Sports Baseball Biographies

Seventy baseball seasons ago, on a May afternoon at Yankee Stadium, Joe DiMaggio lined a hard single to left field. It was the quiet beginning to the most resonant baseball achievement of all time. Alongside the story of DiMaggio's dramatic quest, Kennedy deftly examines the peculiar nature of hitting streaks and with an incisive, modern-day perspective gets inside the number itself, as its sheer improbability heightens both the math and the magic of 56 games in a row.

Bobby Richardson played alongside Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, Moose Skowron, and Yogi Berra during one of the greatest dynasties in baseball history, and he remains to this day the only player from a losing team ever to be named World Series MVP. Impact Player chronicles Bobby’s life story - from his early days playing American Legion ball in South Carolina through his storied career with the Yankee’s and his decision to walk away from the game in his prime.

Weaving baseball history with personal memoir, this book is one that will make you thrill to victory, believe in hope, stand up to cheer for what is good in peoples' lives. It's a powerful story of redemption and faith that reminds us that God can work in our lives even when we think it's too late to change - and sometimes he sends us signs from heaven if we only have eyes to see.

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.

Learn the inspiring story of the Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds' legendary outfielder Ken Griffey Jr.! One of the many riveting listens in the Baseball Biography books series by Clayton Geoffreys. In Ken Griffey Jr.: The Inspiring Story of One of Baseball's Greatest Outfielders, you will learn the story of one of baseball's greatest outfielders, Ken Griffey Jr.

When baseball fans voted on the top twenty-five players of the twentieth century in 1999, Stan Musial didn’t make the cut. This glaring omission—later rectified by a panel of experts—raised an important question: How could a first-ballot Hall of Famer, widely considered one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, still rank as the most underrated athlete of all time?

Negro league baseball players didn’t always get the respect that major leaguers received. And yet many - including Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, and Roy Campanella - quickly became standouts in the major leagues after 1947. Others didn’t get to prove their mettle in the majors at all - or not until long past their prime. New York Times best-selling author Carole Boston Weatherford compiles an enthralling summary of Negro league history that includes fascinating tidbits about prominent pitchers, hitters, utility players, teams, and traditions.

Clarinda, Iowa, population 5,000, sits two hours from anything. There, between the cornfields and hog yards, is a ball field with a bronze bust of a man named Merl Eberly, a baseball whisperer who specialized in second chances and lost causes. The statue was a gift from one of Merl's original long-shot projects, a skinny kid from the ghetto in Los Angeles who would one day become a beloved Hall of Fame shortstop: Ozzie Smith.

Journalist and baseball lover Ed Henry reveals for the first time the backstory of faith that guided Jackie Robinson into not only the baseball record books but the annals of civil rights advancement as well. Through recently discovered sermons, interviews with Robinson's family and friends, and even an unpublished book by the player himself, Henry details a side of Jackie's humanity that few have taken the time to see.

The idea of integrating baseball began as a dream in the mind of Branch Rickey. In 1947, as president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he defied racism on and off the field to bring Jackie Robinson into the major leagues, changing the sport and the nation forever. Rickey's is the classic American tale of a poor boy from Ohio whose deep-seated faith and dogged work ethic took him to the pinnacle of success, earning him a place in the Hall of Fame and in history.

In 2007, pitcher Barry Zito signed a seven-year, $126 million contract with the San Francisco Giants. At that time, it was the largest contract ever given to a pitcher. He was at the top of his game, in peak physical condition, and had the kind of financial security most people can only dream of. He was also miserable. And it began to show. Zito's career declined over the next few years until he hit rock bottom - watching from the bench as his team won the World Series in 2010. In Curveball, Zito shares his story with honesty and transparency.

When Joe Torre was fired as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1995, he thought his career in baseball was over. After more than three decades and 4,200 games as a player and manager, one thing had always eluded him: winning a World Series. He had all but given up his dream when the New York Yankees made him an offer to manage their 1996 club. Encouraged by his wife and others, he accepted, and so began one of the greatest seasons in the fabled history of the New York Yankee franchise.

In Imperfect, Jim Abbot retraces his remarkable journey. Born without a right hand, Jim Abbott as a boy dreamed of being a great athlete. Raised in Flint, Michigan, by parents who saw in his condition not a disability but an extraordinary opportunity, Jim became a two-sport standout in high school, then an ace pitcher for the University of Michigan. But his journey was only beginning. By 21, he’d won the gold medal game at the 1988 Olympics and cracked the starting rotation of the California Angels....

In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team's Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. By quantifying the game's intangibles, they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay an American League pennant. This is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.

In the plainest of terms, baseball scouts are tasked with seeing the future—a distant future, at that. Baseball's long developmental arc leaves room for plenty of twists and turns on the way to The Show. Some prospects shoot like arrows toward their projected potential, while others fizzle out or chart an unexpected course. Smart, Wrong, and Lucky explores how first impressions measure up to their aftermaths: the draft, years of progression, and for a talented few, major-league success.

Childhood for Evan Roberts was defined by outings to the old Shea Stadium with his father, always with a scorebook in hand. What began as a gameday ritual replete with misspelled player names and scrawled symbols turned into an obsession with scoring every game he watched, one which persisted as Roberts rose through the ranks at WFAN. Taken together, those scorebooks form a living, breathing Mets diary spanning 30 years of thrilling—and, at times, tortured—fandom. My Mets Bible is an exercise in memory and nostalgia, and a meditation on the things that stick with us as sports fans.

Detroit, mid-1930s: In a city abuzz over its unrivaled sports success, gun-loving baseball fan Dayton Dean became ensnared in the nefarious and deadly Black Legion. The secretive, Klan-like group was executing a wicked plan of terror, murdering enemies, flogging associates, and contemplating armed rebellion. The Legion boasted tens of thousands of members across the Midwest, among them politicians and prominent citizens - even, possibly, a beloved athlete.

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.

Mamie "Peanut" Johnson had one dream: to play professional baseball. She was a talented player, but she wasn't welcome in the segregated All-American Girls Pro Baseball League due to the color of her skin. However, a greater opportunity came her way in 1953 when Johnson signed to play ball for the Negro Leagues' Indianapolis Clowns, becoming the first female pitcher to play on a men's professional team. During the three years she pitched for the Clowns, her record was an impressive 33-8. But more importantly, she broke ground for other female athletes and for women everywhere.

In Swing and Hit​, O’Neill elaborates on his most important hitting principles, lessons, and memories—exploring those elements across ten chapters (to align with the nine innings of a baseball game and one extra inning). Here, O’Neill, with his intense temperament, describes what he did as a hitter, how he adjusted to pitchers, how he boosted his confidence, how he battled with umpires (and water coolers), and what advice he would give to current hitters.