Download or read book The Meaning Of Sports written by Michael Mandelbaum and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2005-05-11 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Meaning of Sports, Michael Mandelbaum, a sports fan who is also one of the nation's preeminent foreign policy thinkers, examines America's century-long love affair with team sports. In keeping with his reputation for writing about big ideas in an illuminating and graceful way, he shows how sports respond to deep human needs; describes the ways in which baseball, football and basketball became national institutions and how they reached their present forms; and covers the evolution of rules, the rise and fall of the most successful teams, and the historical significance of the most famous and influential figures such as Babe Ruth, Vince Lombardi, and Michael Jordan. Whether he is writing about baseball as the agrarian game, football as similar to warfare, basketball as the embodiment of post-industrial society, or the moral havoc created by baseball's designated hitter rule, Mandelbaum applies the full force of his learning and wit to subjects about which so many Americans care passionately: the games they played in their youth and continue to follow as adults. By offering a fresh and unconventional perspective on these games, The Meaning of Sports makes for fascinating and rewarding reading both for fans and newcomers.
Download or read book Sports Illustrated Baseball s Greatest written by The Editors of Sports Illustrated and published by Sports Illustrated. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who's the greatest slugger of all time, Babe Ruth or Ted Williams? Where do Derek Jeter and Cal Ripken Jr. rank on the list of the best shortstops? At third base, would you rather have Mike Schmidt or Brooks Robinson? Is Fenway or Wrigley the better ballpark? This book will end many arguments-and start some new ones. Sports Illustrated's has polled its Major League Baseball experts to determine the ultimate Top 10 in more than 20 categories. The rankings appear alongside stunning photography and classic stories from SI's archives. This is the best of the best in the major leagues, or, more simply, Baseball's Greatest.
Download or read book Five Seasons written by Roger Angell and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronicle of our national pastime’s most unforgettable era from the bestselling author of The Summer Game—“No one writes better about baseball” (The Boston Globe). Classic New Yorker sportswriter Roger Angell calls 1972 to 1976 “the most important half-decade in the history of the game.” The early to mid-1970s brought unprecedented changes to America’s ancient pastime: astounding performances by Nolan Ryan and Hank Aaron; the intensity of the “best-ever” 1975 World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox; the changes growing from bitter and extended labor strikes and lockouts; and the vast new influence of network television on the game. Angell, always a fan as well as a writer, casts a knowing but noncynical eye on these events, offering a fresh perspective to baseball’s continuing appeal during this brilliant and transformative era.
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 Baseball 100 written by Joe Posnanski and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Winner of the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year “An instant sports classic.” —New York Post * “Stellar.” —The Wall Street Journal * “A true masterwork…880 pages of sheer baseball bliss.” —BookPage (starred review) * “This is a remarkable achievement.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A magnum opus from acclaimed baseball writer Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100 is an audacious, singular, and masterly book that took a lifetime to write. The entire story of baseball rings through a countdown of the 100 greatest players in history, with a foreword by George Will. Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,? The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski. In the book’s introduction, Pulitzer Prize–winning commentator George F. Will marvels, “Posnanski must already have lived more than two hundred years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?” Baseball’s legends come alive in these pages, which are not merely rankings but vibrant profiles of the game’s all-time greats. Posnanski dives into the biographies of iconic Hall of Famers, unfairly forgotten All-Stars, talents of today, and more. He doesn’t rely just on records and statistics—he lovingly retraces players’ origins, illuminates their characters, and places their accomplishments in the context of baseball’s past and present. Just how good a pitcher is Clayton Kershaw in the 21st-century game compared to Greg Maddux dueling with the juiced hitters of the nineties? How do the career and influence of Hank Aaron compare to Babe Ruth’s? Which player in the top ten most deserves to be resurrected from history? No compendium of baseball’s legendary geniuses could be complete without the players of the segregated Negro Leagues, men whose extraordinary careers were largely overlooked by sportswriters at the time and unjustly lost to history. Posnanski writes about the efforts of former Negro Leaguers to restore sidelined Black athletes to their due honor and draws upon the deep troves of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and extensive interviews with the likes of Buck O’Neil to illuminate the accomplishments of players such as pitchers Satchel Paige and Smokey Joe Williams; outfielders Oscar Charleston, Monte Irvin, and Cool Papa Bell; first baseman Buck Leonard; shortstop Pop Lloyd; catcher Josh Gibson; and many, many more. The Baseball 100 treats readers to the whole rich pageant of baseball history in a single volume. Engrossing, surprising, and heartfelt, it is a magisterial tribute to the game of baseball and the stars who have played it.
Download or read book Fair Ball written by Bob Costas and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2001-11-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From his perspective as a journalist and a true fan, Bob Costas, NBC's award-winning broadcaster, shares his views on the forces that are diminishing the appeal of Major League Baseball and proposes realistic changes that can be made to protect and promote the game's best interests. In this cogent--and provocative--book, Costas examines the growing financial disparities that have resulted in nearly two-thirds of the teams in Major League Baseball having virtually no chance of contending for the World Series. He argues that those who run baseball have missed the crucial difference between mere change and real progress. And he presents a withering critique of the positions of both the owners and players while providing insights on the wild-card system, the designated-hitter rule, and interleague play. Costas answers each problem he cites with an achievable strategy for restoring genuine competition and rescuing fans from the forces that have diluted the sheer joy of the game. Balanced by Costas's unbridled appreciation for what he calls the "moments of authenticity" that can still make baseball inspiring, Fair Ball offers a vision of our national pastime as it can be, a game that retains its traditional appeal while initiating meaningful changes that will allow it to thrive into the next century.
Download or read book How Baseball Happened written by Thomas W. Gilbert and published by Godine+ORM. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of baseball’s nineteenth-century origins: “a delightful look at a young nation creating a pastime that was love from the first crack of the bat” (Paul Dickson, The Wall Street Journal). You may have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Neither did. You may have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. They didn’t. Perhaps you’ve read that baseball’s color line was first crossed by Jackie Robinson in 1947. Nope. Baseball’s true founders don’t have plaques in Cooperstown. They were hundreds of uncredited, ordinary people who played without gloves, facemasks, or performance incentives. Unlike today’s pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They worked, built businesses, and fought against the South in the Civil War. In this myth-busting history, Thomas W. Gilbert reveals the true beginnings of baseball. Through newspaper accounts, diaries, and other accounts, he explains how it evolved through the mid-nineteenth century into a modern sport of championships, media coverage, and famous stars—all before the first professional league was formed in 1871. Winner of the Casey Award: Best Baseball Book of the Year
Download or read book The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told written by Jeff Silverman and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-seven essays, profiles, and stories about America's pastime.
Download or read book Right Off the Bat written by Evander Lomke & Martin Rowe and published by Paul Dry Books. This book was released on with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Looking over the legends and stars of both sports, explaining the rules, complete with glossary, Right Off the Bat is a fine assortment of knowledge, very much recommended for any curious sports fan."—Midwest Book Review It's been said that baseball and cricket are two sports divided by a common language. Both employ bats, balls, innings, and umpires. Fans of both steep themselves in statistics, revel in nostalgia, and toss around baffling jargon. In Right Off the Bat, baseball nut Evander Lomke and cricket buff Martin Rowe explain "their" sport—and their love of it—to the other sport's fans. You'll come away finding yourself as fascinated by legbreaks and inswingers as you are by knuckleballs and sliders (or vice versa). Are you a dyed-in-the-wool baseball fan who nevertheless harbors a nagging doubt as to whether Babe Ruth was, in fact, the greatest athlete ever to swing a bat? When you think of cricket, is what comes to mind stuffy Victorians standing around in a field, twirling their mustaches and saying silly things like "Howzat" or "googly"? Or are you a staunch cricket fan who sometimes wonders whether a screwball is really as difficult to execute as a doosra? Do you ask yourself where the thrill is in watching a ball sail 400 feet over a wall and just past the outstretched fingers of a fielder wearing a glove (and all for a paltry one run)? Well, step right up and take a seat—you've got a lot to learn (for example, the very first international cricket match was played in the United States). And Right Off the Bat is just the book for you.
Download or read book Play Baseball Like a Pro written by Hans Hetrick and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2011 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Provides instructional tips on how to improve one's baseball skills, including quotes and advice from professional coaches and athletes"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Ultimate written by Pasquale Anthony Leonardo and published by Breakaway Books. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ALL NEW 3rd EDITION! Some still say ultimate is the most misunderstood flying disc field running team sport on the planet. Most people think it’s Frisbee football played barefoot and without boundaries. Those people are wrong. Ultimate is a sport played by 4.7 million people a year in North America—more than korfball, lawn darts, lacrosse, curling and FootGolf combined. Ultimate is so popular that it even has rules that are sometimes followed. This book will provide you with complete and total knowledge of the ultimate game. And since this is the revised 2015 Third Edition you can now read all about Brodie Smith, the AUDL, MLU, the TCT, more Brodie Smith and the Olympics and be amazed. THIS BOOK INCLUDES: • The Eight Ultimate Player Types • Brand-New 50 Most Common Nicknames • 28 Near-Useless Throws on the Field • Brodie Smith’s Date of Birth • How to Tweet Your Ultimate Team • Where to Play Ultimate Without Being Mocked • How to Score at an Ultimate Party • Whether or Not You Should Go Pro • Useful Playing Tips from Experts of the Game LOOK INSIDE FOR ANSWERS TO: Can I play ultimate with a mohawk? Where do ultimate teams come from? How can I become a champion and still be Canadian? What is “throwing Fire”? How can I survive a tornado attack? The 3rd edition is available ONLY as an e-book, not on paper.
Download or read book Baseball written by George Vecsey and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the great bards of America's Grand Old Game gives a rousing account ofbaseball, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day.
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 Baseball Dynasties written by Rob Neyer and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2000 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assesses the top fifteen baseball teams of the twentieth century, including such legendary squads as the 1927 Yankees and the 1970 Orioles, to determine which team was the greatest of the modern era.
Download or read book Moneyball The Art of Winning an Unfair Game written by Michael Lewis and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-03-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?
Download or read book Baseball Between the Numbers written by Jonah Keri and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2007-02-27 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the numbers-obsessed sport of baseball, statistics don't merely record what players, managers, and owners have done. Properly understood, they can tell us how the teams we root for could employ better strategies, put more effective players on the field, and win more games. The revolution in baseball statistics that began in the 1970s is a controversial subject that professionals and fans alike argue over without end. Despite this fundamental change in the way we watch and understand the sport, no one has written the book that reveals, across every area of strategy and management, how the best practitioners of statistical analysis in baseball-people like Bill James, Billy Beane, and Theo Epstein-think about numbers and the game. Baseball Between the Numbers is that book. In separate chapters covering every aspect of the game, from hitting, pitching, and fielding to roster construction and the scouting and drafting of players, the experts at Baseball Prospectus examine the subtle, hidden aspects of the game, bring them out into the open, and show us how our favorite teams could win more games. This is a book that every fan, every follower of sports radio, every fantasy player, every coach, and every player, at every level, can learn from and enjoy.
Download or read book Pure Baseball written by Keith Hernandez and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1994 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keith Hernandez, former superstar, teaches how to watch a baseball game by focusing on each pitch and each play in two games in June, 1993.
