Download or read book What Baseball Means to Me written by Curt Smith and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2009-02-28 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Funny, moving, and each one a diamond in the rough of the American consciousness, the essays in this book are the ultimate baseball conversation that pays homage to the perfect sport, in this perfect companion for all our personal baseball journeys. For some people baseball means a memory-of a certain dusty ball field on a certain summer day, or the first time they walked into a major league park and saw the perfect emerald playing field. For some, baseball means one heartbreaking or heroic moment. And for others, it means a father, a friend, or an old flame who shared a game for a day or for a lifetime. To create this marvelous book, more than 150 writers, athletes, celebrities, politicians, presidents, and pundits were asked what baseball means to them. The answers came back with richness, wonder, insight, and poetry. A fascinating portrait of baseball's beautiful nuances, What Baseball means to me marks the greatest collection of original essays ever written about the game. Accompanied by more than 200 classic baseball photographs, the voices in this book bring alive the game in all its venues-in the past and present, in wartime and hard times, in Cuba, in Wrigley Field or Yankee Stadium. We meet players in a different light: including Paul Molitor returning a baseball to a trusting boy named Dan Jansen, Derek Jeter as depicted by his dad, the Toledo Mud Hens as seen through the eyes of Christine Brennan, and Pedro Martinez talking about baseball as a way of life in his native Dominican Republic. Most of all, we meet ordinary Americans, like the kids Rudy Giuliani grew up with in Brooklyn, or the man in Philadelphia who transforms himself for every home game from mild-mannered Tom Burgoyne to the Phillie Phanatic.
Download or read book Baseball as a Road to God written by John Sexton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The president of New York University offers a love letter to America’s most beloved sport and a tribute to its underlying spirituality. For more than a decade, John Sexton has taught a wildly popular New York University course about two seemingly very different things: religion and baseball. Yet Sexton argues that one is actually a pathway to the other. Baseball as a Road to God is about touching that something that lies beyond logical understanding. Sexton illuminates the surprisingly large number of mutual concepts shared between baseball and religion: faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, and even sacredness among many others. Structured like a game and filled with riveting accounts of baseball’s most historic moments, Baseball as Road to God will enthrall baseball fans whatever their religious beliefs may be. In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Sexton elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to enlightenment.
Download or read book The Mental Game Of Baseball written by H. A. Dorfman and published by Taylor Trade Publications. This book was released on 2002 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, authors H.A. Dorfman and Karl Kuehl present their practical and proven strategy for developing the mental skills needed to achieve peack performance at every level of the game.
Download or read book The Way of Baseball written by Shawn Green and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major League All-Star Green shares how his baseball career has taught him to live life being fully present in every moment.
Download or read book Winning Baseball written by Trent Mongero and published by Sterling Publishing Company Incorporated. This book was released on 2011 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From age-appropriate drills to motivation strategies, this step-by-step guide to youth baseball offers all the information parents and coaches need to help young players reach their full potential.
Download or read book Death at the Ballpark written by Robert M. Gorman and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we think of baseball, we think of sunny days and leisurely outings at the ballpark--rarely do thoughts of death come to mind. Yet during the game's history, hundreds of players, coaches and spectators have died while playing or watching the National Pastime. In its second edition, this ground-breaking study provides the known details for 150 years of game-related deaths, identifies contributing factors and discusses resulting changes to game rules, protective equipment, crowd control and stadium structures and grounds. Topics covered include pitched and batted-ball fatalities, weather and field condition accidents, structural failures, fatalities from violent or risky behavior and deaths from natural causes.
Download or read book Meet the Mertzes written by Rob Edelman and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet the Mertzes is an expansive dual biography chronicling the lives of two of America's most popular situation-comedy actors, William Frawley and Vivian Vance, who portrayed Fred and Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy. This meticulously researched book contains interviews with Frawley's and Vance's colleagues, friends, and relatives, and explores their personal and professional lives before, during, and after I Love Lucy. With a complete filmography and videography of each, Meet the Mertzes finally sets the record straight on the lives and legacies of these compelling stars who detested one another. You'll learn about: -Vance's successful Broadway career prior to I Love Lucy -Frawley's vaudevillian roots and his passion for baseball -Vance's nervous breakdown after the collapse of her first marriage -Frawley's drinking and carousing -Lucille Ball's caustic relationship with both of her costars -Vance's hatred of being known to the world as Ethel Mertz
Download or read book The Gigantic Book of Baseball Quotations written by Wayne Stewart and published by Skyhorse Publishing Inc.. This book was released on 2007-10-17 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here’s what former Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck had to say about baseball: “This is a game to be savored, not gulped. There’s time to discuss everything between pitches or between innings.” That’s just one of the thousands of quotes gathered in this gigantic collection, and they include some of the wisest, wittiest comments made on America’s national pastime. Edited by Wayne Stewart, a sports writer with almost 30 years of experience and 20 books to his name, and with a Foreword by Roger Kahn, who wrote the seminal book on baseball, The Boys of Summer, this anthology includes observations from players, managers, owners, writers, fans, and more. Among the greats whose thoughts are here to savor: Hank Aaron, Satchel Paige, Babe Ruth, Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays, Derek Jeter, Don Zimmer, Roger Angell, Red Barber, George Will, and countless others. This is a great gift book for any baseball fan! 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.
Download or read book A People s History of Baseball written by Mitchell Nathanson and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012-03-30 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball is much more than the national pastime. It has become an emblem of America itself. From its initial popularity in the mid-nineteenth century, the game has reflected national values and beliefs and promoted what it means to be an American. Stories abound that illustrate baseball's significance in eradicating racial barriers, bringing neighborhoods together, building civic pride, and creating on the field of play an instructive civics lesson for immigrants on the national character. In A People's History of Baseball, Mitchell Nathanson probes the less well-known but no less meaningful other side of baseball: episodes not involving equality, patriotism, heroism, and virtuous capitalism, but power--how it is obtained, and how it perpetuates itself. Through the growth and development of baseball Nathanson shows that, if only we choose to look for it, we can see the petty power struggles as well as the large and consequential ones that have likewise defined our nation. By offering a fresh perspective on the firmly embedded tales of baseball as America, a new and unexpected story emerges of both the game and what it represents. Exploring the founding of the National League, Nathanson focuses on the newer Americans who sought club ownership to promote their own social status in the increasingly closed caste of nineteenth-century America. His perspective on the rise and public rebuke of the Players Association shows that these baseball events reflect both the collective spirit of working and middle-class America in the mid-twentieth century as well as the countervailing forces that sought to beat back this emerging movement that threatened the status quo. And his take on baseball’s racial integration that began with Branch Rickey’s “Great Experiment” reveals the debilitating effects of the harsh double standard that resulted, requiring a black player to have unimpeachable character merely to take the field in a Major League game, a standard no white player was required to meet. Told with passion and occasional outrage, A People's History of Baseball challenges the perspective of the well-known, deeply entrenched, hyper-patriotic stories of baseball and offers an incisive alternative history of America's much-loved national pastime.
Download or read book Baseball and Philosophy written by Eric Bronson and published by Open Court. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball and Philosophy brings together two high-powered pastimes: the sport of baseball and the academic discipline of philosophy. Eric Bronson asked eighteen young professors to provide their profound analysis of some aspect of baseball. The result offers surprisingly deep insights into this most American of games. The contributors include many of the leading voices in the burgeoning new field of philosophy of sport, plus a few other talented philosophers with a personal interest in baseball. A few of the contributors are also drawn from academic areas outside philosophy: statistics, law, and history. This volume gives the thoughtful baseball fan substancial material to think more deeply about. What moral issues are raised by the Intentional Walk? Do teams sometimes benefit from the self-interested behavior of their individual members? How can Zen be applied to hitting? Is it ethical to employ deception in sports? Can a game be defined by its written rules or are there also other constraints? What can the U.S. Supreme Court learn from umpiring? Why should baseball be the only industry exempt from antitrust laws? What part does luck play in any game of skill?
Download or read book A Well Paid Slave written by Brad Snyder and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-09-25 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “captivating”* look at how center fielder Curt Flood's refusal to accept a trade changed Major League Baseball forever. After the 1969 season, the St. Louis Cardinals traded their star center fielder, Curt Flood, to the Philadelphia Phillies, setting off a chain of events that would change professional sports forever. At the time there were no free agents, no no-trade clauses. When a player was traded, he had to report to his new team or retire. Unwilling to leave St. Louis and influenced by the civil rights movement, Flood chose to sue Major League Baseball for his freedom. His case reached the Supreme Court, where Flood ultimately lost. But by challenging the system, he created an atmosphere in which, just three years later, free agency became a reality. Flood’s decision cost him his career, but as this dramatic chronicle makes clear, his influence on sports history puts him in a league with Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali. *The Washington Post
Download or read book Infinite Baseball written by Alva Noë and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball is a strange sport: it consists of long periods in which little seems to be happening, punctuated by high-energy outbursts of rapid fire activity. Because of this, despite ever greater profits, Major League Baseball is bent on finding ways to shorten games, and to tailor baseball to today's shorter attention spans. But for the true fan, baseball is always compelling to watch -and intellectually fascinating. It's superficially slow-pace is an opportunity to participate in the distinctive thinking practice that defines the game. If baseball is boring, it's boring the way philosophy is boring: not because there isn't a lot going on, but because the challenge baseball poses is making sense of it all. In this deeply entertaining book, 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. The book ranges from the nature of umpiring and the role of instant replay, to the nature of the strike zone, from the rampant use of surgery to controversy surrounding performance enhancing drugs. Throughout, Noe's observations are surprising and provocative. Infinite Baseball is a book for the true baseball fan.
Download or read book Baseball in the Garden of Eden written by John Thorn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-20 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Think you know how the game of baseball began? Think again. Forget Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown. Did baseball even have a father--or did it just evolve from other bat-and-ball games? John Thorn, baseball's preeminent historian, examines the creation story of the game and finds it all to be a gigantic lie. From its earliest days baseball was a vehicle for gambling, a proxy form of class warfare. Thorn traces the rise of the New York version of the game over other variations popular in Massachusetts and Philadelphia. He shows how the sport's increasing popularity in the early decades of the nineteenth century mirrored the migration of young men from farms and small towns to cities, especially New York. Full of heroes, scoundrels, and dupes, this book tells the story of nineteenth-century America, a land of opportunity and limitation, of glory and greed--all present in the wondrous alloy that is our nation and its pastime.--From publisher description.
Download or read book Rounding the Bases written by Joseph L. Price and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After identifying early conflicts between churches and baseball in the late-nineteenth century, Price examines the appropriation of baseball by the House of David, an early twentieth-century millennial Protestant community in southern Michigan. Turning then from historic intersections between baseball and religion, two chapters focus on the ways that baseball reelects religious myths. First, the omphalos myth about the origin and ordering of the world is reflected in the rituals and rules of the game. Then the myth of curses is explored in the culture of superstition that underlies the game. At the heart of the book is a sustained argument about how baseball functions as an American civil religion, affirming and sanctifying American identity, especially during periods of national crises such as wars and terrorist attacks. Building on this analysis of baseball as an America's civil religion, two chapters draw upon novels by W. P. Kinsella and David James Duncan to explore the sacramental potential of baseball and to align baseball with apocalyptic possibilities. The final chapter serves as a full confession, interpreting baseball affiliation stories as conversion narratives. In various ways
Download or read book Baseball and the Blame Game written by John Billheimer and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2007-07-02 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most baseball fans know what links Fred Merkle, Fred Snodgrass, Mickey Owen and Bill Buckner. It's a pantheon of public failure. They would be harder put to say what links Eric Byrnes, Tony Fernandez, and Babe Ruth, though these players made misplays every bit as egregious. In this smart, highly readable history of scapegoating, John Billheimer identifies the elements that combine to condemn one player to a life sentence while another gets a wrist slap for the same offense. As it turns out, the difference between a lower-case e in some forgotten box score and a lifetime of ignominy can hinge on a number of factors, including timing, geography, reputation, misunderstanding, media bias, and just plain bad luck.
Download or read book Born to Play Ball written by Willie Mays and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book about the well known sports personality who broke the color barrier in baseball.
Download or read book Baseball Saved Us written by Ken Mochizuki and published by Lerner Publishing Group. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Author Ken Mochizuki reads his award-winning book. There is some soft background music, and a few gentle sound effects, but the power of the words need little embellishment...This treasure of a book is well-treated in this format." - School Library Journal
