Baseball Historical

Stephen Satlow is an eight-year-old boy living in Brooklyn, New York, which means he only cares about one thing - the Dodgers. Steve and his father spend hours reading the sports pages and listening to games on the radio. Aside from an occasional run-in with his teacher, life is pretty simple for Steve. But then Steve hears a rumor that an African-American family is moving to his all-Jewish neighborhood. It's 1948 and some of his neighbors are against it. Steve knows this is wrong. His hero, Jackie Robinson, broke the color barrier in baseball the year before.

Jon Hamm returns as intrepid private eye Jack Bergin in this thrilling, hard-boiled Audible Original series. Set against the backdrop of the real-life battle to bring the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles, Bergin investigates a brutal murder at the request of an old flame (Ana de la Reguera), and uncovers a deadly conspiracy to forcefully evict a Mexican-American community.

Last Days of Summer is the story of Joey Margolis, neighborhood punching bag, growing up goofy and mostly fatherless in Brooklyn in the early 1940s. A boy looking for a hero, Joey decides to latch on to Charlie Banks, the all-star third basemen for the New York Giants. But Joey's chosen champion doesn't exactly welcome the extreme attention of a persistent young fan with an overactive imagination. Then again, this strange, needy kid might be exactly what Banks needs.

Eddy Pareti is a street-smart kid who does things his own way. He ditches school and dodges duties at the family’s tavern, Ernie’s Bleachers (now Murphy’s Bleachers), which is just across from Wrigley Field. World War II is ending, the Cubs are heading to the World Series, and Eddy sneaks into games and brushes up against baseball legends, including stars of the Negro League. From behind his family’s bar, Eddy pours beer for soldiers, ball players, and rodeo clowns, runs bets for a bookie who wants him to shoot a deadbeat gambler and—hold your horses—crashes a stagecoach on State Street.

On the 50th anniversary of "The Shot Heard Round the World", Don DeLillo reassembles in fiction the larger-than-life characters who on October 3, 1951, witnessed Bobby Thomson's pennant-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin's touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball. She re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans.

Play ball! Jack and Annie aren’t great baseball players... yet! Then Morgan the librarian gives them magical baseball caps that will make them experts. They just need to wear the caps to a special ballgame in Brooklyn, New York. The magic tree house whisks them back to 1947! When they arrive, Jack and Annie find out that they will be batboys in the game - not ballplayers. What exactly does Morgan want them to learn? And what’s so special about this game? They only have nine innings to find out!

In Peter Schilling's wonderful novel, the extraordinary baseball season of 1944 comes vividly to life. Bill Veeck, the maverick promoter, returned from Guadalcanal with a leg missing and $500 to his name, has hustled his way into buying the Philadelphia Athletics. Hungry for a pennant, young Veeck jettisons the team's white players and secretly recruits the legendary stars of the Negro Leagues, fielding a club that will go down in baseball annals as one of the greatest ever to play the game.

It seems that the FDR writer is back wanting more Fe-As-Ko stories from cowpoke Royal Leckner. This time it's 1897, Royal and E.M. have been married about four years. And so have Leviticus and Lou(ella) Perrault, owners of the Four Arrows ranch. Royal is still foreman of the ranch and caretaker of its owner. As he reminds us, Leviticus and Lou(ella) Perrault are "short a hat size," but "nice and honest, which is better than smart and fox-like any day." It's time to take the cattle to Portland for the annual sale, and Royal is bringing Leviticus along to teach him how "to sign on the dotted line."

In 1963, volunteer Jack Harjo sits in the jungles of Costa Rica pondering three questions: Is there a greater good; does it apply here; and can you really trademark Panama Red, Acapulco Gold, and Maui Wowie? A story of sex, drugs, revolution, and the dawn of the Peace Corps....

It’s 1984, and David is off the couch once more and providing support to the team-building efforts of a publishing start-up at the LA Dodgers Adult Fantasy Camp in Florida. As David seeks the elusive home run that will elevate his love life from the minors, team rivalries simmer, and he is drawn into a web of lies, suspicion, and drug smuggling. Teambuilding becomes less of a goal and more of a necessity as members start to show up dead.

What’s a 16-year-old boy to do when he learns that his stepmother and a local judge have murdered his father and now plan to kill him, too? Well, when it’s 1906, and you can play pretty good second base, you join a barn-storming baseball team making its way across Kansas. It also helps that the team is the Kansas City National Bloomer Girls. After all, who’d look for a runaway boy disguised as a girl on a women’s team that competes against town-ball teams of male players? Of course, it’ll take more than long hair, a Spalding glove, and a quick bat to stay alive.

When local baseball player Junior Jones receives death threats over the color of his skin, the team's wealthy owner hires Sam Rockwell to solve the case and stop a murder before it happens. Sam goes undercover as a minor league pitcher to strike out the culprit. Follow the clues along with Sam's curmudgeonly ghost of a father Frank Rockwell, and Sam's wife Amelia, who holds a secret that will forever change the lives of the entire Rockwell family. It's another laugh-filled, madcap mystery in the warm, witty 1950's Hollywood-style of author Jason Anspach.

It is 1947 when Joseph Burke, ex-Marine, ex-husband, ex-somebody–is hired as a bodyguard to protect Lauren Roach, 25 and spoiled rotten. The unlikely duo becomes entangled with Burke’s boyhood hero, color-barrier breaking baseball player Jackie Robinson, in a story that is both thrilling and engaging. It is in the historical character Jackie Robinson that Mr. Parker finds inspiration and Joseph Burke may find his redemption. This is a work of fiction about a real man. Most of what I’ve written I’ve made up. I have, however, attempted to render Jackie Robinson accurately. As he was, or as I imagined him to be, in 1947, when I was turning 15, and he was changing the world. The rest is altogether fiction. It may be more Burke’s story then Jackie’s story. But, without Jackie, Burke would have had no story. And neither would I. Robert B Parker.

Conor Nash has lived his life with a single purpose - to pitch in the major leagues. He’s been released from professional baseball contracts 10 times over a 16-year career, but he’s overcome every obstacle to finally reach "The Show" when he’s a decade too old. As he faces the specter of injury-forced retirement, he becomes a man neither he nor his wife recognizes. During his career, Conor avoided the trap of alcohol and drugs because his drug was baseball.

The Roaring Twenties: America is dancing to jazz, gangsters are selling bootleg liquor, and the New York Yankees are building a baseball dynasty. In 1923, Yankee Stadium opens and Babe Ruth is about to lead the team to its first world's championship. But the promising season gets off to an ominous start when the body of a murdered bootlegger is found buried in the new ballpark.

Borchert Field was Milwaukee's major sports venue for 64 years. In this rickety wooden stadium (originally called Athletic Park), Wisconsin residents had a close-up view of sports history in the making, along with rodeos, thrill shows, and even multiple eruptions of Mount Vesuvius. In Borchert Field, baseball historian Bob Buege introduces the famous and fascinating athletes who dazzled audiences in Milwaukee's venerable ballpark. Borchert Field is long gone, but every moment of this audiobook takes listeners back to the sights, sounds, and spectacle of its heyday.

When the kitchen ceiling caved in and the contents of his mother’s attic splayed across the floor, Ron, better known as “Punky”, knew he had to help clean up. With the assistance of his son and nephew, he would try to preserve as many of the dirty, mold-covered memories as he could, including a mysterious old metal box, possibly belonging to his Grandpa Hash. What’s inside it takes him back 32 years earlier, as he recalls the magical weekend in 1984 spent with his grandfather attending two baseball games.

Moe Berg is not a typical baseball player. He's Jewish - very unusual for the major leagues in the 1930s - has a law degree, speaks several languages, and loves traveling the world. He also happens to be a spy for the US government. When World War II begins, Moe trades his baseball career for a life of danger and secrecy. Using his unusual range of skills, he sneaks into enemy territory to gather crucial information that could help defeat the Nazis. But he also has plenty of secrets of his own...