Sports Softball

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.

Leo Durocher (1906-1991) was baseball's all-time leading cocky, flamboyant, and galvanizing character, casting a shadow across several eras, from the time of Babe Ruth to the Space Age Astrodome, from Prohibition through the Vietnam War. For more than 40 years, he was at the forefront of the game, with a Zelig-like ability to be present as a player or manager for some of the greatest teams and defining baseball moments of the 20th century.

Celebrated sports writer Roger Kahn casts his gaze on the golden age of baseball, an unforgettable time when the game thrived as America's unrivaled national sport. The Era begins in 1947, with Jackie Robinson changing major league baseball forever by taking the field for the Dodgers. Dazzling, momentous events characterize the decade that followed....

Pete Rose played baseball with a singular and headfirst abandon that endeared him to fans and peers, even as it riled others--a figure at once magnetic, beloved and polarizing. Rose has more base hits than anyone in history, yet he is not in the Hall of Fame. Twenty-five years ago he was banished from baseball for gambling, then ruled ineligible for Cooperstown; today, the question "Does Pete Rose belong in the Hall of Fame?" has evolved into perhaps the most provocative in sports, a layered, slippery and ever-relevant moral conundrum.

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.

Bartolo Colón - also known as Big Sexy - is a baseball icon and one of the most beloved players to ever play the game. In a career spanning 21 years, Colón has won the Cy Young Award and won more games than any other Latin American-born pitcher. But more importantly, Big Sexy has captured the hearts of fans of the game as well as the stars he has played against. Colón plays the game the way it was meant to be. In Big Sexy: In His Own Words, Bartolo Colón opens up as never before. The result is a touching and deeply personal story of a truly unique baseball life.

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.

From his perspective as a journalist and a true fan, Bob Costas, NBC's award-winning broadcaster, shares his views on the forces that are diminishing the appeal of Major League Baseball and proposes realistic changes that can be made to protect and promote the game's best interests. Costas answers each problem he cites with an achievable strategy for restoring genuine competition and rescuing fans from the forces that have diluted the sheer joy of the game.

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.

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.

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 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.

Long before the Moneyball-era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History’s feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968-1982. When Weaver was hired by the Orioles, managers were still seen as coaches and inspirational leaders, more teachers of the game than strategists. Weaver invented new ways of building baseball teams, prioritizing on-base average, elite defense, and strike throwing.

This golf instruction audio is the creation of a weekend golfer striving to improve his game and bring the practice range swing to the course. This 40-minute pre-shot hypnosis program uses relaxation, visualization, and auditory cues to provide the listener with the pre-shot skills that will improve scores.

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.

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.