Great Outdoors

Many childhood summers, Mark Woods piled into a station wagon with his parents and two sisters and headed to America's national parks. Mark's most vivid childhood memories are set against a backdrop of mountains, woods, and fireflies in places like Redwood, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon national parks. On the eve of turning 50, and a little burned out, Mark decided to reconnect with the great outdoors. He'd spend a year visiting the national parks.

The Players League, formed in 1890, was a short-lived professional baseball league controlled and owned, in part, by the players themselves, a response to the National League’s salary cap and “reserve rule” which bound players for life to one particular team. Led by John Montgomery Ward, the Players League was a star-studded group that included most of the best players of the National League who bolted, not only to gain control of their wages but also to share ownership of the teams.

In Body Politic, David Shields looks at contemporary America and its mythology through the lens of professional and college sports. The result is an unusually insightful and provocative book about an empire in denial. Shields relentlessly examines the way we tell our sports stories (both fictional and nonfictional), considers the kinds of athletes we choose as heroes, and delineates the lessons and values we glean from sports.

A work of 1980s nostalgia by one who grew up amidst it, this book takes an in-depth look at the entire decade, from the moments that seem like they happened yesterday to those that time forgot.

The home run is the single most dramatic moment in baseball. Often it has been the exclamation point that appears at the end of a game, a season, a playoff, or a World Series. For fans, certain images such as that of Carlton Fisk urging his shot fair over Green Monster or of Kirk Gibson limping around the bases are engraved in memory. From Babe Ruth to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, the author tells of the stories of what he has selected as the thirty most memorable home runs.

On October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson's "shot heard around the world" ended one of the most dramatic pennant races ever. Interviews, contemporary newspaper articles, and memoirs of participants are used to describe the intense rivalry and provide a day-by-day look at the Giants' pennant run, including a fascinating examination of the strategy of the final game.

Sage advice distilled from a Hall of Fame coach’s years of interactions and astute observations, this straight-to-the-point guidebook for parents of young athletes describes how to support your child’s journey to their dreams and capture their heart.

In the half-century since its birth, as Sports Illustrated grew from a struggling start-up to America's preeminent sports magazine, one thing has remained constant: the commitment to great storytelling. That part of the magazine's mission has always been easy to define: Identify the most compelling sports stories of our time and get the best writers in the business to tell them. This book brings together a lineup of writing talent worthy of the Hall of Fame and the classic stories they produced for Sports Illustrated over the past 50 years. Many of the writers whose work is collected here are longtime favorites of SI readers (Frank Deford, Rick Reilly, Steve Rushin, Gary Smith).

Based on the 506-page full guide to the great American national parks, how to avoid the crowds, walking tours, facilities, and how to get there, this audio edition focuses on the major parks of California: Death Valley, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Sequoia, King's Canyon, and Yosemite. This audiobook includes information on accommodations and dining, camping and tours.

An entertaining collection of insider yarns by an Aussie Test cricket legend. 'In the Test arena, Dennis Lillee was never beaten. West Indian champion Viv Richards had taken the sword to all the international bowlers of his era. But when he came up against Lillee, it was a heavyweight fight between unrelenting combatants. Their contests were always take-no-prisoners affairs.'

In these 65 original stories, we hear of the explosive introduction of World Series Cricket in 1977, which turned a genteel endeavour into a high-octane contest, and the clash of the titans as Packer and Murdoch squared off over the Super League war. We see Rugby Union become a battleground for race and the Olympics an arena for sublime acts of courage and achievement.

Pat Williams has drawn on his basketball industry connections to compile great stories from on and off the court. Fans will be inspired, surprised, and even amused, by inside stories from well-known coaches and players, fascinating looks behind the scenes, and anecdotes from the people who make it all possible - the fans. Includes first person stories from 21 basketball celebrities, plus Pat Williams.

As a columnist for Time magazine, among many other publications, Tom Callahan witnessed an extraordinary number of defining moments in American sport across four decades. He takes us from Roberto Clemente clinching his 3,000th, and final, regular-season hit in Pittsburgh; to ringside for the Muhammad Ali - George Foreman fight in Zaire; and to Arthur Ashe announcing, at a news conference, that he'd tested positive for HIV.

In Better Great than Never, Lindsay shows you how to seize your full potential by removing self-imposed limitations. She demonstrates how to embrace every step, good and bad, to find greatness. For Lindsay, life isn’t about winning. As long as you learn throughout your journey, you can never lose.

As Donald Honig points out in his introduction, "Every World Series in itself is a tale with beginning, middle, and end, and because there must be a winner, there must be a hero." Tales of Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Sandy Koufax, and Willie Mays are related by the star players who knew them. Those players recall vivid moments from their World Series games, stretching from 1912 to 1974.

After numerous beloved and best-selling sports books, John Feinstein returns to the subjects of his first 10 books, crafting a narrative of the most revealing encounters he's had. These are the coaches and athletes who know their games the best, and the legends and legendary moments that gave inherent shape to our favorite pastimes.

Satchel Paige was 42 years old when he became the first Black pitcher in the American League in 1948. Although the oldest rookie around, he was already a legend. For 22 years, beginning in 1926, Paige dazzled throngs with his performance in the Negro Baseball Leagues. Then he outlasted everyone by playing professional baseball, in and out of the majors, until 1965.

Dirty Feet is a fresh look at the now more than 100-year-old Tour de France. Les Woodland goes back to the blue-collar origins of the race when the father of the Tour, Henri Desgrange, was so bothered by the hygiene of his tough, beloved racers that at the end of each stage he would publish the names of the riders who did not wash after a day of racing on France’s mostly dirt and often muddy roads.

Biking is a popular exercise and pastime among a number of people. Learning to ride a bike is nearly a rite of passage when we are children, and we all believe that once your learn how to ride, you’ll never forget. Whether you are a recreational bike rider, or your more of the professional sort, it’s important to have a good idea where some of the best biking trails are.

The father of the Kentucky Derby called him "the greatest all-around Thoroughbred in American racing history". Sportswriter Grantland Rice simply called him "the greatest racehorse". Now Eliza McGraw tells the story of how a gangling, long-shot Kentucky Derby winner named Exterminator became one of the most beloved racehorses of all time.