Baseball Memoirs

Iron Man Cal Ripken, Jr., the 19-time All-Star, World-Series-winning legend, American League MVP, and record holder who played 2,632 consecutive games, outlines eight rules for the game of baseball and life, drawing from the lessons he has learned on and off the field.

Burke Masters had the perfect game plan for his life: he was going to become a Major League Baseball player. As a star infielder for Mississippi State with a game-winning grand slam to help his team reach the College World Series, he was well on his way to the career of his dreams. But little did he know that his life-changing call would not be from a recruiter to join the Major Leagues—it would be from God to become a priest.

In The Bases Were Loaded (and So Was I), sportswriter Tom Callahan brings to life the most fascinating - and often least understood - figures in the world of sports. This is the ultimate collection of Callahan’s sports profiles, with subjects ranging from Muhammad Ali to Pete Rose, and Joe Montana to Michael Jordan. Based on decades of sports reporting as well as featuring material original to this book, The Bases Were Loaded (and So Was I) takes athletes we thought we knew and reveals how wrong we often are. This is a rare and surprising work of reportage that will appeal to sports fans and non–sports fans alike.

Yogi Berra is one of America's most beloved baseball players of all time, known as much for his wit and humor as he is for his exploits with the New York Yankees. In this new book, Yogi provides inspiring, funny, and surprisingly moving essays on life, happiness, and getting through the slumps.

Rube Foster, Cool Papa Bell, Monte Irvin, Buck Leonard...they are some of the greatest players to ever play the game. So, why have so few people heard of them? Because they never played in the MLB; they were the heroes of a baseball league often forgotten: the Negro League. This book traces the history of the league from the early days of professional Black baseball and the formation of leagues to post-integration decline.

In 1942, Pete Reiser was on the road to baseball superstardom. Then he crashed into a wall—an unpadded concrete outfield wall as he tried to make a game-saving catch. And for Pete, nothing was ever the same. A year earlier, at age 22, he had won a batting title, a rookie of the year award, and a pennant with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Sportswriters could not stop marveling at his skill set, highlighted by a keen batting eye, a rifle throwing arm, and speed that whisked him from home to first in three-point-six seconds.

In this audiobook, you'll find scores of interesting stories about unforgettable moments in the game, and see what the batboy saw as he mingled with legendary players of the 1950s, a time that may well go down as the greatest in American baseball history!

Jon Peters had it all: record-breaking high school baseball pitcher, on the cover of Sports Illustrated, a beautiful girlfriend. He was going to play professional baseball. He was going to have everything he'd ever wanted. Until a shoulder injury and four surgeries changed his life. With dreams shattered, Jon struggled to find value and happiness. After years of searching vainly to make sense of it all, alcohol, a suicide attempt, deep-seated anger, and a failed marriage made him feel even more desperate.

Chris Von der Ahe knew next to nothing about baseball when he risked his life’s savings to found the St. Louis Browns, the franchise that would become the St. Louis Cardinals. Yet the German-born beer garden proprietor would become one of the most important - and funniest - figures in the game’s history.

No origin story of the New York Mets is complete without Ed Kranepool. The lefty first baseman known as "Steady Eddie" made his major-league debut at age seventeen during the team's inaugural season and would eventually depart, nearly two decades later, with his name written throughout the franchise's record books. In this definitive autobiography, Kranepool shares a remarkable life story.

At fifteen, Willie Horton received his first contract offer to become a professional baseball player. At twenty, he smacked his first major-league home run. At twenty-four, Horton stood in full uniform on the hood of his car, in the midst of burning homes and overturned vehicles, and pleaded for an end to the violence of the 1967 Detroit riots. In this new autobiography, Horton shares the fascinating story of his life and career, from growing up in Detroit's Jeffries Projects as the youngest of twenty-one children to winning a World Series with his hometown Tigers in 1968.

ボールパークを創りたい、その夢を北海道で実現した男たちの物語

As star players for the 1955 World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers, and prior to that as the first black players to be candidates to break professional baseball's color barrier, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella would seem to be natural allies. But the two men were divided by a rivalry going far beyond the personality differences and petty jealousies of competitive teammates. Behind the bitterness were deep and differing beliefs about the fight for civil rights.

Everything Happens in Chillicothe is an authentic, behind-the-scenes look at the lowest rung of professional baseball, and a biography of Max McLeary, the one-eyed umpire and a most intriguing individual. Author Mike Shannon spent the 2000 Frontier League season attending games with McLeary and gives his account of the season here. The audiobook speaks volumes about umpiring as a profession, relationships (particularly between Max and his estranged son, a minor league player.

As a boy in the 1890s he went looking for thrills in a rural Georgia that still burned with humiliation from the Civil War. As an old man in the 1960s he dared death, picked fights, refused to take his medicine, and drove off all his friends and admirers. He went to his deathbed alone, clutching a loaded pistol and a bag containing millions of dollars worth of cash and securities. During the years in between, he became, according to Al Stump, "the most shrewd, inventive, lurid, detested, mysterious, and superb of all baseball players." He was Ty Cobb. In Cobb, Stump tells how he was given a fascinating window into the Georgia Peach's life and times when the dying Cobb hired him in 1960 to ghostwrite his autobiography.

This memoir shares the unique coming of age story of a young college student, utterly devoid of confidence, until he is "recruited" as a semi-professional mascot for a junior hockey team. After a year on the ice, a new opportunity draws him into the world of Minor League Baseball. As the unexpectedly humorous, heartwarming, and (at times) hazardous experiences unfold, the young man finds himself sitting in the hospital with his future wife, weighing the risks of one more season against the potential of one day going pro.

In My Long Journey Home: Discovering Life After the Game, Rick Williams bares his soul in a captivating and inspiring memoir that will appeal to both men and women alike. As a former minor league baseball player who faced the crushing disappointment of being released from the Atlanta Braves organization, Williams found himself spiraling out of control. He turned to drugs, womanizing, and other destructive behaviors to cope with the pain and loss. For years, he felt rejected and alone, and the fallout from a contentious custody battle with his two oldest children left him shattered.

At 6-foot-7 and 285 pounds, Aaron Judge emerged as the biggest story in baseball in 2017 with his monstrous home runs and record-breaking ability. A three-sport athlete in high school and a Division I ballplayer at Fresno State, the Californian was drafted by the New York Yankees in the first round in 2013 and made it to the majors by August 2016. Homering in his first major league at-bat and starting in right field straight out of spring training in 2017, he gave Yankees fans hope for the future, along with "Baby Bombers" teammates such as Gary Sanchez.

New York Daily News reporter Madden and Klein, of the Newark Star-Ledger, who have covered the Yankees for years, here join forces on a history that may send fans to their handkerchiefs and opponents into laughter. The authors chiefly discuss the period 1977 to 1989, when principal team owner George Steinbrenner converted a stable, conservative, successful franchise into a club characterized by "chaos, confusion, and craziness'' to the point that some top players refuse to sign with the team.

In Max Scherzer: The Inspiring Story of One of Baseball's All-Star Pitchers, you will learn the story of one of baseball's best pitchers, Max Scherzer. Max Scherzer has been one of the best pitchers since entering the pros in 2006. At the time of this writing, Scherzer has been selected as an All-Star eight times, won three Cy Young Awards, pitched two no-hitters, and notably won the World Series with the Washington Nationals in 2019. Scherzer has carved out quite the legacy for himself, and will go down as one of the best pitchers in modern history of the game.