Sports Softball

When Sports Illustrated was launched in 1954, baseball was, indisputable, the national pastime, its stars America's epic heroes, its rivalries the era's mythology. As baseballs fortunes rose and fell over the next 50 years - and then rose again to new heights, drawing more than 65 million fans to ballparks in 2004 - the game never failed to produce great drama and inspired storytelling.

The 1980s New York Yankees were loaded with talent - their always-outspoken owner made sure of that. Just Out of Reach: The 1980s New York Yankees is the first-ever book to focus solely on this decade of the team. Featuring nearly 30 all-new, exclusive interviews with players and those close to the team, Just Out of Reach is a fly-on-the-wall view of what was going on behind the scenes and on the field.

It’s the bottom of the ninth, bases are loaded, and your team is down by three - who do you want coming up to bat? Baseball Biographies for Kids answers this question and more! Bursting with statistics and impressive feats from the greatest players of the last 60 years, this lineup of inspirational baseball biographies shows you what it takes to be a real MVP. Discover the ultimate dream team as you explore the best pros for each position. You’ll also get quick looks into some truly legendary baseball players and lots of fun facts!

The inside account of an iconic team in baseball history: the 1969 New York Mets - a consistently last-place team that turned it all around in just one season - told by ’69 Mets outfielder Art Shamsky, Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver, and other teammates as they reminisce about what happened then and where they are today.

The real Joe DiMaggio, remembered by the man who knew him best in the last decade of his life - candid and little-known stories about icons from Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, and his Yankees teammates on the field to Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and other great celebrities off the field.

It’s no surprise that, with so much exposure to the game, your child has developed an interest in the sport. Every single time they’re around someone who loves baseball, they’re going to hear excited conversations about scores, player performance, and historical clashes between top players. And when your child starts to get curious and ask out-of-the-box questions, they’re going to turn to you for answers.

It’s not simply that Dot Wilkinson was one of the most decorated women’s softball players, bowlers, and athletes of all time and one of the original players from the three-time-world-champion PBSW Phoenix Ramblers softball team (1933–1965). Nor was it the length of her time here on Earth—over a century—although any of these things by itself would be impressive. The magic of Dot’s story is in the details. Out at the Plate is the story of a forgotten era in women’s history and sports, and one extraordinary woman’s place at the center of it all.

In the pageantry of baseball, one select group is virtually unknown in the outside world, derided by fans, faced with split-second choices that spell victory or defeat. These men are up-close observers of the action, privy to inside jokes, blood feuds, benches-clearing brawls, and managers’ expletive-filled tirades. In this wonderful memoir, Hall of Fame umpire Doug Harvey takes us within baseball as you’ve never seen it, with unforgettable inside stories of baseball greats such as Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, and Whitey Herzog.

The 1950s marked a transformative period in postwar American history. In baseball, one dynasty was the story during the decade. The New York Yankees played in eight World Series from 1950 to 1959, winning six of them. Yankees icon Joe DiMaggio retired following the 1951 season, but a new superstar, Mickey Mantle, took over in Yankee Stadium’s center field in 1952. Mantle, the powerful switch-hitter who blasted tape-measure home runs, often tortured by leg ailments, was the number one box office draw in baseball.

This umpire manual is the definitive resource for professional and amateur umpires alike. It is the official umpire manual and rulebook for Minor League Baseball Umpire Development (formerly PBUC). This MiLB manual contains over six hours of narration of the official rule interpretations and clarifications used throughout Minor League Baseball.Changes in the 2019 edition include the numbering of interpretations. These have changed from previous editions due to the addition of 20 new interpretations for this season.

Like many American boys, Tony Barnette yearned to one day make it to “The Show,” playing baseball professionally. The Arizona State pitcher was drafted in 2006 by the in-state Diamondbacks. Gradually ascending the minor-league ladder, it looked like this was the beginning of a blessed life, where he could play the game he loved on the grandest of stages. But things don’t always work out the way we want. On the verge of achieving his lifelong dream after notching a league-high 14 wins in Triple A, Tony looked ahead to 2010 with optimism. That’s when Japan came calling.

When eleven-year-old Tommy made his hometown's baseball travel team, he thought he'd be set for life. He thought he'd be royalty. He thought he'd become a member of the Super Sports Society. And that's all kind of true . . . it will all happen, AFTER he wins his first travel tournament. Meanwhile, Tommy's best friend, Pel, is also going to his first tournament, and using his dad's old baseball glove is a punch-in-the-gut reminder that he's no longer here. Or, as Ma says, is he?

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.

The road to Major League Baseball goes through the minor leagues. Every year there are over 5,500 players trying to work their way to the top of the tiered minor league system. Very few people know what life is really like for these aspiring players - until now. This collection of stories from actual minor league players is a hilarious, heartbreaking, and honest account of the struggle to make it to the big leagues.

In this deeply entertaining book, philosopher and baseball fan Alva Noë explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game. For example, he ponders how observers of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or blame. To put it another way, in baseball - as in the law - we decide what happened based on who is responsible for what happened.

The evidence is overwhelming: Sports help girls grow into strong women. Both scientific studies and anecdotal evidence confirm that athletic girls not only grow up to be healthier, but they also learn teamwork, gain inner confidence, and grow into society's leaders. Sports help preteen and teenage girls make the right choices in a society that is sending them incredibly mixed messages about who they are supposed to be. Yet no one is speaking directly to these girls.

In Past Time, Tygiel gives us a seat behind home plate, where we catch the ongoing interplay of baseball and American society. We begin in New York in the 1850s, where pre-Civil War nationalism shaped the emergence of a "national pastime." We witness the true birth of modern baseball with the development of its elaborate statistics - the brainchild of English-born reformer, Henry Chadwick. Chadwick, Tygiel writes, created the sport's "historical essence" and even imparted a moral dimension to the game with his concepts of "errors" and "unearned" runs.

At the tender age of 24, Lou Gehrig decided to tell the remarkable story of his life and career. He was one of the most famous athletes in the country, in the midst of a record-breaking season with the legendary 1927 World Series-winning Yankees. In an effort to grow Lou’s star, pioneering sports agent Christy Walsh arranged for Lou’s tale of baseball greatness to syndicate in newspapers across the country. Those columns were largely forgotten and lost to history - until now.

Batavia, New York—between Rochester and Buffalo—hosted its first professional baseball game in 1897. Despite decades of deindustrialization and evaporating middle-class jobs, the Batavia Muckdogs endured. When Major League Baseball cravenly shut them down in 2020—along with forty-one other minor league teams—the town fought back, reviving the Muckdogs as a summer league team comprised of college players.

Jackie Robinson heroically broke the color barrier in 1947. But how—and, in practice, when—did the integration of the sport actually occur? Bill Madden shows that baseball’s famous black experiment” did not truly succeed until the coming of age of Willie Mays and the emergence of some star players—Larry Doby, Hank Aaron, and Ernie Banks—in 1954. And as a relevant backdrop off the field, it was in May of that year that the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, that segregation be outlawed in America’s public schools.