Baseball Memoirs

Exclusive interviews with the top athletes in sports today. Trust the Grind: How World-Class Athletes Got to the Top reveals how these men and women reached the heights of their profession so that you can too. Each chapter tells a different story, as each superstar shares the habit that helped them accomplish their goals and reach the pinnacle of their profession.

The longtime commissioner of Major League Baseball provides an unprecedented look inside professional baseball today, focusing on how he helped bring the game into the modern age and revealing his interactions with players, managers, fellow owners, and fans nationwide.

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.

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.

At forty-four years old, Tim Wakefield is the longest-serving member of one of baseball’s most popular franchises. He is close to eclipsing the winning records of two of the greatest pitchers to have played the game, yet few realize the full measure of his success. That his career can be characterized by such words as dependability and consistency defies all odds because he has achieved this with baseball’s most mercurial weapon—the knuckleball.

All Porter Fischer wanted was the $4,000 Tony Bosch owed him. But Bosch would not pay him back, so he swiped Bosch’s Biogenesis ledgers as collateral. Fischer eventually examined the lists of clients and treatment plans revealed in the ledgers and saw what he really had: proof that major and minor sports figures came to the Miami antiaging clinic for anabolic steroids, human growth hormones, and other illegal drugs. That included one of the greatest sluggers in modern baseball history: three-time MVP Alex Rodriguez.

There was nobody like Casey before him and no one like him since. For more than 50 years, Casey Stengel lived baseball, first as a player (he was the only person in history to play for all the New York teams - the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees, and Mets) and then as a manager (for the Yankees and Mets, among others). He made his biggest mark on the game revolutionizing the role of manager while winning an astounding 10 pennants and seven World Series championships (including five straight!) with the Yankees.

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.

It happens every spring. Yankees pitching great Ron Guidry arrives at the Tampa airport to pick up Hall of Fame catcher and national treasure Yogi Berra. Guidry drives him to the ballpark. They watch the young players. They talk shop. They eat dinner together and tease each other mercilessly. They trade stories about the greats they have met along the way. And the next day they do the same thing all over again. As every former ballplayer can appreciate, in that routine, every spring, there emerges a certain magic.

In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen emerged from a field of 370 teams to become the smallest school in Illinois history to make the state final, a distinction that still stands. There, sporting long hair, and warming up to "Jesus Christ Superstar", the Ironmen would play a dramatic game that would change their lives forever.

No immortal in the history of baseball retired so young, so well, or so completely as Sandy Koufax. After compiling a remarkable record from 1962 to 1966 that saw him lead the National League in ERA all five years, win three Cy Young awards, and pitch four no-hitters including a perfect game, Koufax essentially disappeared. Save for his induction into the Hall of Fame and occasional appearances at the Dodgers training camp, Koufax has remained unavailable, unassailable, and unsullied.

Peter Golenbock brings to life baseball greats from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s through timeless stories told straight from the players themselves. Like the enduring classic The Glory of Their Times, this book features the reminiscences of baseball legends, pulled from hundreds of hours of taped interviews with the author. The players interviewed were All-Stars, Hall of Famers, and heroes to many, and their impact on the national pastime is still seen to this day. Baseball history comes alive, offering a fascinating account of the golden age of baseball.

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.

Gripping and tragic, Dalko is the definitive story of Steve “White Lightning” Dalkowski, baseball’s fastest pitcher ever. Dalko explores one man’s unmatched talent on the mound and the forces that kept ultimate greatness always just beyond his reach. For the first time, Dalko: The Untold Story of Baseball’s Fastest Pitcher unites all of the eyewitness accounts from the coaches, analysts, teammates, and professionals who witnessed the game’s fastest pitcher in action.

When journalist Terence Moore was 12 years old, he treasured his poster of Henry Aaron. Years later, Aaron would sign it for him. Later still, Moore would be named an honorary pallbearer at the home run king's funeral. Friends and family knew Aaron as quick-witted, hilarious, and fiercely opinionated beyond what was shown in public. With the encouragement of Aaron's family, Moore now shares this intimate perspective on the baseball legend, the culmination of decades of friendship and correspondence.

In 2010 the New York Mets were in trouble. One of baseball's most valuable franchises, they had recently suffered an embarrassing September collapse and two bitter losing seasons. Their GM had made costly mistakes. And their principle owners were embroiled in the largest financial scam in American history. To whom did they turn? Sandy Alderson, a former marine who served in Vietnam and graduated from Harvard Law.

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!

Willie Mays, a name synonymous with excellence, grace, and enduring greatness in baseball, has etched his story into the annals of American sports history. His journey from a young boy with a dream in Alabama to a baseball icon is not just a tale of athletic prowess but also a profound narrative of resilience, talent, and cultural impact.

In the wake of 2005's sometimes contentious, sometimes comical Congressional hearings on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball and the subsequent Mitchell Report, Major League Baseball established the Department of Investigations (DOI). An internal and autonomous unit, it was created to not only eliminate the use of steroids, but also to rid baseball of any other illegal, unsavory, or unethical activities. The DOI would investigate the dark side of the national pastime - gambling, age and identity fraud, human trafficking, cover-ups, and more.

Baseball's Natural is John Theodore's true account of the slick-fielding first baseman who played for the Cubs and the Phillies in the 1940s and became immortalized in baseball lore as the inspiration for Bernard Malamud's The Natural. Eddie Waitkus grew up in Boston and fought in the Pacific theater in World War II. Following the war, Waitkus became one of the most popular players of his era. In 1949, with his career on the rise, his life changed dramatically in a Chicago hotel when a 19-year-old shot him in the chest.