Download or read book Astroball written by Ben Reiter and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The inside story of the Houston Astros, whose relentless innovation took them from the worst team in baseball to the World Series in 2017 and 2019 “Reiter’s superb narrative of how the team got there provides powerful insights into how organizations—not just baseball clubs—work best.”—The Wall Street Journal Astroball picks up where Michael Lewis’s acclaimed Moneyball leaves off, telling the thrilling story of a championship team that pushed both the sport and business of baseball to the next level. In 2014, the Astros were the worst baseball team in half a century, but just three years later they defied critics to win a stunning World Series. In this book, Ben Reiter shows how the Astros built a system that avoided the stats-versus-scouts divide by giving the human factor a key role in their decision-making. Sitting at the nexus of sports, business, and innovation, Astroball is the story of the next wave of thinking in baseball and beyond, at once a remarkable underdog tale and a fascinating look at the cutting edge of evaluating and optimizing human potential.

Download or read book Astroball written by Ben Reiter and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Winning Fixes Everything written by Evan Drellich and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reporter who broke the Houston Astros' cheating scandal reveals how a baseball team could so dramatically descend into corruption, with never-before-told details of a broken management culture, the once-revered leaders who enabled it and the scandal itself. Baseball, that old romantic game, has been defaced and consumed by corporate America. As Moneyball-thinking and Ivy League graduates grabbed hold of the sport, the Astros set out to build a cost-efficient winning machine on the principles of the outside business world, squeezing every dollar out of every transaction, player and employee. In less than a decade, ex-Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow helped revolutionize the game. He created an environment that led to one of the worst cheating scandals in baseball history, a Shakespearean tragedy of innovation and failed change management. Through years of extensive interviews, former Houston Chronicle beat writer Evan Drellich, now a national writer for The Athletic, delivers the definitive account of baseball’s most controversial franchise and how a modern baseball team truly works—without the usual myth-spinning. Drellich reveals the rise and fall of the Astros to be a collision of subcultures. The team’s top boss was a former McKinsey consultant who lived on the bleeding edge with no guardrails. He hired outsider after outsider to change the organization as quickly and cheaply as possible. The wins piled up, and so did the cash for the billionaire owner with a checkered business past. But not even a World Series title could cover up the rot. All of it came at a cost to fans, employees, and the sport on a whole. But as Winning Fixes Everything makes clear, “The Astros Way” isn’t going anywhere. Drellich uses the saga of the Astros’ scandal to detail the evolution of baseball itself.

Download or read book Cheated written by Andy Martino and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A baseball book that reads like a spy novel—a story about cheaters and the cheated that has the power to forever change how we feel about the game.” —Brian Williams, MSNBC anchor and host of The 11th Hour The definitive insider story of one of the biggest cheating scandals to ever rock Major League Baseball, bringing down high-profile coaches and players, and exposing a long-rumored "sign-stealing" dark side of baseball By the fall of 2019, most teams in Major League Baseball suspected that the Houston Astros, winners of the 2017 World Series, had been stealing signs for several years. Deconstructing exactly what happened in this explosive story, award-winning sports reporter and analyst Andy Martino reveals how otherwise good people like Astros manager A. J. Hinch, bench coach Alex Cora, and veteran leader Carlos Beltrán found themselves on the wrong side of clear ethical lines. Along the way, Martino explores the colorful history of cheating in baseball, from notorious episodes like the 1919 “Black Sox” fiasco all the way to the modern steroid era. But as Martino deftly shows, the Astros scandal became one of the most significant that the game has ever seen—its fallout ensnaring many other teams, as victims, alleged cheaters, or both. Like a riveting true sports whodunit, Cheated is an electrifying, behind-the-scenes look into the heart of a scandal that shocked the baseball world.

Download or read book Big Sexy written by Bartolo Colón and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The All-Star pitcher tells his incredible life story from picking coffee in the Dominican Republic to reaching MLB icon status in America. Legendary baseball pitcher Bartolo Colón—also known as Big Sexy—is one of the most beloved athletes to ever play the game. Honored with the Cy Young Award in 2005, Colón has won more games than any other Latin American–born pitcher. But more importantly, Big Sexy has captured the hearts of fans as well as the elite competitors he has played against. In Big Sexy: In His Own Words, he opens up as never before, telling the story of his life and his decades-long career. The result is a touching and deeply personal story of a truly unique baseball life.

Download or read book Sinatra written by James Kaplan and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 908 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just in time for the Chairman’s centennial, the endlessly absorbing sequel to James Kaplan’s bestselling Frank: The Voice—which completes the definitive biography that Frank Sinatra, justly termed the “Entertainer of the Century,” deserves and requires. Like Peter Guralnick on Elvis, Kaplan goes behind the legend to give us the man in full, in his many guises and aspects: peerless singer, (sometimes) accomplished actor, business mogul, tireless lover, and associate of the powerful and infamous. In 2010’s Frank: The Voice, James Kaplan, in rich, distinctive, compulsively readable prose, told the story of Frank Sinatra’s meteoric rise to fame, subsequent failures, and reinvention as a star of live performance and screen. The story of “Ol’ Blue Eyes” continues with Sinatra: The Chairman, picking up the day after he claimed his Academy Award in 1954 and had reestablished himself as the top recording artist. Sinatra’s life post-Oscar was astonishing in scope and achievement and, occasionally, scandal, including immortal recordings almost too numerous to count, affairs ditto, many memorable films (and more than a few stinkers), Rat Pack hijinks that mesmerized the world with their air of masculine privilege, and an intimate involvement at the intersection of politics and organized crime that continues to shock and astound with its hubris. James Kaplan has orchestrated the wildly disparate aspects of Frank Sinatra’s life and character into an American epic—a towering achievement in biography of a stature befitting its subject.

Download or read book The Club written by Joshua Robinson and published by Houghton Mifflin. This book was released on 2018 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two veteran sports writers and editors take readers inside the history of the most-watched sports league on earth -- England's Premier League.

Download or read book Superbugs written by Matt McCarthy and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drug-resistant bacteria — known as superbugs — are one of the biggest medical threats of our time. Here, a doctor, researcher, and ethics professor tells the exhilarating story of his race to beat them and save countless lives. When doctor Matt McCarthy first meets Jackson, a mechanic from Queens, it is in the ER, where he has come for treatment for an infected gunshot wound. Usually, antibiotics would be prescribed, but Jackson’s infection is one of a growing number of superbugs, bacteria that have built up resistance to known drugs. He only has one option, and if that doesn’t work he may lose his leg or even his life. On the same day, McCarthy and his mentor Tom Walsh begin work on a groundbreaking clinical trial for a new antibiotic they believe will eradicate certain kinds of superbugs and demonstrate to Big Pharma that investment in these drugs can save millions of lives and prove financially viable. But there are countless hoops to jump through before they can begin administering the drug to patients, and for people like Jackson time is in short supply. Superbugs is a compelling tale of medical ingenuity. From the muddy trenches of the First World War, where Alexander Fleming searched for a cure for soldiers with infected wounds, to breakthroughs in antibiotics and antifungals today that could revolutionise how infections are treated, McCarthy takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through the history — and future — of medicine. Along the way, we meet patients like Remy, a teenage girl with a dangerous and rare infection; Donny, a retired firefighter with a compromised immune system; and Bill, the author’s own father-in-law, who contracts a deadly staph infection. And we learn about the ethics of medical research: why potentially life-saving treatments are often delayed for years to protect patients from exploitation. Can McCarthy get his trial approved and underway in time to save the lives of his countless patients infected with deadly bacteria, who have otherwise lost all hope?

Download or read book The Nature of the Game written by Mike Keiser and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential reading for every golfer from the sport’s most acclaimed course developer—a comprehensive, firsthand account of restoring the inherent satisfactions of this centuries-old game, from the beauty of natural courses to the joys of walking the course “Mike Keiser is the best thing to happen to golf since the Big Bertha. He’s the guy who single-handedly saved us from the Fake 100-foot Waterfall Era. He gave us back nature, walking and buddy trips. This is a fascinating read on how in the world he did it.”—Rick Reilly, golf writer An avid golfer with a demanding career in the greeting card business, Mike Keiser found a new calling on the authentic links courses of Scotland and Ireland. Seized by the beauty of the landscape and the holes running through it, he determined this was how golf was meant to be: inclusive, not private; played on foot, not riding a cart; the courses natural, neither lavish nor contrived. Vowing to transplant this experience to the States, Keiser entered the golf business and, ignoring the advice of experts, built a true links course in Oregon. Bandon Dunes has redefined the game here and become a destination for golfers everywhere. Those same convictions have now produced other top-ranked courses by Keiser—in Wisconsin, Nova Scotia, Tasmania, and elsewhere—whose magical allure demonstrates what the world’s most gifted golf course architects can accomplish by working on designs that hew to the natural landscape. Keiser’s further commitments—to the caddies, greens crews, and staff at his resorts; to the communities in which they’re located; and to deep environmental stewardship—enhance the singular appeal of these immensely popular courses. At once an account of inventing a new, life-changing business, a guide to historic course design, and a paean to the sport that has recently experienced a surge of growth, The Nature of the Game is essential reading for every golfer.

Download or read book This Ain t Brain Surgery written by Larry Dierker and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2005-02-14 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly everyone in major-league baseball was surprised when longtime Houston Astros player and then broadcaster Larry Dierker was hired to manage the Astros following the 1996 season without previous managerial experience at any level of the game. In the five years that followed, however, Dierker confounded the experts and led the team to four National League Central division titles and four playoff appearances, and was named the National League Manager of the Year in 1998. Adroitly handling every sort of distraction and disaster than can befall a team—including suffering a nearly catastrophic seizure during a game—Dierker excelled like no other manager in Astros history, until resigning at the end of the 2001 season. In This Ain’t Brain Surgery, Larry Dierker draws on his vast experience of nearly four decades in baseball to reflect on his tenure as Astros manager, telling the reader along the way that the game isn’t so simple, that personalities clash, and that intuition isn’t everything. Woven into the narrative of this book are thoughtful and humorous anecdotes from his playing days.

Download or read book K A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches written by Tyler Kepner and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From The New York Times baseball columnist, an enchanting, enthralling history of the national pastime as told through the craft of pitching, based on years of archival research and interviews with more than three hundred people from Hall of Famers to the stars of today. The baseball is an amazing plaything. We can grip it and hold it so many different ways, and even the slightest calibration can turn an ordinary pitch into a weapon to thwart the greatest hitters in the world. Each pitch has its own history, evolving through the decades as the masters pass it down to the next generation. From the earliest days of the game, when Candy Cummings dreamed up the curveball while flinging clamshells on a Brooklyn beach, pitchers have never stopped innovating. In K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, Tyler Kepner traces the colorful stories and fascinating folklore behind the ten major pitches. Each chapter highlights a different pitch, from the blazing fastball to the fluttering knuckleball to the slippery spitball. Infusing every page with infectious passion for the game, Kepner brings readers inside the minds of combatants sixty feet, six inches apart. Filled with priceless insights from many of the best pitchers in baseball history--from Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan to Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Clayton Kershaw--K will be the definitive book on pitching and join such works as The Glory of Their Times and Moneyball as a classic of the genre.

Download or read book Houston to Cooperstown written by Greg Lucas and published by . This book was released on 2017-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Houston joined Major League Baseball in 1962 as the Colt 45s, but it wasn't until Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell started showing up in the late 1980s that the team entered its "Golden Age." Biggio and Bagwell were National League All-Stars who own most of the club's hitting records. With the best winning percentages and most post-season appearances in franchise history, the pair led the team as close as it has ever been to World Series victory... The author explores the history of the Houston Astros as a team and the effect Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell had on the franchise. He illustrates Biggio and Bagwell's legacies with stories from the stands, teammates, the press, and the players themselves."--Dust jacket.

Download or read book Dave Pelz s Putting Bible written by Dave Pelz and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2000-06-06 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combines step-by-step drawings and photographs with detailed instruction in the author's techniques to provide a master class in the art of putting and offers advice on everything from perfecting the set-up to reading a tricky green.

Download or read book Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer written by Warren St. John and published by Crown. This book was released on 2005-05-31 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it about sports that turns otherwise sane people into raving lunatics? Why does winning compel people to tear down goal posts, and losing, to drown themselves in bad keg beer? In short, why do fans care? In search of answers, Warren St. John seeks out the roving community of RVers who follow the Alabama Crimson Tide from game to game. A movable feast of Weber grills and Igloo coolers, these are hard-core football fans who arrive on Wednesday for Saturday’s game: The Reeses, who skipped their own daughter’s wedding because it coincided with a Bama game; Ray Pradat, the Episcopal minister who watches the games on a television beside his altar while performing weddings; and John Ed, the wheeling and dealing ticket scalper whose access to good seats gives him power on par with the governor. In no time at all, St. John buys an RV (a $5,500 beater named The Hawg) and joins the caravan for a full football season, chronicling the world of the extreme fan and learning that in the shadow of the stadium, it can all begin to seem strangely normal. Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer is not only a hilarious travel story, but a cultural anthropology of fans that goes a long way toward demystifying the universal urge to take sides and to win.

Download or read book Who s Your Caddy written by Rick Reilly and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2004-05-04 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The funniest and most popular sportswriter in America abandons his desk to caddy for some of the world’s most famous golfers—and some celebrity duffers—with hilarious results in this New York Times bestseller. Who knows a golfer best? Who’s with them every minute of every round, hears their muttering, knows whether they cheat? Their caddies, of course. So sportswriter Rick Reilly figured that he could learn a lot about the players and their game by caddying, even though he had absolutely no idea how to do it. Amazingly, some of the best golfers in the world—including Jack Nicklaus, David Duval, Tom Lehman, John Daly, Jill McGill of the LPGA tour, and Casey Martin—agreed to let Reilly carry their bags at actual PGA and LPGA Tour events. To round out his portrait of the golfing life, Reilly also persuaded Deepak Chopra and Donald Trump to take him on as a caddy, accompanied the four highest-rolling golf hustlers in Las Vegas around the course, and carried the bag for a blind golfer. Between his hilarious descriptions of his own ineptitude as a caddy and his insight into what makes the greats of golf so great, Reilly’s wicked wit and an expert’s eye provide readers with the next best thing to a great round of golf.