Download or read book Cellar Dwellers written by Jonathan Weeks and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1890, baseball's Pittsburgh Alleghenys won a measly 23 games, losing 113. The Cleveland Spiders topped this record when they lost an astonishing 134 games in 1899. Over 100 years later, the 2003 Detroit Tigers stood apart as the only team in baseball history to lose 60 games before July in a season. These stories and more are told in Cellar Dwellers: The Worst Teams in Baseball History, a colorful tribute to the sport's least successful clubs. Cellar Dwellers spans three centuries of professional baseball, recounting the seasons of those teams whose misadventures have largely been forgotten over time. Chapters not only cover the stories of the luckless teams, they also include reams of statistics and detailed player profiles of those who helped the clubs--and those who helped them fail. In addition to the Alleghenys, Spiders, and Tigers, the cellar dwellers of baseball include: -1904 and 1909 Washington Senators -1916 Philadelphia Athletics -1928 and 1941 Philadelphia Phillies -1932 Boston Red Sox -1935 Boston Braves -1939 St. Louis Browns -1952 Pittsburgh Pirates -1962 New York Mets While many books revel in the glories of teams whose exploits have become legendary, the stories found in this volume offer an engaging alternative to the thrill of victory. Embellished with comical and amusing anecdotes alongside historical perspectives, Cellar Dwellers will entertain baseball fans and fascinate those who love baseball history.
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 The Only Rule Is It Has to Work written by Ben Lindbergh and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller about what would happen if two statistics-minded outsiders were allowed to run a professional baseball team. It’s the ultimate in fantasy baseball: You get to pick the roster, set the lineup, and decide on strategies -- with real players, in a real ballpark, in a real playoff race. That’s what baseball analysts Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when an independent minor-league team in California, the Sonoma Stompers, offered them the chance to run its baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics. Their story in The Only Rule is it Has to Work is unlike any other baseball tale you've ever read. We tag along as Lindbergh and Miller apply their number-crunching insights to all aspects of assembling and running a team, following one cardinal rule for judging each innovation they try: it has to work. We meet colorful figures like general manager Theo Fightmaster and boundary-breakers like the first openly gay player in professional baseball. Even José Canseco makes a cameo appearance. Will their knowledge of numbers help Lindbergh and Miller bring the Stompers a championship, or will they fall on their faces? Will the team have a competitive advantage or is the sport’s folk wisdom true after all? Will the players attract the attention of big-league scouts, or are they on a fast track to oblivion? It’s a wild ride, by turns provocative and absurd, as Lindbergh and Miller tell a story that will speak to numbers geeks and traditionalists alike. And they prove that you don’t need a bat or a glove to make a genuine contribution to the game.
Download or read book The 1934 St Louis Cardinals written by Edited by Charles F. Faber and published by SABR, Inc.. This book was released on with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1934 St. Louis Cardinals were one of the most colorful crews ever to play the National Pastime. Sportswriters delighted in assigning nicknames to the players, based on their real or imagined qualities. What a cast of characters it was! None was more picturesque than Pepper Martin, the “Wild Horse of the Osage,” who ran the bases with reckless abandon, led his teammates in off thefield hijinks, and organized a hillbilly band called the Mississippi Mudcats. He was quite a baseball player, the star of the 1931 World Series and a significant contributor to the 1934 championship. The harmonica player for the Mudcats was the irrepressible Dizzy Dean. Full of braggadocio, Dean delivered on his boasts by winning 30 games in 1934, the last National League hurler to achieve that feat. Dizzy and his brother Paul accounted for all of the Cardinal victories in the 1934 World Series. Some writers tried to pin the moniker Daffy on Paul, but that name didn’t fit the younger and much quieter brother. The club’s hitters were led by the New Jersey strong boy, Joe “Ducky” Medwick, who hated the nickname, preferring to be called “Muscles.” Presiding over this aggregation was the “Fordham Flash,” Frankie Frisch. Rounding out the club were worthies bearing such nicknames as Ripper, “Leo the Lip,” Spud, Kiddo, Pop, Dazzy, Ol’ Stubblebeard, Wild Bill, Buster, Chick, Red, and Tex. Some of these were aging stars, past their prime, and others were youngsters, on their way up. Together they comprised a championship ball club. “The Gas House Gang was the greatest baseball club I ever saw. They thought they could beat any ballclub and they just about could too. When they got on that ballfield, they played baseball, and they played it to the hilt too. When they slid, they slid hard. There was no good fellowship between them and the opposition. They were just good, tough ballplayers.” — Cardinals infielder Burgess Whitehead on "When It Was A Game," HBO Sports, 1991
Download or read book Paths to Glory written by Daniel R. Levitt and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential experience of being a baseball fan is the hopeful anticipation of seeing the hometown nine make a run at winning the World Series. In Paths to Glory, Mark L. Armour and Daniel R. Levitt review how teams build themselves up into winners. What makes a winning team like the 1900 Brooklyn Superbas or the 1917 White Sox or the 1997 Florida Marlins? And how are these teams different? What makes each championship team a unique product of its time? Armour and Levitt provide the historical context to show how the sport's business side has changed dramatically but its competitive environment remains the same. Utilizing new statistics to evaluate a player's value and career patterns, Armour and Levitt explore the teams that took risks, created their own opportunities, and changed the game. How did the Washington Senators achieve the unthinkable and blow past Babe Ruth's Yankees in 1924 and 1925? How did the 1965 Minnesota Twins quickly rise to the top and why did they just as suddenly fall? Did Charlie Finley assemble the last old-fashioned championship team before free agency, or was the Moustache Gang another example of winning by building from within? Why did the star-laden Red Sox of the 1930s keep falling short? In exploring these teams and more, Armour and Levitt analyze the players, the managers, and the executives who built teams to win and then lived with the consequences.
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 The SABR Baseball List Record Book written by Society for American Baseball Research and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the authority on baseball research and statistics comes a vast and fascinating compendium of unique baseball lists and records. The SABR Baseball List & Record Book is an expansive collection of pitching, hitting, fielding, home run, team, and rookie records not available online or in any other book. This is a treasure trove of baseball history for statistically minded baseball fans that's also packed with intriguing marginalia. For instance, on July 25, 1967, Chicago's Ken Berry ended Game Two of a doubleheader against Cleveland with a home run in the bottom of the sixteenth inning -- Chicago's second game-winning homer of the day. The comprehensive lists include Most Career Home Runs by Two Brothers (Tommie and Hank Aaron have 768), Most Seasons with 15 or More Wins (Cy Young and Greg Maddux each have 18), and Highest On Base Percentage in a Season by a Rookie (listing every rookie above .400). Unlike other record books that only list the record holders -- say, most RBI by a rookie, held by Ted Williams with 145 -- SABR details every rookie to reach 100 RBI. Other record books might note the last pitcher in each league to steal home; here SABR has included every pitcher to do it. The book also includes a number of idiosyncratic features, such as a rundown of every player who has hit a triple and then stolen home, or every reliever who has won two games in one day. Many of the lists include a comments column for key historical notes and entertaining trivia (Bob Horner hit four home runs in a 1986 game, but his team lost). This is a must-have for every fan's library. Edited by Lyle Spatz, Chairman of the Baseball Records Committee for SABR
Download or read book Seasons in Hell written by Mike Shropshire and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A funny, revealing, Ball Four–like romp through mid-seventies baseball” from the longtime sports columnist and author of The Last Real Season (Booklist). You think your team is bad? In this “disastrously hilarious” work on one of the most tortured franchises in baseball, one reporter discovers that nine innings can feel like an eternity (USA Today). In early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire agreed to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, not realizing that the Rangers were arguably the worst team in baseball history. Seasons in Hell is a riotous, candid, irreverent behind-the-scenes account in the tradition of The Bronx Zoo and Ball Four, following the Texas Rangers from Whitey Herzog’s reign in 1973 through Billy Martin’s tumultuous tenure. Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique (and likely never-to-be-seen-again) baseball personalities, Seasons in Hell recounts some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game and brings to life the no-holds-barred culture of major league baseball in the mid-seventies. “The single funniest sports book I have ever read.”—Don Imus “The locker-room shenanigans of a lousy team of the 1970s.”—Publishers Weekly
Download or read book A Team for the Ages written by Robert W. Cohen and published by Globe Pequot. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Certain to create new controversies, and stir up some old ones, here is a fascinating historical and comparative look at the national pastime and its greatest players over the past one hundred years.
Download or read book The Best of Everything Baseball Book written by Nate LeBoutillier and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2010-12 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When was the first World Series played? What MLB pitcher holds the league record with seven no-hitters? Which player stole home 54 times during his career? Learn the answer to these questions and more in The Best of Everything Baseball Book.
Download or read book Pitching Defense and Three Run Homers written by Society for American Baseball Research ( and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of the Baltimore Orioles of the 1960's and 1970s in contextualized biographies of the players, managers, and everyone else important to the team.
Download or read book Rob Neyer s Big Book of Baseball Blunders written by Rob Neyer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BLOOPER: BALL SQUIRTS THROUGH BILLY BUCKNER'S LEGS. BLUNDER: BILLY BUCKNER'S MANAGER LEFT HIM IN THE GAME. Baseball bloopers are fun; they're funny, even. A pitcher slips on the mound and his pitch sails over the backstop. An infielder camps under a pop-up...and the ball lands ten feet away. An outfielder tosses a souvenir to a fan...but that was just the second out, and runners are circling the bases (and laughing). Without these moments, the highlight reels wouldn't be nearly as entertaining. Baseball blunders, however, can be tragic, and they will leave diehard fans asking why...why...why? Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders does its best to answer all those whys, exploring the worst decisions and stupidest moments of managers, general managers, owners, and even commissioners. As he did in his Big Book of Baseball Lineups, Rob Neyer provides readers with a fascinating examination of baseball's rich history, this time through the lens of the game's sometimes hilarious, often depressing, and always perplexing blunders. · Which ill-fated move cost the Chicago White Sox a great hitter and the 1919 World Series? · What was Babe Ruth thinking when he became the first (and still the only) player to end a World Series by getting caught trying to steal? · Did playing one-armed Pete Gray in 1945 cost the Browns a pennant? · How did winning a coin toss lead to the Dodgers losing the National League pennant on Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'round the World"? · How damaging was the Frank Robinson-for-Milt Pappas deal, really? · Which of Red Sox manager Don Zimmer's mistakes in 1978 was the worst? · Which Yankees trade was even worse than swapping Jay Buhner for Ken Phelps? · What non-move cost Buck Showalter a job and gave Joe Torre the opportunity of a lifetime? · Game 7, 2003 ALCS: Pedro winds up to throw his 123rd pitch...what were you thinking? These are just a few of the legendary (and not-so-legendary) blunders that Neyer analyzes, always with an eye on what happened, why it happened, and how it changed the fickle course of history. And in separate chapters, Neyer also reviews some of the game's worst trades and draft picks and closely examines all the teams that fell just short of first place. Another in the series of Neyer's Big Books of baseball history, Baseball Blunders should win a place in every devoted fan's library.
Download or read book Sports Illustrated Greatest Teams written by Time-Life Books and published by Time Life Medical. This book was released on 1999-05 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers. The Yankees with Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle. The Celtics in the Bill Russell and Larry Bird eras. The Montreal Canadiens with Maurice Richard and Jacques Plante. Here, from the leader in sports news and coverage, is a tribute to the best teams ever to play pro football, basketball, hockey and baseball -- as well as a handy compendium of championship records and key statistics.
Download or read book Color Blind written by Tom Dunkel and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking readers back in time to 1947, an award-winning journalist chronicles an integrated baseball team in Bismarck, North Dakota that rose above a segregated society to become champions, delving into the history of the players, the town and baseball itself.
Download or read book Future Value written by Eric Longenhagen and published by Triumph Books. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unprecedented look inside the world of baseball scouting and evaluation from two of the industry's top prospect analysts For the modern Major League team, player evaluation is a complex, multi-pronged, high-tech pursuit. But far from becoming obsolete in this environment—as Michael Lewis' Moneyball once forecast—the role of the scout in today's game has evolved and even expanded. Rather than being the antithesis of a data-driven approach, scouting now represents an essential analytical component in a team's arsenal. Future Value is a thorough dive into baseball's changing world of talent acquisition and development, a world with its own language, methods, metrics, and madness. From rural high schools to elite amateur showcases, from the back fields of spring training to major league draft rooms, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel break down the key systems and techniques used to assess talent. It's a process that has moved beyond the quintessential stopwatches and radar guns to include statistical models, countless measurable indicators, and a broader international reach. ?Practical and probing, discussing wide-ranging topics from tool grades to front office politics, this is an illuminating exploration of how to watch baseball and see the future.
Download or read book So Many Ways to Lose written by Devin Gordon and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is a weird, wonderful, and essential book about both America and its pastime. It’s about a place as vast as New York City and as intimate as the human heart. Fred Exley meets Richard Ben Cramer—a funny, wild, heartfelt, and keenly observed portrait of yearning itself.”—Wright Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of The Cost of These Dreams “Mr. Gordon’s ability to explain the Sisyphean plight of all Mets fans is truly remarkable. Bravo!”—Ron Darling, New York Times bestselling author of Game 7, 1986 The Mets lose when they should win. They win when they should lose. And when it comes to being the worst, no team in sports has ever done it better than the Mets. In So Many Ways to Lose, author and lifelong Mets fan Devin Gordon sifts through the detritus of Queens for a baseball history like no other. Remember the time the Mets lost an All-Star after Yoenis Céspedes got charged by a wild boar? Or the time they blew a six-run ninth-inning lead at the peak of a pennant race? Or the time they fired their manager before he ever managed a game? Sure you do. It was only two years ago, and it was all in the same season. The Mets have an unrivaled gift for getting it backward, doing the impossible, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and then snatching defeat right back again. And yet, just ask any Mets fan: Amazing and/or miraculous postseason runs are as much a part of our team's identity as losing 120 games in 1962. The DNA of seasons like 1969, the original Miracle Mets, and the 1973 “Ya Gotta Believe” Mets, who went from last place to Game 7 of the World Series in two months, and the powerhouse 1986 Mets, has encoded in us this hapless instinct that a reversal of fortune is always possible. It’s happened before. It’s kind of our thing. And now we've got Steve Cohen's hedge-fund billions to play with! What could go wrong? In this hilarious history of the Mets and love letter to the art of disaster, Devin Gordon presents baseball the way it really is, not in the wistful sepia tones we've come to expect from other sportswriters. Along the way, he explains the difference between being bad and being gifted at losing, and why this distinction holds the key to understanding the true amazin’ magic of the New York Mets.
Download or read book Now Taking the Field Baseball s All Time Dream Teams for All 30 Franchises written by Tom and published by ACTA Publications. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best all-time rosters for all 30 current Major League Baseball teams, with in-depth analysis of who would start (and backup) at each position. Current players analyzed but not included in rosters.
