Sports Softball

Baseball is fun to watch, but even more fun to play! Kids can get in the game by learning about the rules of the sport, the equipment needed to play, and the importance of good sportsmanship.

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.

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.

Fernando Valenzuela was only twenty years old when Tom Lasorda chose him as the Dodgers' opening-day starting pitcher in 1981. Born in a remote Mexican town, the left-hander had moved to the US less than two years before. He became an instant icon and there hasn't been a player since who created as many Dodgers fans.

The New York Yankees. The Boston Red Sox. For a hundred years, no two teams have locked horns as fiercely or as frequently, and no two seasons frame the colossal battle more perfectly than 2003 and 2004. Now, with incredible energy and access, leading sports columnist Mike Vaccaro chronicles the history of the greatest rivalry in sports, and the two stunning American League Championship Series that define a century of baseball.

As Sports Illustrated’s lead baseball writer since 1993, Verducci has witnessed the achievements of the game’s greatest heroes and told their inspiring stories with unmatched passion and sophistication. He has enriched SIs readers with an insider’s perspective on the game, examining subtle shifts in the ever-changing balance between pitchers and hitters, between slumps and streaks, between sacred records and the athletes trying to break them. Despite his deep affection for baseball, however, Verducci has never shied away from the hard truth about the game.

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.

Throw a frozen rope! Hit a dinger! Catch a stinger! Discover the meaning of these big-league terms and more in Baseball Talk. Created with Sports Illustrated Kids, this nonfiction book presents wacky lingo and puzzling phrases from America’s favorite pastime.

When Joe Torre took over as manager of the New York Yankees in 1996, the most storied franchise in sports had not won a World Series title in 18 years. The famously tough and mercurial owner, George Steinbrenner, had fired 17 managers during that span. Torre's appointment was greeted with Bronx cheers from the notoriously brutal New York media, who cited his record as the player and manager who had been in the most Major League games without appearing in a World Series.

A brief introduction to the game of baseball as intended to be played by children.

Seasoned pitchers Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina have seen it all in the Major Leagues, and both entered 2007 in search of individual milestones and one more shot at the World Series - Glavine with the Mets, Mussina five miles away with the Yankees. Feinstein provides a true insider's look at the pressure cooker of sports at the highest level.

For fifty years, bestselling author Peter Golenbock has been interviewing some of the most fascinating figures in baseball. Their conversations are a journey back in time to the days of Ruth and Gehrig, Gehringer and Greenberg, Robinson and Reese, and Howard and Mantle, as they reflect on the sport's greatest moments and biggest issues.

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.

Never before had both the Yankees and the Mets been in contention for the playoffs so late in the same season. For months New York fans dreamed of the first Subway Series in nearly 30 years, and the Mets and the Yankees vied for their hearts. While the drama inside the Mets' clubhouse only made the team more endearing to fans, the drama inside the Yankees' clubhouse had the opposite effect. The result was the most attention-grabbing and exciting season New York would see in generations.

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.

If I were a Major League baseball player, I would smack the ball out of the park! I would scoop up a grounder and throw out the runner. Dream big, and see what fun it is to be a Major League baseball player.

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?

When the stakes are high, some players seize the moment and make themselves legends. From pitching heroics in Game 7 of the World Series to pennant-clinching home runs, some of baseball's greatest moments are chronicled in vivid fashion here. You've got a front-row seat to the action.

Who works in a stadium? Where do the players get ready for the big game? Who makes all those hot dogs? Go on a guided tour of a stadium to find out! Meet a baseball manager and see how thousands of people can gather, have fun, and cheer their team at a stadium.