Peter Hertzmann teaches you skills that encompass everything you need to do with a knife in the kitchen, whether you're a four-star chef or an at-home beginner. This comprehensive guide fills a gaping void in culinary literature.

    Its rhythms are those of the seasons. Its memories are savored, it losses lamented. Baseball's graceful athleticism, formal strategy, and democratic spirit have ensured the devotion of Americans for generations, and writers have been drawn to this sport as to no other. With Baseball: A Literary Anthology, The Library of America presents a vivid panorama of the game that is, in Roger Angell's words, "one of the reasons that summer exists." It offers a lively mix of stories, memoirs, poems, news reports, and insider accounts about all aspects of the great American game, from its pastoral 19th-century beginnings to its apotheosis as the undisputed national pastime. Here are the major leaguers and the bush leaguers, the umpires and broadcasters, the wives and girlfriends and would-be girlfriends, fans meticulously observant and lovingly, fanatically obsessed. Here too are the teams of storied greatness--the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Red Sox--and the luminaries who made them legendary.Unforgettable portraits of icons such as Christy Matthewson, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Jackie Robinson are joined by glimpses of lesser-known characters such as the erudite Moe Berg, who could speak a dozen languages "but couldn't hit in any of them." Poems included in Baseball: A Literary Anthology include indispensable works whose phrases have entered the language--Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" and Franklin P. Adams's "Baseball's Sad Lexicon"--as well as more recent offerings from May Swenson, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Martin Espada. Testimonies from classic oral histories offer insights into the players who helped enshrine the sport in the American imagination. Spot reporting by Heywood Broun and Damon Runyon stands side by side with journalistic profiles that match baseball legends with some of our finest writers: John Updike on Ted Williams, Gay Talese on Joe DiMaggio, Red Smith on Lefty Grove.

    Jon Wertheim to overturn some of the most cherished truisms of sports, and reveal the hidden forces that shape how basketball, baseball, football, and hockey games are played, won and lost.Drawing from Moskowitz's original research, as well as studies from fellow economists such as bestselling author Richard Thaler, the authors look at: the influence home-field advantage has on the outcomes of games in all sports and why it exists; the surprising truth about the universally accepted axiom that defense wins championships;  the subtle biases that umpires exhibit in calling balls and strikes in key situations; the unintended consequences of referees' tendencies in every sport to "swallow the whistle," and more.Among the insights that Scorecasting reveals:Why Tiger Woods is prone to the same mistake in high-pressure putting situations that you and I areWhy professional teams routinely overvalue draft picks The myth of momentum  or the "hot hand" in sports, and why so many fans, coaches, and broadcasters fervently subscribe to itWhy NFL coaches rarely go for a first down on fourth-down situations--even when their reluctance to do so reduces their chances of winning.In an engaging narrative that takes us from the putting greens of Augusta to the grid iron of a small parochial high school in Arkansas, Scorecasting will forever change how you view the game, whatever your favorite sport might be.

    take a historic jog around the bases on the evening of September 6, 1995--the night he smashed Lou Gehrig?s record number of 2,130 consecutively played games. But, as "the hardest working man in baseball" will tell you, he was just doing his job. And now he tells you just how he does it, why he does it, and how it makes him feel.With the candor and grace that have endeared him to fans everywhere, Cal Ripken, Jr. tells the story of his journey to the major leagues: of his early childhood and life with a baseball manager for a father; his stint in the minors, working his way up from the Rookie Leagues to Triple-A; and finally to the permanent call from Baltimore where he began the drive to an All-Star career. Cal talks with warmth of his mentors and teammates, and with honesty of the Orioles? roller-coaster ride from the pennant to a lamentable 0-21 start in the eighties. He reveals his innermost thoughts on the game, and leads us through his strategies at the plate and on the field. Best of all, Cal reveals what makes him tick: his commitment to the game, to his family, to his career, and to the team. In this rich and rewarding memoir, we find out why he?s credited with putting the "great" back into America?s greatest game: it?s the only way he knows.

    Not just a special day in a historic rivalry but a unique one in the long tradition of baseball writing. For on this day award-winning sportswriter Steve Kettmann worked with a team of top reporters to chronicle everything that happened, from the point of view of everyone involved. With One Day at Fenway, Kettmann goes beyond the ballpark to bring you interviews and anecdotes involving all the major players—from Red Sox owner John Henry and CEO Larry Lucchino, privately second-guessing Grady Little's managing moves during the game; to Yankee skipper Joe Torre, worrying on the bench about Mariano Rivera, who can't find home plate; to Sox slugger Manny Ramirez, who missed the game with a throat infection. And there's more: the famous and infamous players in the field and in the boardrooms, rabid fans on both sides, the not-so-innocent bystanders—all here in this brilliant re-creation of a day in the life of America's favorite pastime.

    But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin’s left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake—hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox.With an unforgettable cast of characters—including Doc, Straw, the Kid, Nails, Mex, and manager Davey Joshson—this “affectionate but critical look at this exciting season” (Publishers Weekly) celebrates the last of baseball’s arrogant, insane, rock-and-roll-and-party-all-night teams, exploring what could have been, what should have been, and what never was.

    Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings in Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation." Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from a Birmingham Jail 1963Anybody who is familiar with the Civil Rights movement knows that 1964 was a pivotal year. And in Birmingham, Alabama - perhaps the epicenter of racial conflict - the Barons amazingly started their season with an integrated team. Johnny "Blue Moon" Odom, a talented pitcher and Tommie Reynolds, an outfielder - both young black ballplayers with dreams of playing someday in the big leagues, along with Bert Campaneris, a dark-skinned shortstop from Cuba, all found themselves in this simmering cauldron of a minor league town, all playing for Heywood Sullivan, a white former major leaguer who grew up just down the road in Dothan, Alabama. Colton traces the entire season, writing about the extraordinary relationships among these players with Sullivan, and Colton tells their story by capturing the essence of Birmingham and its citizens during this tumultuous year. (The infamous Bull Connor, for example, when not ordering blacks to be blasted by powerful water hoses, is a fervent follower of the Barons and served as a long-time broadcaster of their games.) By all accounts, the racial jeers and taunts that rained down upon these Birmingham players were much worse than anything that Jackie Robinson ever endured.More than a story about baseball, this is a true accounting of life in a different time and clearly a different place. Seventeen years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color line in the major leagues, Birmingham was exploding in race riots....and now, they were going to have their very first integrated sports team. This is a story that has never been told.

    In October of 1912, seven years before gambling nearly destroyed the sport, the world of baseball got lucky. It would get two teams-the Boston Red Sox and the New York Giants, winners of a combined 208 games during the regular season-who may well have been the two finest ball clubs ever assembled to that point. Most importantly, during the course of eight games spanning nine days in that marvelous baseball autumn, they would elevate the World Series from a regional October novelty to a national obsession. The games would fight for space on the front pages of the nation's newspapers, battling both an assassin's bullet and the most sensational trial of the young century, with the Series often carrying the day and earning the "wood." In "The First Fall Classic," veteran sports journalist and author Mike Vaccaro brings to life a bygone era in cinematic and intimate detail-and gives fans a wonderful page-turner that re-creates the magic and suspense of the world's first "great" series.

    A major work of American history by an author with a flair for mesmerizing story-telling.” —ForbesHe lived in the present tense—in the camera’s lens. There was no frame he couldn’t or wouldn’t fill. He swung the heaviest bat, earned the most money, and incurred the biggest fines. Like all the new-fangled gadgets then flooding the marketplace—radios, automatic clothes washers, Brownie cameras, microphones and loudspeakers—Babe Ruth "made impossible events happen." Aided by his crucial partnership with Christy Walsh—business manager, spin doctor, damage control wizard, and surrogate father, all stuffed into one tightly buttoned double-breasted suit—Ruth drafted the blueprint for modern athletic stardom.His was a life of journeys and itineraries—from uncouth to couth, spartan to spendthrift, abandoned to abandon; from Baltimore to Boston to New York, and back to Boston at the end of his career for a finale with the only team that would have him. There were road trips and hunting trips; grand tours of foreign capitals and post-season promotional tours, not to mention those 714 trips around the bases.After hitting his 60th home run in September 1927—a total that would not be exceeded until 1961, when Roger Maris did it with the aid of the extended modern season—he embarked on the mother of all barnstorming tours, a three-week victory lap across America, accompanied by Yankee teammate Lou Gehrig. Walsh called the tour a "Symphony of Swat." The Omaha World Herald called it "the biggest show since Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, and seven other associated circuses offered their entire performance under one tent." In The Big Fella, acclaimed biographer Jane Leavy recreates that 21-day circus and in so doing captures the romp and the pathos that defined Ruth’s life and times.Drawing from more than 250 interviews, a trove of previously untapped documents, and Ruth family records, Leavy breaks through the mythology that has obscured the legend and delivers the man.

     Greed and excess defined the 1980s, and the sports world was no exception. Shifting from the love of the game to the love of money, athletes made the transition from representing honor and humility to becoming brash and branded. Capturing the stories of headliners who capitalized on this trend, "Bigger Than the Game" charts the rise (and sometimes spectacular fall) of four athletes over the span of one of the most dramatic eras in sports. Meticulously researched, with stirring, you-are-there reporting, "Bigger Than the Game" assembles a cast that includes Jim McMahon, who took the Chicago Bears to Super Bowl glory despite his penchant for partying and his aversion to following the game plan; Brian Boswoth, the university of Oklahoma linebacker who mugged for the cameras while calling the NCAA a communist organization; Bo Jackson, who pursued promising careers in both pro football and baseball; and Len Bias, poised to ensure the Boston Celtics' dominance but died of a cocaine overdose just one day after the draft. Also packed with portraits of folk heroes such as "Refrigerator" Perry and Michael Jordan, "Bigger Than the Game" offers a riveting ride for every sports fan.

    In 2004, Sam Walker, a sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal, decided to explore this phenomenon by talking his way into Tout Wars, a league reserved for the nation’s top experts. The result is one of the most sheerly entertaining sports books in years and a matchless look into the heart and soul of our national pastime.

    Trading Bases explains how he did it. After the fall of Lehman Brothers, Joe Peta was out of a job. He found a new one but lost that, too, when an ambulance mowed him down. In search of a way to cheer himself up while he recuperated in a wheelchair, Peta started watching baseball again, as he had growing up. That’s when inspiration hit: Why not apply his outstanding risk-analysis skills to improve on sabermetrics, the method made famous by Moneyball—and beat the only market in town, the Vegas betting line? Why not treat MLB like the S&P 500? In Trading Bases, Peta shows how to subtract luck—in particular “cluster luck,” as he puts it—from a team’s statistics to best predict how it will perform in the next game and over the whole season. His baseball “hedge fund” returned an astounding 41 percent in 2011—and has never been down more than 5 percent. Peta takes readers to the ballpark in San Francisco, trading floors and baseball bars in New York, and sports books in Vegas, all while tracing the progress of his wagers. Often humorous, occasionally touching, and with a wink toward the sheer implausibility of the whole project, Trading Bases is all about the love of critical reasoning, trading cultures, risk management, and baseball. And not necessarily in that order.

    Very Good conditions. May have soft reading marks and name of the previous owner.

    Fans watching the game on television or even at the stadium don't have access to the mind games a pitcher must play in order to get through an at-bat, an inning, a game. Tewksbury explores the fascinating psychology behind baseball, such as how players use techniques of imagery, self-awareness, and strategic thinking to maximize performance, and how a pitcher's strategy changes throughout a game. He also offers an in-depth look into some of baseball's most monumental moments and intimate anecdotes from a "who's who" of the game, including legendary players who Tewksbury played with and against (such as Mark McGwire, Craig Biggio, and Greg Maddux), game-changing managers and executives (Joe Torre, Bruce Bochy, Brian Sabean), and current star players (Jon Lester, Anthony Rizzo, Andrew Miller, Rich Hill).With Tewksbury's esoteric knowledge as a thinking-fan's player and his expertise as a "baseball whisperer", this entertaining book is perfect for any fan who wants to see the game in a way he or she has never seen it before. Ninety Percent Mental will deliver an unprecedented look at the mound games and mind games of Major League Baseball. "Tewks and I were teammates when Tewks was ending his career with the Twins. I saw him use his mind to be successful on the mound. Years later, we were once again on the same team with the 2013 World Series champion Red Sox, and I again saw him use his mind--this time to help others. I know he helped us win, and I know this book can help anyone who reads it."―David Ortiz, 10-time All-Star, 3-time World Series champion, and New York Times bestselling author of Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits; called "the most important player in Boston Red Sox history." "I've known Bob Tewksbury for more than a quarter of a century, dating back to our five seasons together in St. Louis. He was one of the most thoughtful players I ever managed, approaching the craft of pitching like an artist. Bob became an All-Star not through physical gifts, but because he excelled on the mental side of a game that constantly challenges its players and their resilience. I have no doubt that Bob's readers will benefit from his insights on the importance of focus and preparation."―Joe Torre, Hall of Fame and Four-Time World Series Champion Manager, and Chief Baseball Officer, Major League Baseball "Nobody I've come across in my almost 30 years in the game did more with his God-given talent than Tewks. His ability to control a baseball was freakish and he was tough. But more than that, he was always different. Not just an athlete, but a deep thinker, a good teammate and an even better friend. The Red Sox now get all of that as a resource for their entire roster, which in my mind is a distinct competitive advantage."―Joe Buck, lead play-by-play broadcaster, Fox Sports "Tewksbury relied on control and guile, a testament to his ability to think and adjust. His intellect and devotion to helping others came with the credibility of knowing what it is like to stand on a major-league mound with three tiers of stands staring down on him. Few better understand that baseball is a human game, and humans are fragile beings."―Peter Gammons, Hall of Fame and J.G. Taylor Spink Award-winning baseball writer and MLB Network on-air analyst

    and Lou Gehrig, who each achieved the coveted and sometimes confounding record of most consecutive games played When Cal Ripken Jr. began his career with the Baltimore Orioles at age twenty-one, he had no idea he’d beat the historic record of 2,130 games played in a row set by Lou Gehrig, the fabled “Iron Horse” of the New York Yankees. When Ripken beat that record by 502 games, the baseball world was floored. Few feats in sports history have generated more acclaim. But the record that Ripken now owns, quite possibly forever, spawns an array of questions. Was his streak or Gehrig’s the more difficult achievement? Who owned the record before Gehrig? When did someone first think it was a good idea to play in so many games without taking a day off?   Through probing research, meticulous analysis, and colorful parallel storytelling, The Streak delves into this impressive but controversial milestone, unraveling Gehrig’s at times unwitting pursuit of that goal and Ripken’s fierce determination to play the game his way, which resulted in his seizing of the record decades later. Along the way Eisenberg dives deep into the history of the record and offers a portrait of the pastime in different eras, going back more than a century.   The question looms: Was it harder for Ripken or Gehrig to play every day for so long? The length of seasons, the number of teams in the major leagues, the inclusion of non-white players, travel, technology, and even media are all part of the equation. Larger than all of this, however, is a book that captures the deeply American appreciation—as seen in the sport itself, its players, and its fans—for that workaday mentality and that desire to be there for the game they love, the job they are paid to do.