching nothing but hay?Teenager Billy Baggs is desperately needed on his family's struggling dairy farm, but he's also an extraordinarily gifted natural baseball player. How he struggles to reconcile his father's desire to keep him on the farm with his coach's interest in getting him on the field is at the heart of this ‘meaty story.… The complex characters grow and change in profoundly real ways.''K. ‘[With] flashes of humor, a wealth of lovingly recounted details evokes the difficult daily life on a small dairy farm.''Publishers Weekly. 1994 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)1994 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)1993 "Pick of the Lists" (ABA)

    

    Working his way through the minor leagues, earning three hundred dollars a month, he survived just about everything, even riots in stadiums in Puerto Rico. And while players and other umps hit the bars at night, Harvey memorized the rule book. In 1962, he broke into the big leagues and was soon listening to rookie Pete Rose worrying that he would be cut by the Reds and laying down the law with managers such as Tommy Lasorda and Joe Torre. This colorful memoir takes you behind the plate for some of baseball’s most memorable moments, including Roberto Clemente’s three thousandth and final hit; the heroic three-and-two pinch-hit home run by Kirk Gibson in the ’88 World Series; and the nail-biting excitement of the ’68 World Series. But beyond the drama, Harvey turned umpiring into an art. He was a man so respected, whose calls were so feared and infallible, that the players called him “God.” And through it all, he lived by three rules: never take anything from a player, never back down from a call, and never carry a grudge. A book for anyone who loves baseball, They Called Me God is a funny and fascinating tale of on- and off-the-field action, peopled by unforgettable characters from Bob Gibson to Nolan Ryan, and a treatise on good umpiring techniques. In a memoir that transcends the sport, Doug Harvey tells a gripping story of responsibility, fairness, and honesty.

    When Wiggins had to pull out of the defence of his yellow jersey, attention moved to Chris Froome, who had finished as runner-up the year before. Could he bring about back-to-back victories for the UK and for Team Sky? With team principal Sir Dave Brailsford at the helm, the levels of expectation were high. Nothing less than a win would do. Embedded within the team was top sportswriter David Walsh, who had been covering the sport for four decades. As the man who had done more than any other journalist to reveal the lies of Lance Armstrong, he has the reputation for exposing the dark secrets that cycling would want to keep hidden. His inside story, from how Team Sky prepared for the Tour de France through to Froome's emphatic victory, is supported by insights from all the key members of the team, and provides a definitive account of a dramatic race that gripped cycling fans around the world.

    His father, Patrick Riley, is a New York City cop. His grandfather, a fireman for thirty years, is a man who firmly believes that all of life’s great lessons are explained in baseball lore. In the wake of the assassinations of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, as the neighborhood changes around him, Scooter is forced to see that life, like baseball, is a game in which a few extraordinary moments–moments of either courage or cowardice–will define the man he becomes.