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

    Now, Erik Sherman, the New York Times bestselling coauthor of Mookie, profiles key players from that infamous Mets team, revealing never-before-exposed details about their lives after that championship year…as well as a look back at the magical season itself.      Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden, Keith Hernandez, Lenny Dykstra, Mookie Wilson, Howard Johnson, Doug Sisk, Rafael Santana, Bobby Ojeda, Wally Backman, Kevin Mitchell, Ed Hearn, Danny Heep, and the late Gary Carter were all known for their heroics on the field. For some of them—known as the “Scum Bunch”—their debauchery off the field was even more awe-inspiring. But when that golden season ended, so did their aura of invincibility. Some faced battles with addiction, some were traded, and others struggled just to keep their lives together.    Through interviews with these legendary players, Erik Sherman offers fans a new perspective on a team that will forever be remembered in sports history.INCLUDES PHOTOSFrom the Hardcover edition.

    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.

    Plus, the Philadelphia Phillies' 2011 rotation also happens to include Cole Hamels--the 2008 NLCS and World Series MVP--and an alternating fifth starter. This awe-inducing rotation has been the talk of baseball since coming together in December 2010. They were featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated's 2011 baseball- preview edition, interviewed on the MLB Network on opening day of spring training, covered in the New York Times Magazine, and mentioned in numerous newspapers and magazines nationwide.Authored by two of the most knowledgable and connected Phillies beat writers, The Rotation is a remarkably detailed day-in-the-life story of one complete season with a Major League Baseball starting-pitching staff. The authors offer deep daily access to the Phillies players, coaches, and front-office staff, as well as the players and staff of other major league teams and the national baseball media.With firsthand reporting and extensive interviews, plus two full-color photo inserts, this is a fascinating and detailed look into the day-to-day operation of what is arguably the greatest pitching rotation ever assembled. It is a must-read for Phillies fans and general baseball fans alike.

    In The DiMaggios, acclaimed sportswriter Tom Clavin reveals the untold Great American Story of three brothers, Joltin’ Joe, Dom, and Vince DiMaggio, and the Great American Game—baseball—that would consume their lives.A vivid portrait of a family and the ways in which their shifting fortunes and status shaped their relationships, The DiMaggios is a exploration of an era and a culture.This comprehensive biography that recalls the work of Jane Leavy offers a trove of insight into one of the game’s greatest players and his family, sure to be treasured by Yankees fans, Red Sox Fans, and baseball aficionados around the world.

    ALS known today as "Lou Gehrig's Disease" robbed him of his physical skills at a relatively young age, and he died in 1941. Ray Robinson re-creates the life of this legendary ballplayer and also provides an insightful look at baseball, including all the great players of that era: Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and more.

    Here is the brilliant manager stripped naked—the person underneath all the clowning, mugging, and double-talking. Robert Creamer shows us Casey at twenty-two, famous from his very first day in the big leagues. We see Casey’s playing career fall apart as he is traded, shunted to last-place teams, hampered by injuries, considered finished—until he bats a glorious home run in the 1923 World Series. Here are Casey’s managing successes and failures—dismissed by the Yankees, he returns to the limelight with his new and inept New York Mets, the team he single-handedly lifts into the nation’s consciousness.“I’m a man that’s been up and down,” Casey said in a serious moment. Certainly his knack for bouncing back made him a legend in our national pastime. Here are the stories and gags, the Stengelian style, the full dimensions of the man.

    It's all here--the lawsuits, the crazy confluence of sports and ego and civic destiny, and of course, superstars Ichiro, A-Rod, Randy Johnson, and Ken Griffey. Seattle sportswriter Art Thiel recounts the painful birth, awkward adolescence, and hard-won maturity of one of the most beloved teams in sports history.

    Featuring the players’ fascinating stories and original photographs.Cam Perron always loved history, and from an early age, he had a knack for collecting. But when he was twelve and bought a set of Topps baseball cards featuring several players from the Negro Leagues, something clicked. Cam started writing letters to former Negro League players in 2007, asking for their autographs and a few words about their careers. He got back much more than he expected. The players responded with detailed stories about their glory days on the field, and the racism they faced, including run-ins with the KKK. They explained how they were repeatedly kept out of the major leagues and confined to the historic but lower-paying Negro Leagues, even after Jackie Robinson—who got his start in the Negro Leagues—broke the color barrier. By the time Cam finished middle school, letters had turned into phone calls, and he was spending hours a day talking with the players. In these conversations, many of the players revealed that their careers had been unrecognized over time, and they’d fallen out of touch with their former teammates. So Cam, along with a small group of fellow researchers, organized the first annual Negro League Players Reunion in Birmingham, Alabama in 2010. At the celebratory, week-long event, fifteen-year-old Cam and the players—who were in their 70s, 80s, and 90s—finally met in person. They quickly became family. As Cam and the players returned to the reunion year after year, Cam became deeply involved in a complicated mission to help many players get pension money that they were owed from Major League Baseball. He also worked to get a Negro League museum opened in Birmingham, and stock it with memorabilia. Sports fans—and anyone who enjoys a heartfelt story—will have their eyes opened by this book about unlikely friendships, the power of memories, and just how far a childhood interest can go.

    First identified as valuable in the 1930s, when the whole notion of card collecting was still young, the T206 Wagner has remained the big score for collectors who have scoured card shows, flea markets, estate sales, and auctions for the portrait of baseball's greatest shortstop.Only a few dozen T206 Wagners are known to still exist. Most, with their creases, stains, and dog-eared corners, look worn and tattered, like they've been around for almost a century. But one—The Card—appears to have defied the travails of time. Thanks to its sharp corners and its crisp portrait of Honus Wagner, The Card has become the most famous and desired baseball card in the world.Over the decades, as The Card has changed hands, its value has skyrocketed. It was initially sold for $25,000 by a small card shop in a nondescript strip mall. Years later, hockey great Wayne Gretzky bought it at the venerable Sotheby's auction house for $451,000. Then, more recently, it sold for $1.27 million on eBay. Today worth over $2 million, it has transformed a sleepy hobby into a billion-dollar industry that is at times as lawless as the Wild West. The Card has made men wealthy, certainly, but it has also poisoned lifelong friendships and is fraught with controversy—from its uncertain origins and the persistent questions about its provenance to the possibility that it is not exactly as it seems.Now for the first time, award-winning investigative reporters Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson follow the trail of The Card from a Florida flea market to the hands of the world's most prominent collectors. They delve into a world of counterfeiters and con men and look at the people who profit from what used to be a kids' pastime, as they bring to light ongoing investigations into sports collectibles. O'Keeffe and Thompson also examine the life of the great Honus Wagner, a ballplayer whose accomplishments have been eclipsed by his trading card, and the strange and fascinating subculture of sports memorabilia and its astonishing decline.Intriguing and eye-opening, The Card is a ground-breaking look at a uniquely American hobby.

    The Perfection Point is ideal for sports fans interested in the scientific basis of athletic excellence and a fascinating read for science fans interested in the physics of sports.

    Small though that number is, it is inflated by dozens of skippers with only a few weeks or months at the helm of a club. If we were to define "real" managers as those who have managed a thousand games - not, after all, a terribly high bar to hurdle, fewer than seven full seasons - we would find that fewer than one hundred men qualify. Now Bill James, "the guru of baseball" (Newsweek), takes on the challenge of chronicling that history, including a decade-by-decade snapshot of baseball strategy from the 1870s through the 1990s.

    In 1945 Major League Baseball had become a ghost of itself. Parks were half empty, the balls were made with fake rubber, and mediocre replacements roamed the fields, as hundreds of players, including the game's biggest stars, were serving abroad, devoted to unconditional Allied victory in World War II. But by the spring of 1946, the country was ready to heal. The war was finally over, and as America's fathers and brothers were coming home, so too were the sport's greats. Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and Joe DiMaggio returned with bats blazing, making the season a true classic that ended in a thrilling seven-game World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals. America also witnessed the beginning of a new era in baseball: it was a year of attendance records, the first year Yankee Stadium held night games, the last year the Green Monster wasn't green, and, most significant, Jackie Robinson's first year playing in the Brooklyn Dodgers' system. The Victory Season brings to vivid life these years of baseball and war, including the littleknown "World Series" that servicemen played in a captured Hitler Youth stadium in the fall of 1945. Robert Weintraub's extensive research and vibrant storytelling enliven the legendary season that embodies what we now think of as the game's golden era.

    With a new introduction by celebrated baseball writer Roger Kahn and a new afterword by the author, updating John Henry's first year of ownership after nearly six decades of the Yawkey dynasty, the legacy of the late Will McDonough, and the author's return to his native Boston after a seventeen-year absence, Shut Out has reopened the discussion of baseball, race, and Boston with a new candor.

    As the beloved, longtime PR director for the New York Mets, he has witnessed and quietly shaped some of the most memorable moments in team history, becoming a trusted friend and mentor to generations of players, from Darryl Strawberry to Jacob deGrom. In this fascinating memoir, Horwitz tells the unlikely story of a childhood dream come true, offering an unparalleled insider's perspective on four dynamic and unpredictable decades of Mets baseball. Featuring reflections and anecdotes only Horwitz can tell, on subjects ranging from clubhouse hijinks to the chaotic New York media scene to navigating moments of greatness and defeat, Mr. Met is a remarkable behind-the-scenes ride that fans will not want to miss.