Keith Law applies Daniel Kahneman's ideas about decision making to the game of baseball, and deepens our knowledge of the sport in this fun and deeply informative book. Baseball is a sport of decisions-- some small and routine, becoming the building blocks of the game; others so huge they dictate the future of franchises. Law offers an era-spanning dissection of some of the best and worst decisions in modern baseball. He explains what motivated them,...

"Here's the fascinating origin story of baseball, where America's first sport came from and how it conquered a nation. Baseball's true founders were the thousands of amateurs -- ordinary people -- who played without gloves, facemasks or performance incentives in the middle decades of the 19th century. Unlike today's pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They practiced professions, built businesses and fought in the Civil War. Baseball...

"This book captures the state of baseball after the demise of the reserve clause gave birth to free agency and fueled the national pastime's surge in popularity. It examines how baseball grew and evolved in the 1980s and the controversies that followed, including drug scandals, gambling, and issues involving race, women, and sexual orientation"--