Sports Softball

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.

Most fans don't know how far the Jewish presence in baseball extends beyond a few famous players such as Greenberg, Rosen, Koufax, Holtzman, Green, Ausmus, Youkilis, Braun, and Kinsler. In fact, that presence extends to the baseball commissioner Bud Selig, labor leaders Marvin Miller and Don Fehr, owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Stuart Sternberg, officials Theo Epstein and Mark Shapiro, sportswriters Murray Chass, Ross Newhan, Ira Berkow, and Roger Kahn, and even famous Jewish baseball fans like Alan Dershowitz and Barney Frank.

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 journey, a four-part chronicle beginning with my freshman year and culminating with senior year, offers an insider's view into the life of a college athlete. As I share my experiences on the baseball diamond, in the classroom, and up in the dorm room, the entire college baseball experience comes to life.

Grinders: Baseball’s Intrepid Infantry tells the tales of the game's unheralded foot soldiers who took the hard-knocks road, bouncing between the show and obscurity, never quite achieving their dreams, all for a chance to play the game they love. Grinders fill every roster at every level, plugging away year after year. Without their grit, determination, and persistence, there would be no stars. These are their stories.

A Theologian and a Baseball Fan: What Could Go Wrong? explores aspects of the game of baseball that evoke images from biblical stories and theological themes. Using a theological framework to analyze the game of baseball provides a much more interesting, if not deeper, experience of the game.

The stories of thirteen Black Minor League baseball players during the post-Jackie Robinson era, from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, who were figuratively and literally left behind even as both baseball and the country claimed a newfound racial progressiveness.

This every-day baseball trivia book for 2024 is targeted for baseball fanatics of all ages who enjoy a daily trivia question about hardball. It contains one trivia question for each of the 366-days of the leap year, with answers following. The emphasis is entertainment and accuracy (each question and statement has been fact checked multiple times). Some baseball trivia fans have complained about getting just one trivia question for weekends, annoying for real fans.

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.

What’s the Endgame is a guidebook designed to help families navigate youth baseball, written by former All-American outfielder at Kansas State University and professional baseball player Sean Collins, who was drafted by the Kansas City Royals in 1989.

ベストセラー『栗山ノート』続編を緊急出版！ここでしか読めない、歓喜と感動をくれた侍たちの激闘の舞台裏。

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.

With a career that has now touched eight decades, Jim Kaat has had a prime front row seat for baseball's continuing evolution. Not only was he a major-league pitcher for twenty-five seasons, but his time as a pitching coach and his many years as a broadcaster have given him a singular long view of the game. In Good as Gold, Kaat weaves the tale of a lifetime, taking fans on the field, into the clubhouse, and behind the mic as only he can.

Cheers to Baseball by Darren Munns is a baseball jewel, but this easy listen is truly beneficial for coaches of other sports, entrepreneurs, supervisors, and all aspiring leaders. Prepare to have your thoughts provoked and laugh out loud while gaining valuable leadership lessons.

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.

Recently widowed and now retired, Billy Bryan is “coming to the end of many things.” Then a long-forgotten scrapbook stirs memories of a distant past - and beckons him and his grown daughter on a reluctant journey to relive his role in history. In 1947 Bryan was playing winter ball in Cuba, his future as uncertain as the island country’s. Then one fateful night Bryan witnessed a young student radical named Fidel unleash an amazing curveball. So begins Bryan's tug-of-war with destiny.

Playing for Keeps is an insightful, in-depth account of the game that became America's premier spectator sport for nearly a century. Reconstructing the culture and experience of early baseball through a careful reading of the sporting press, baseball guides, and the correspondence of the player-manager Harry Wright, Warren Goldstein discovers the origins of many modern controversies during the game's earliest decades.The 20th Anniversary Edition includes information about the changes that have occurred in the history of the sport since the 1980s.

An unlikely team of misfit players, and the coach fighting to hold them all together… The All Nation Team tells the story of the first fully integrated, "post-racial" baseball team, very loosely based on an actual team that played in the years before World War I. In his first season as head coach of the All Nations team, former slave George Grunion must contend with racist crowds, flagging team morale, his own loneliness, and even the ghost of the previous head coach.

After a decade starring for the St. Louis Cardinals, Albert Pujols is already compared with names in the highest reaches of baseball’s pantheon: Ruth, Gehrig, Aaron, Mays. Slugging his way toward the Hall of Fame, Pujols has raised the game’s standard for greatness almost beyond any statistical measure.