Download or read book The Tao of the Backup Catcher written by Tim Brown and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This isn’t just a story about baseball. It’s about life and the beauty of knowing and accepting who you are.” —Jeff Passan, ESPN baseball columnist This fascinating book chronicles the unsung men of baseball who serve the job, the hardships they face, and their love for a game that would not always love them back―told partly through the experiences of an MLB veteran.​ In baseball there are superstars and stars and everyday players and then there are the rest. Within the rest are role players and specialists and journeymen and then there are the backup catchers. The Tao of the Backup Catcher is about them, the backup catchers, who exist near the bottom of the roster and the end of the bench and between the numbers in a sport–and a society–increasingly driven by cold, hard analytics. The Tao of the Backup Catcher is a story of grown men who once dreamed of stardom and generational wealth. Instead, they were handed a broom and a deeper understanding of who wins and why, who stands tall and who folds, and who will invest their own lives in catching bullpens and the back ends of doubleheaders. Backup catchers survive in part because every team needs one. They are necessary, once or twice a week. They prosper because the game, like the world around the game, still needs good souls, honest efforts, open eyes and ears, closed mouths, compassion for the sad parts, a laugh for the silly parts, and a heart that knows the difference. Backup catchers are sports’ big brothers, psychologists, priests, witch doctors, player coaches, father figures and drinking buddies, all wrapped in a suit of today’s polycarbonate armor and yesterday’s dirt. They come with a singular goal–to win baseball games. They play for the greater good. After that, they play for themselves. A reverie on loving the grind and the little things baseball can teach us, The Tao of the Backup Catcher profiles Erik Kratz, Josh Paul, AJ Ellis, Bobby Wilson, Drew Butera, Matt Treanor, and John Flaherty to name a few. “This isn’t just a story about baseball. It’s about life and the beauty of knowing and accepting who you are.” ―Jeff Passan

Download or read book The Tao of the Backup Catcher written by Tim Brown and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Told partly through the experiences of MLB veteran, Erik Kratz, THE TAO OF THE BACKUP CATCHER, chronicles the unsung men of baseball who serve the job, the hardships they face, and their love for a game that would not always love them back. In baseball there are superstars and stars and everyday players and then there are the rest. Within the rest are role players and specialists and journeymen and then there are the backup catchers. THE TAO OF THE BACKUP CATCHER is about them, the backup catchers, who exist near the bottom of the roster and the end of the bench and between the numbers in a sport - and a society - increasingly driven by cold, hard analytics. THE TAO OF THE BACKUP CATCHER is a story of grown men who once dreamed of stardom and generational wealth. Instead, they were handed a broom and a deeper understanding of who wins and why, who stands tall and who folds, and who will invest their own lives in those who might not. Backup catchers survive in part because every team needs one. They are necessary, once or twice a week. They prosper because the game, like the world around the game, still needs good souls, honest efforts, open eyes and ears, closed mouths, compassion for the sad parts, a laugh for the silly parts, and a heart that knows the difference. Backup catchers are sports' big brothers, psychologists, priests, witch doctors, player coaches, father figures and drinking buddies, all wrapped in a suit of today's polycarbonate armor and yesterday's dirt. They come with a singular goal - to win baseball games. They play for the greater good. After that, they play for themselves. A reverie on loving the grind and the little things baseball can teach us, THE TAO OF THE BACKUP CATCHER profiles Erik Kratz, Josh Paul, AJ Ellis, Bobby Wilson, Drew Butera, Matt Treanor, and John Flaherty to name a few.

Download or read book I Ain t an Athlete Lady written by John Kruk and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There's a story, a funny story, about me sitting in a restaurant. I'm eating this big meal and maybe having a couple of beers and smoking a cigarette. A woman comes by the table. She recognizes me and she's shocked because it seems like I should be in training or something. She's getting all over me, saying that a professional athlete should take better care of himself." "I lean back and I say to her, "I ain't an athlete, lady. I'm a baseball player."" "That pretty much sums it up." "In an age when athletes are getting bigger and stronger and more imposing every day, John Kruk of the National League champion Philadelphia Phillies is a hero for the rest of us. He likes his food, he likes his beer, he doesn't see much point in combing his hair and he plays the game of baseball too well for anyone to get away with hassling him about any of it. A three-time all-star, Kruk has maintained a .309 average since coming to the Phillies in 1989 and has had more fun doing it than just about anybody in sports today." "You knew the World Series against Toronto was going to be an offensive series, and [the 15-14 game] sort of epitomized that. It sucked. It was a worthless game. I told Paul Molitor - it seemed like the eighth time he was on base that day - "This ain't a World Series. The World Series is supposed to be the two best teams in the world playing. I mean, you could go to Williamsport and get two little League teams to play better than we are tonight."" ""I Ain't an Athlete, Lady..." is John Kruk's loose, funny view of his life, his world, his game, and his teammates - the wildest and flakiest bunch of players since the Gashouse Gang of the 1930s. ("In our clubhouse, if you called somebody a psychopathic idiot, it was a pretty good compliment.") Kruk shares his stories of growing up in a small town in West Virginia ("People in West Virginia do have cars. We have indoor plumbing. We even use knives and forks"), passes along his diet tips ("The best diet is just to go into a restaurant and say, 'Give me the thing on your menu that tastes the worst.' It'll probably be good for you, because that's what everything else I've eaten that's supposed to be good for me tastes like"), takes us on a tour of the Phillies' locker room ("When Jim Eisenreich first came to the Phillies, I said to some of the guys, 'Look at that guy. He looks like a mass murderer, staring like he wants to kill one of us. He looks like Jeffrey Dahmer.' So I started calling him Dahmer, and he liked it"), and tells why he was looking forward to a post-World Series visit to the White House ("He may be President, but he's not pardoned from being ragged on. If I can get on Dale Murphy, I can rag Bill Clinton")." "Kruk's take-nothing-too-seriously-and-take-no-prisoners outlook shines through. "I Ain't an Athlete, Lady..." makes clear why Kruk is rapidly becoming the most popular player in the game today."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Download or read book Imperfect written by Jim Abbott and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Honest, touching, and beautifully rendered . . . Far more than a book about baseball, it is a deeply felt story of triumph and failure, dreams and disappointments. Jim Abbott has hurled another gem.”—Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Man NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Born without a right hand, Jim Abbott dreamed of someday being a great athlete. Raised in Flint, Michigan, by parents who encouraged him to compete, Jim would become an ace pitcher for the University of Michigan. But his journey was only beginning: By twenty-one, he’d won the gold medal game at the 1988 Olympics and—without spending a day in the minor leagues—cracked the starting rotation of the California Angels. In 1991, he would finish third in the voting for the Cy Young Award. Two years later, he would don Yankee pinstripes and pitch one of the most dramatic no-hitters in major-league history. In this honest and insightful book, Jim Abbott reveals the challenges he faced in becoming an elite pitcher, the insecurities he dealt with in a life spent as the different one, and the intense emotion generated by his encounters with disabled children from around the country. With a riveting pitch-by-pitch account of his no-hitter providing the ideal frame for his story, this unique athlete offers readers an extraordinary and unforgettable memoir. “Compelling . . . [a] big-hearted memoir.”—Los Angeles Times “Inspirational.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer Includes an exclusive conversation between Jim Abbott and Tim Brown in the back of the book.

Download or read book Namath A Biography written by Mark Kriegel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-07-26 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In between Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan there was Joe Namath, one of the few sports heroes to transcend the game he played. Novelist and former sports-columnist Mark Kriegel’s bestselling biography of the iconic quarterback details his journey from steel-town pool halls to the upper reaches of American celebrity—and beyond. The first of his kind, Namath enabled a nation to see sports as show biz. For an entire generation he became a spectacle of booze and broads, a guy who made bachelorhood seem an almost sacred calling, but it was his audacious “guarantee” of victory in Super Bowl III that ensured his legend. This unforgettable portrait brings readers from the gridiron to the go-go nightclubs as Kriegel uncovers the truth behind Broadway Joe and why his legend has meant so much to so many.

Download or read book Pistol written by Mark Kriegel and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-02-05 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Basketball.

Download or read book Infinite Baseball written by Alva Noë and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...Philosopher and baseball fan Alva Noë explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game. For example, he ponders how observers of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or blame. To put it another way, in baseball - as in the law - we decide what happened based on who is responsible for what happened. Noe also explains the curious activity of keeping score: a score card is not merely a record of the game, like a video recording; it is an account of the game. Baseball requires that true fans try to tell the story of the game, in real time, as it unfolds, and thus actively participate in its creation. Some argue that baseball is fundamentally a game about numbers. Noe's wide-ranging, thoughtful observations show that, to the contrary, baseball is not only a window on language, culture, and the nature of human action, but is intertwined with deep and fundamental human truths."--Dust jacket flap.

Download or read book The Game written by Jon Pessah and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The incredible inside story of power, money, and baseball's last twenty years In the fall of 1992, America's National Pastime is in crisis and already on the path to the unthinkable: cancelling a World Series for the first time in history. The owners are at war with each other, their decades-long battle with the players has turned America against both sides, and the players' growing addiction to steroids will threaten the game's very foundation. It is a tipping point for baseball, a crucial moment in the game's history that catalyzes a struggle for power by three strong-willed men: Commissioner Bud Selig, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and union leader Don Fehr. It's their uneasy alliance at the end of decades of struggle that pulls the game back from the brink and turns it into a money-making powerhouse that enriches them all. This is the real story of baseball, played out against a tableau of stunning athletic feats, high-stakes public battles, and backroom political deals--with a supporting cast that includes Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, Joe Torre and Derek Jeter, George Bush and George Mitchell, and many more. Drawing from hundreds of extensive, exclusive interviews throughout baseball, The Game is a stunning achievement: a rigorously reported book and the must-read, fly-on-the-wall, definitive account of how an enormous struggle for power turns disaster into baseball's Golden Age.

Download or read book Clubbie written by Greg Larson and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greg Larson was a starry-eyed fan when he hurtled headfirst into professional baseball. As the new clubhouse attendant for the Aberdeen IronBirds, a Minor League affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles, Larson assumed he’d entered a familiar world. He thought wrong. He quickly discovered the bizarre rituals of life in the Minors: fights between players, teammates quitting in the middle of the games, doomed relationships, and a negligent parent organization. All the while, Larson, fresh out of college, harbored a secret wish. Despite the team’s struggles and his own lack of baseball talent, he yearned to join the exclusive fraternity of professional ballplayers. Instead, Larson fell deeper into his madcap venture as the scheming clubbie. He moved into the clubhouse equipment closet, his headquarters to swing deals involving memorabilia, booze, and loads of cash. By his second season, Larson had transformed into a deceptive, dip-spitting veteran, now fully part of a system that exploited players he considered friends. Like most Minor Leaguers, the gravitational pull of baseball was still too strong for Larson—even if chasing his private dream might cost him his girlfriend, his future, and, ultimately, his love of the game. That is, until an unlikely shot at a championship gives Larson and the IronBirds one final swing at redemption. Clubbie is a hilarious behind-the-scenes tale of two seasons in the mysterious world of Minor League Baseball. With cinematic detail and a colorful cast of characters, Larson spins an unforgettable true story for baseball fans and nonfans alike. An unflinching look at the harsh experience of professional sports, Clubbie will be a touchstone in baseball literature for years to come.

Download or read book Cobra written by Dave Parker and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2021 CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year "For that period of time, he was the greatest player of my generation."--Keith Hernandez Dave Parker was one of the biggest and most badass baseball players of the late twentieth century. He stood at six foot five and weighed 235 pounds. He was a seven-time All-Star, a two-time batting champion, a frequent Gold Glove winner, the 1978 National League MVP, and a World Series champion with both the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Oakland A's. Here the great Dave Parker delivers his wild and long-awaited autobiography--an authoritative account of Black baseball during its heyday as seen through the eyes of none other than the Cobra. From his earliest professional days learning the game from such baseball legends as Pie Traynor and Roberto Clemente to his later years mentoring younger talents like Eric Davis and Barry Larkin, Cobra is the story of a Black athlete making his way through the game during a time of major social and cultural transformation. From the racially integrated playing fields of his high school days to the cookie-cutter cathedrals of his prime alongside all the midseason and late-night theatrics that accompany an athlete's life on the road-Parker offers readers a glimpse of all that and everything in between. Everything. Parker recounts the triumphant victories and the heart-breaking defeats, both on and off the field. He shares the lessons and experiences of reaching the absolute pinnacle of professional athletics, the celebrations with his sports siblings who also got a taste of the thrills, as well as his beloved baseball brothers whom the game left behind. Parker recalls the complicated politics of spring training, recounts the early stages of the free agency era, revisits the notorious 1985 drug trials, and pays tribute to the enduring power of relationships between players at the deepest and highest levels of the sport. With comments at the start of each chapter by other baseball legends such as Pete Rose, Dave Winfield, Willie Randolph, and many more, Parker tells an epic tale of friendship, success, indulgence, and redemption, but most of all, family. Cobra is the unforgettable story of a million-dollar athlete just before baseball became a billion-dollar game.

Download or read book The Q Factor written by Brian Billick and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brian Billick, Super Bowl-winning coach and current analyst for the NFL network, takes on the 2018 draft class of quarterbacks and follows them for two years, identifying the tangibles and intangibles of success, in search of the key to better predicting who will make it as a top-ranked NFL franchise QB. There are elite athletes in every sport -- people who possess tangible and intangible qualities that allow them to overcome daunting odds, spot opportunity in the midst of adversity, and turn defeat into victory. No position embodies this dynamic more than football quarterbacks, and nothing is a greater test of performance than the NFL. The tangibles -- metrics, stats, ratings, bowl games, championships -- are critical to evaluation. But they're not enough. Every year, highly rated college quarterbacks are analyzed, critiqued, hyped up and/or doubted, and those who manage to survive the scrutiny are drafted early. Some of those early picks make it to the top, some end up journeymen, and some just wash out. Why? What separates the elites from the pack? In THE Q FACTOR, former NFL coach Brian Billick takes the highly promising 2018 NFL quarterback Draft class -- the most touted class since 2004 (Manning, Roethlisberger, Rivers) and 1983 (Elway, Kelly, Marino) -- and measures the top five quarterback picks to gauge how, why, and if they succeed. They are all first rounders, all with sterling college credentials, all talented athletes, all taken by teams betting their futures. One or maybe two could go on to greatness. But which ones, and why? Could the prediction process be better? Are the "experts" looking at the wrong factors? How do we find the best of the best? That's what THE Q FACTOR explores...and finally explains.

Download or read book Miracles on the Hardwood written by John Gasaway and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the David vs. Goliath rise of Catholic college basketball, from Villanova to Georgetown to Gonzaga, where small schools perennially shoot past the big power conference programs. In MIRACLES ON THE HARDWOOD, author John Gasaway traces the rise of Catholic college basketball—from its early days (Villanova made an appearance in the Final Four in the first NCAA tournament in 1939) to the dominance of the San Francisco Dons in the 1950s and the ascendance of powerhouses Georgetown, Villanova, and Gonzaga—through their decades-long rivalries and championship games. Featuring interviews with notable coaches, players, alums, and fans—including Loyola Chicago's most famous and dedicated fan, 100-year-old Sister Jean—to get at the heart of how these universities have excelled at this sport. Small in number but devout in the game's spirit, these teams have made the miraculous a matter of ritual, and their greatest works may be yet to come.

Download or read book Hall of Name written by Diane Firstman and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biographical profiles and fun factoids of 100 of the most memorable names in baseball history. The names I'm profiling here are divided into four groups (admittedly a few of these players could qualify for more than one category):?Baseball Poets/Men of (Few Different) Letters: Players with rhyming names and/or alliterative names.?Dirty Names Done Dirt Cheap: Players with scatological or otherwise naughty names.?Sounds Good to Me: Players with mellifluous/melodious names.?No Focus Group Convened: Players whose names don't fall into one of the prior three categories, or ones that might involve us questioning the intentions of the player's parents.Each player profile within has the following:?general demographic information (name they played under, their full name at birth, date of birth/death, years active in the majors, positions played, etc.)?etymology/definition of each part of their given name?baseball biography (generally, how they made it to the majors, what they did while they were there)?best day (a recap of a great day in their major league career)?the wonder of his name (why his name is memorable to me/us)?not to be confused with (names that sound and/or look like the player's name)?fun anagrams (anagrams of their given names, just because I can)?ephemera (factoids, tidbits, trivia about the player, details regarding their parents, their family and their life after baseball)

Download or read book Upon Further Review written by Mike Pesca and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Mike Pesca, host of the popular Slate podcast The Gist, comes the greatest sports minds imagining how the world would change if a play, trade, injury, or referee's call had just gone the other way. "Intriguing...thought provoking...delightful." --The Washington Post No announcer ever proclaimed: "Up Rises Frazier!" "Havlicek commits the foul, trying to steal the ball!" or "The Giants Lose the Pennant, The Giants Lose The Pennant!" Such moments are indelibly etched upon the mind of every sports fan. Or rather, they would be, had they happened. Sports are notoriously games of inches, and when we conjure the thought of certain athletes - like Bill Buckner or Scott Norwood - we can't help but apply a mental tape measure to the highlight reels of our minds. Players, coaches, and of course fans, obsess on the play when they ask, "What if?" Upon Further Review is the first book to answer that question. Upon Further Review is a book of counterfactual sporting scenarios. In its pages the reader will find expertly reported histories, where one small event is flipped on its head, and the resulting ripples are carefully documented, the likes of... What if the U.S. Boycotted Hitler's Olympics? What if Bobby Riggs beat Billie Jean King? What if Bucky Dent popped out at the foot of the Green Monster? What if Drew Bledsoe never got hurt? Upon Further Review takes classic arguments conducted over pints in a pub and places them in the hands of dozens of writers, athletes, and historians. From turning points that every sports fan rues or celebrates, to the forgotten would-be inflection points that defined sports, Upon Further Review answers age old questions, and settles the score, even if the score bounced off the crossbar.

Download or read book Dollar Sign on the Muscle written by Kevin Kerrane and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013-11-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MEET THE MEN WHO SHAPE THE GAME OF BASEBALL the men who can make--or break--careers, the men who, more than any others, were responsible for getting Mike Schmidt, Al Kaline, Darryl Strawberry, Mickey Mantle, Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax, and Brooks Robinson--to name just a few--into their major league positions. Here is all the inside information--trade secrets, player development, original scouting reports; the history and economics of this pivotal side of baseball, and how the scouting system is changing--from the baseball scouts themselves. This edition includes an all-new chapter updating the original with thoughts on the state of scouting in 2013. DAVID SIMON ON DOLLAR SIGN ON THE MUSCLE "The story of a quest is one of the most basic and essential narratives in human existence. Kevin Kerrane strains the Homeric through the voices of American baseball scouts, those journeymen who search the sandlots for raw athletic potential. Dollar Sign on The Muscle was essential reading when it first arrived nearly three decades ago. And now, as big money has arrived to magnify the entire dynamic, Kerrane has returned to update his classic. "They use 'inside baseball' as a term to suggest esoteric knowledge. That's ridiculous. The inside is where anything worth knowing actually begins to matter." -- David Simon, creator, The Wire and Treme THE CRITICS AGREE, INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE GAME "An entertaining, in-depth look at a fascinating part of baseball invisible to most. I loved this book." -- Tim Kurkjian, ESPN "Dollar Sign on the Muscle is the scouting bible for the baseball executive as well as the baseball enthusiast." -- Kevin Towers, General Manager, Arizona Diamondbacks "Updating a classic is always risky, but given the dramatic changes in baseball since Dollar Sign's original publication, the time had certainly come for a modernized examination of the game... and who better to give it to us than Kevin Kerrane and Baseball Prospectus." -- Dan O'Dowd, General Manager, Colorado Rockies "The last word on a profession even baseball fans may find they knew little about." -- Sports Illustrated "One of baseball literature's most noble and enjoyable works." -- Diamond Classics "A must read for anyone who wants the inside stories on baseball scouts and the happenings on their daily quest for the next MLB all-star." -- Don Welke, Senior Special Assistant to the GM & Scouting, Texas Rangers

Download or read book Sophomores written by Sean Desmond and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What a vibrant, propulsive, wildly intelligent and big-hearted slice of life Sophomores is, an intricate portrait of a family in crisis rendered with a great deal of humor and compassion. I loved this family, this corner of the world, this novel." -Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had The late 1980s come alive in this moving and keenly observed story of one boy's unforgettable sophomore year, and his parents' surprising journey alongside him. It's fall 1987 and life as normal is ending for the Malone family. With their sterile Dallas community a far cry from the Irish-American Bronx of their youth, Pat and Anne Malone have reached a breaking point. Pat, faced with a debilitating MS diagnosis, has fallen into his drinking. Anne, his devoutly Catholic wife, is selected as a juror for a highly publicized attempted murder trial, one that raises questions--about God, and about men in power--she has buried her entire life. Together, they try to raise their only son, Daniel, a bright but unmotivated student who is shocked into actual learning by an enigmatic English teacher. For once, Dan is unable to fly under the radar, and is finally asked to consider what he might want to make of his life. With humor and tenderness, Sophomores brilliantly captures the enduring poignancy of coming of age, teenage epiphanies and heartbreak, and family redemption.

Download or read book The Limit written by Michael Cannell and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2011-11-07 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Limit, Michael Cannell tells the enthralling story of Phil Hill-a lowly California mechanic who would become the first American-born driver to win the Grand Prix-and, on the fiftieth anniversary of his triumph, brings to life a vanished world of glamour, valor, and daring. With the pacing and vivid description of a novel, The Limit charts the journey that brought Hill from dusty California lots racing midget cars into the ranks of a singular breed of men, competing with daredevils for glory on Grand Prix tracks across Europe. Facing death at every turn, these men rounded circuits at well over 150 mph in an era before seat belts or roll bars-an era when drivers were "crushed, burned, and beheaded with unnerving regularity." From the stink of grease-smothered pits to the long anxious nights in lonely European hotels, from the tense camaraderie of teammates to the trembling suspense of photo finishes, The Limit captures the 1961 season that would mark the high point of Hill's career. It brings readers up close to the remarkable men who surrounded Hill on the circuit-men like Hill's teammate and rival, the soigné and cool-headed German count Wolfgang Von Trips (nicknamed "Count Von Crash"), and Enzo Ferrari, the reclusive and monomaniacal padrone of the Ferrari racing empire. Race by race, The Limit carries readers to its riveting and startling climax-the final contest that would decide it all, one of the deadliest in Grand Prix history.