Download or read book The Natural written by Bernard Malamud and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2003-07-07 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classical novel (and basis for the acclaimed film starring Robert Redford) now in a new edition Introduction by Kevin Baker The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first—and some would say still the best—novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material—the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era—and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin's comment still holds true: "Malamud has done something which—now that he has done it!—looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology."
Download or read book The Natural written by Bernard Malamud and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now an American baseball hero and a winner after a dark period, Roy finds the woman he thought he had lost. But his is up against corrupter's, seducers, and glory destroyers. And he has to win the toughest game of his life.
Download or read book Baseball s Natural written by John Theodore and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2006-12-01 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most detailed account of the 1949 shooting of the former Philadelphia Phillies baseball star Eddie Waitkus by an obsessed nineteen-year-old female fan in a Chicago hotel.
Download or read book Growing Up With Shoeless Joe written by Edward J. Thompson and published by Jti Pub. This book was released on 1997-12-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Growing Up with Shoeless Joe written by Edward J. Thompson and published by Jti Pub. This book was released on 1997-12-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Dickson Baseball Dictionary Third Edition written by Paul Dickson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-06-13 with total page 1001 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive work on the language of baseball—one of the “Five Best Baseball Books” (Wall Street Journal). Hailed as “a staggering piece of scholarship” (Wall Street Journal) and “an indispensable guide to the language of baseball” (San Diego Union-Tribune), The Dickson Baseball Dictionary has become an invaluable resource for those who love the game. Drawing on dozens of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century periodicals, as well as contemporary sources, Dickson’s brilliant, illuminating definitions trace the earliest appearances of terms both well known and obscure. This edition includes more than 10,000 terms with 18,000 individual entries, and more than 250 photos. This “impressively comprehensive” (The Nation) book will delight everyone from the youngest fan to the hard-core aficionado.
Download or read book Smoky Joe Wood written by Gerald C. Wood and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-08-06 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2014 SEYMOUR MEDAL sponsored by the Society for American Baseball Research and finalist for 2014 SABR Larry Ritter Award Though his pitching career lasted only a few seasons, Howard Ellsworth "Smoky Joe" Wood was one of the most dominating figures in baseball history--a man many consider the best baseball player who is not in the Hall of Fame. About his fastball, Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson once said: "Listen, mister, no man alive can throw harder than Smoky Joe Wood." Smoky Joe Wood chronicles the singular life befitting such a baseball legend. Wood got his start impersonating a female on the National Bloomer Girls team. A natural athlete, he pitched for the Boston Red Sox at eighteen, won twenty-one games and threw a no-hitter at twenty-one, and had a 34-5 record plus three wins in the 1912 World Series, for a 1.91 ERA, when he was just twenty-two. Then in 1913 Wood suffered devastating injuries to his right hand and shoulder that forced him to pitch in pain for two more years. After sitting out the 1916 season, he came back as a converted outfielder and played another five years for the Cleveland Indians before retiring to coach the Yale University baseball team. With details culled from interviews and family archives, this biography, the first of this rugged player of the Deadball Era, brings to life one of the genuine characters of baseball history.
Download or read book Play Hungry written by Pete Rose and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller The inside story of how Pete Rose became one of the greatest and most controversial players in the history of baseball Pete Rose was a legend on the field. As baseball’s Hit King, he shattered records that were thought to be unbreakable. And during the 1970s, he was the leader of the Big Red Machine, the Cincinnati Reds team that dominated the game. But he’s also the greatest player who may never enter the Hall of Fame because of his lifetime ban from the sport. Perhaps no other ballplayer’s story is so representative of the triumphs and tragedies of our national pastime. In Play Hungry, Rose tells us the story of how, through hard work and sheer will, he became one of the unlikeliest stars of the game. Guided by the dad he idolized, a local sports hero, Pete learned to play hard and always focus on winning. But even with his dad’s guidance, Pete was cut from his team as a teenager—he wasn’t a natural. Rose was determined, though, and never would be satisfied with anything less than success. His relentless hustle and headfirst style would help him overcome his limitations, leading him to one of the most exciting and brash careers in the history of the sport. Play Hungry is Pete Rose’s love letter to the game, and an unvarnished story of life on the diamond. One of the icons of a golden age in baseball, he describes just what it was like to hit (or try to hit) a Bob Gibson fastball or a Gaylord Perry spitball, what happened in that infamous collision at home plate during the 1970 All-Star Game, and what it felt like to topple Ty Cobb’s hit record. And he speaks to how he let down his fans, his teammates, and the memory of his dad when he gambled on baseball, breaking the rules of a sport that he loved more than anything else. Told with candor and wry humor—including tales he’s never told before—Rose’s memoir is his final word on the glories and controversies of his life, and, ultimately, a master class in how to succeed when the odds are stacked against you.
Download or read book Cotton Woods written by Ray Gotto and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Baseball Is America written by Victor Alexander Baltov, Jr and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2010-04-28 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americas Favorite Pastime with its foreign taproot evolved into the modern game. Baseball is traced in the 364-page book from its European origins plus much deeper sources. Cultural beginnings, including the rally monkey, hot dog, peanut and anthems provide historical perspective. The American spirit is captured through baseball, beating to the rhythm of the American culture, sometimes as its direction, but most times its reflection. The goodness of the game exists in both its players serving as role models for the youth, with the Yankee Clipper leading the charge, plus inducing positive progressive change highlighted by the 1947color barrier penetration by Jackie. Type and character makeup of leadership in America and baseball is positioned as integral to the cultural socialization process. Christian religious tenets previously employed in traditional America have been metaphorically Billy-Goated out of the field of play. An orchestrated reshaping from its Founding principles using education and media as hypnotic tools promoting secular-humanist ideals and values has fundamentally transformed America into a nation ripe for governance by the New World Order as One Global Family. The readers thought process is directed to answering the question as to what is the American way? The shear ugliness of baseball bore its soul to the American public during the Synthetic Era as characterized by serpentine-type Congressional hearings involving performance-enhancing-drug use. The author boldly declares America to be a nation on some sort of drug indifferent to toxic societal effects and meritocracy interference. Cultural issues including an intellectual history of PEDs, their affects on performance and leakage into the tributaries plus the evolution of the Promethean Project are well documented. Comparisons are made between the sins of Shoeless Joe and Charlie Hustle and the typical Synthetic Era ballplayer. Hazards of playing ball are probed by comparison to perceived dangers of hit-by-pitch and the Iraq War, shark attacks and automobile accidents. Political perspectives are injected into the read using metaphors, baseball-speak and satire.
Download or read book The Baseball Economist written by J.C. Bradbury and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-02-26 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freakonomics meets Moneyball in this provocative exposé of baseball’s most fiercely debated controversies and some of its oldest, most dearly held myths. Providing far more than a mere collection of numbers, economics professor and popular blogger J.C. Bradbury shines the light of his economic thinking on baseball, exposing the power of tradeoffs, competition, and incentives. Utilizing his own “sabernomic” approach, Bradbury dissects baseball topics such as: • Did steroids have nothing to do with the recent homerun records? Incredibly, Bradbury’s research reveals steroids probably had little impact. • Which players are ridiculously overvalued? Bradbury lists all players by team with their revenue value to the team listed in dollars—including a dishonor role of those players with negative values—updated in paperback to include the 2007 season. • Does it help to lobby for balls and strikes? Statistics alone aren’t enough anymore. This is a refreshing, lucid, and powerful read for fans, fantasy buffs, and players—as well as coaches at all levels—who want to know what is really happening on the field.
Download or read book Reel Baseball written by Stephen C. Wood and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2003-01-16 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not only are movies and baseball two of America's favorite pastimes, they are integral parts of our culture. Small wonder that the two frequently merge in Hollywood's use of baseball themes, jargon, and icons. This work on baseball in the movies is organized into four sections examining different aspects of the cultural intersection between film and baseball. In the first three sections--"Baseball in Baseball Films," "Babe Ruth and the Silver Screen," and "Baseball in Non-Baseball Films"--essays by scholars in various disciplines cover such topics as symbols, the role of family, baseball as a facilitator of violence, and the American mythos. The fourth section consists of interviews with directors (such as Ron Shelton and Penny Marshall), actors (Kevin Costner, James Belushi), and baseball personnel (broadcaster Vin Scully, coach Rod Dedeaux) who have worked in baseball films. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Download or read book The Principle of Baseball written by John F. Paciorek and published by BalboaPress. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "John's Book looks at Baseball, and its two most precious elements of Batting and Throwing, from the multiple standpoints of the 'superficially' physical and mental; from the 'meta-physically' scientific; and from the 'all-inclusiveness' of Spirituality. Therefore, Baseball's most enduring and endearing attributes can be perceived on multiple levels of conscious awareness, and thus arouse the 'dormant understanding' of all enthusiastic fanfare to more than just the mundane interests of the 'ordinary' sports - spectator. Change the way you think about the things you see, and the things you now observe will have changed proportionably and substantially to the quality, intensity, and expectancy of your thoughts." The game of baseball enlists few physical impediments that limit success; they are mostly mental. Any simple-minded person can achieve baseball success. Simplicity is the integration and coordination of lifes infinite array of variables within the realm of understanding. Simplicity is not the beginning of primitive evolvement but rather the culminating effect of organizationnot merely the discovery of the wheel but its maximum utility by expanded thinking. The way to describe the best of ball players at his position or at bat is that he makes it look simple. Although it is not really simple, abiding by a strict discipline of simple mechanics, the best players have perfected the techniques for their particular positions through arduous, repetitive labor, from which the human physical endeavor eventually appears effortless and instinctive. (In the words of Thomas Edison, 10 percent inspiration, 90 percent perspiration.) When mere strength and natural ability reach the limits for peak performance, conscientious devotees will find technique to add to their effectiveness and longevity. The universe (one voice) sings in simple chords of harmonious function, changing chaos into order.
Download or read book Baseball s Book of Firsts written by Lloyd Johnson and published by JG Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Edward Curtis' haunting portraits to Ansel Adams' soaring vistas, this informative and visually compelling overview of America's most famous photographers traces the history and evolution of the black and white image and how it shaped our national view. In a career spanning almost 70 years, Ansel Adams inspired millions with spectacular photographs of natural scenes. This volume is a tribute to perhaps the best-known photographer in the world.
Download or read book Phenom The Making of Bryce Harper written by Rob Miech and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The remarkable story of Bryce Harper's unforgettable ride from Morse Stadium to the top of the baseball draft" (Jayson Stark, ESPN.com) updated from the hardcover edition (The Last Natural) to include his Rookie of the Year season Before he famously became a Major League All-Star as a teenager, Harper already had dominated high school competition like Mickey Mantle on the playground and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, which dubbed him the "most exciting prodigy since LeBron James." Seeking greater tests as a hitter, the precocious star got his GED after his sophomore year and enrolled at the College of Southern Nevada, where he would face future pro pitchers in a difficult wooden-bat league. Sportswriter Rob Miech was "embedded" with the team--in the dugout and locker room and on team buses and in motel rooms--to provide a warts-and-all account of a boy among men playing like a man among boys. Amid fascinating personal stories including the dynamics between a veteran coach and Harper's overprotective father, the jealousies of teammates and opponents, and the sudden descent of press armies on a tiny college field, the author chronicles a season-long experiment that culminates in Harper leading the Coyotes to the Junior College World Series and signing a $9.9 million contract negotiated by notorious agent Scott Boras. Sporting a fresh cover and a bonus chapter that covers Harper's award-winning rookie season with the Washington Nationals, this expanded edition of Phenom (originally published as The Last Natural) gives fans an all-access pass to baseball's newest rising star.
Download or read book Behind the Plate written by Lawrence “Yogi” Berra and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life had not been kind to young Tommy Riggs—and even though he had all the natural playing ability to become a Major Leaguer, his anger at the world kept him from becoming the great player he could be. How Tommy Riggs learned not only to be a star catcher, but also to live with himself and his teammates, makes a suspenseful story filled with the true-to-life color of baseball from the Minor Leagues through the bitter competition of spring training camp to top flight baseball as it is played in the Major Leagues. It is a story every sports fan will enjoy. LAWRENCE “YOGI” BERRA was probably the one man best able to tell sports fans how to play BEHIND THE PLATE and how it feels to be a catcher. His unequaled career with the New York Yankees won him a place as one of the all-time greats. In the words of Casey Stengel, “Outside of DiMaggio, the man behind the plate, Berra, is the greatest player that I ever had to manage.” TIL FERDENZI had a completely rounded sports background that made him the perfect collaborator for “Yogi” on this book. A six-letter varsity baseball and football athlete at Boston College—a former high school coach of baseball and football—and for sportswriter for the New York Journal-American, he helped bring baseball alive for sports fans in BEHIND THE PLATE.
Download or read book The Natural written by and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
