It is an epic overflowing with heroes and hopefuls, scoundrels and screwballs. It is a saga spanning the quest for racial justice, the clash of labor and management, the transformation of popular culture, and the unfolding of the national pastime. Here is the story of a nation at work and play. Experience it in ten thrilling "innings" from master storyteller and award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns.
"Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski that tells the story of the sport through the remarkable lives of its 100 greatest players. In the book's introduction, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator George F. Will marvels, "Posnanski must already have lived more than 200 years. How else could he have acquired such a stock...
An insider’s look at baseball’s unwritten rules, explained with examples from the game’s most fascinating characters and wildest historical moments.
Everyone knows that baseball is a game of intricate regulations, but it turns out to be even more complicated than we realize. All aspects of baseball—hitting, pitching, and baserunning—are affected by the Code, a set of unwritten rules that governs...
Sunshine, hot dogs, friends, and the excitement of the game: Baseball is called America's pastime for a reason. Experience the best of the MLB cities and stadiums with Moon Baseball Road Trips. --from Amazon.
Documents the life of the Negro League star and Hall of Famer, tracing Bell's sharecropping heritage, his extraordinary switch-hitting talents, and how Major League Baseball's racial barriers impacted his career.
From the humble heights of a Class-A pitcher's mound tothe deflating lows of sleeping on his gun-toting grandmother's air mattress,veteran reliever Dirk Hayhurst steps out of the bullpen to deliver the bestpitch of his career—a raw and unflinching account of his life in the minorleagues. Whether training tarantulas to protect his room from thievingemployees in a backwater hotel or absorbing the gentle mockery of somenot-quite-starstruck schoolchildren,
By May 2019, the Washington Nationals--owners of baseball's oldest roster--had one of the worst records in the majors and just a 1.5 percent chance of winning the World Series. Yet by blending an old-school brand of baseball with modern analytics, they managed to sneak into the playoffs and put together the most unlikely postseason run in baseball history. Not only did they beat the Houston Astros, the team with the best regular-season record, to...
"Jason Goodyear is the star outfielder for the Los Angeles Lions, stationed with the rest of his team in the punishingly hot Arizona desert for their annual spring training. Handsome, famous, and talented, Goodyear is nonetheless coming apart at the seams. And the coaches, writers, wives, girlfriends, petty criminals, and diehard fans following his every move are eager to find out why--as they hide secrets of their own. Humming with the energy of...
"What's it like to live through sports' longest season, the 162-game Major League Baseball schedule? THE GRIND captures the frustration, impermanence, and glory felt by the players, the staff, and their families from the start of spring training to the final game of the year; classy baseball writing in the Roger Angell or Tom Boswell tradition"--
Baseball has witnessed more than 125,000 home runs. Many have altered the outcome of games, and some have decided pennants and become legend. But no dinger has had greater impact than Hank Aaron's 715th home run. His historic blast on April 8, 1974, lifted him above Babe Ruth on the all-time list, an achievement that shook not only baseball but our nation itself. Aaron's magnificent feat provoked bigotry and shattered prejudice, inspired a generation,
In Brooklyn, 1940, a wisecracking, baseball loving twelve-year-old boy, Joey Margolis, is in desperate need of a hero. His rich father has recently divorced his mother, leaving her all but penniless, and she is forced to move herself and her son to an Italian dominated part of Brooklyn, where he's the only Jew in the area. Constant abuse from other boys in the neighborhood prompts Joey to send letters to Charlie Banks, an up-and-coming star with the...
"Some of the best players in Major League Baseball were born outside the United States, with Latino players representing one of the fastest growing ethnicities in the league. Current and former stars such as Albert Pujols, Rod Carew, and Miguel Cabrera all found incredible success in MLB. They have won major awards, guided their teams to the postseason, played in All-Star games, and an elite few have been enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. ...
Disc 1. The bad news Bears : Morris Buttermaker, an alcoholic pest removal worker and for a very short period of time a former professional baseball player, is recruited to coach and train a failing baseball team. All of these twelve-year-olds have been thrown out of the league. After losing every game they have played in so far, the kids force the coach to straighten up and teach them how to win before the season is over. Disc 2. Bull Durham : Baseball...
Every time you watch baseball, you're watching more than just a game—you're participating in the latest chapter of a compelling story. What began as the earliest bat-and-ball games became the favorite American pastime of the first 19th-century baseball games. Knowing the history of baseball can add levels of enjoyment and respect to any game you watch. Produced by The Great Courses in collaboration with the National Baseball Hall of Fame
"In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues, this book honors the life of Effa Manley, the trailblazing female co-owner of baseball's Newark Eagles. This edition includes new details regarding the Negro Leagues, Manley's induction into the Hall of Fame, and previously-unknown information about Manley's childhood and family"--
Shoeless Joe, the soul-stirring novel on which the movie Field of Dreams is based, is more than just another baseball story.
W. P. Kinsella captures the spiritual dimension that baseball represents for its most determined devotees in this tale on love and the power dreams have to make people come alive.
"Shoeless Joe" was the great Joe Jackson, one of the eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, who were banned from baseball for
"True is a probing, richly-detailed, unique biography of Jackie Robinson, one of baseball's-and America's-most significant figures. For players, fans, managers, and executives, Jackie Robinson remains baseball's singular figure, the person who most profoundly extended, and continues to extend, the reach of the game. Beyond Ruth. Beyond Clemente. Beyond Aaron. Beyond the heroes of today. Now, a half-century since Robinson's death, letters come to his...
When historian Goodwin was six years old, her father taught her how to keep score for 'their' team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, which forged a lifelong bond between father and daughter. Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is a coming-of-age memoir in the era of Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider, when baseball truly was a national pastime that brought whole communities together.
Baseball, first dubbed the "national pastime" in print in 1856, is the country's most tradition-bound sport. Despite remaining popular and profitable into the twenty-first century, the game is losing young fans, among African Americans and women as well as white men. Furthermore, baseball's greatest charm--a clockless suspension of time--is also its greatest liability in a culture of digital distraction. These paradoxes are explored by the historian...
