Baseball Essays

For more than a decade, New York University president John Sexton has used baseball to illustrate the elements of a spiritual life in a wildly popular course at NYU. Using great works of baseball literature as well as the actual game’s fantastic moments, its legendary characters, and its routine rituals - from the long-sought triumph of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers to the heroic achievements of players like the saintly Christy Mathewson and the sinful Ty Cobb to the loving intimacy of a game of catch between a father and son - Sexton teaches that through the game we can touch the spiritual dimensions of life.

A hilarious but nonetheless groundbreaking contribution to the argument about which force shapes American life the most. For two kinds of readers—those who know it’s football and those who are about to find out. Chuck Klosterman—New York Times bestselling critic, journalist, and, yes...

A hard-hitting and powerful look at hockey's moment of reckoning in Canada, and the ways in which a game that is so universally loved has been rocked in recent years by court cases involving sexual assault and startling incidents of hazing and abuse throughout junior hockey. The allegations read...

A lively, hilarious, and entirely truthful look at the druggie side of history’s most famous figures, including Shakespeare, George Washington, the Beatles, and more Did you know that Alexander the Great was a sloppy drunk and William Shakespeare was a stoner? Or how about the fact that Steve...

The perennially bestselling golf title, Golf in the Kingdom, hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as the "masterpiece on the mysticism of golf," is a wonderfully told romp through the Scottish links, the most beautiful and challenging golf courses in the world where, truly, anything is possible...

No owner has changed the landscape of sports more than New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. From the moment he bought the team in 1973 for $10 million, Steinbrenner's monomaniacal pursuit was to restore the most fabled franchise in baseball history to its former glory. Today the New York...

Laugh till you cry in this new collection of stories from the “Serena Williams of humor writing” (New York Times Book Review) about raising babies and trying to learn how not to be one. Called a “comedic Godsend” by Conan O’Brien, and “the Stephen King of comedy writing” by John...

The first ever collection of short stories by Jaime Cortez, Gordo is set in a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California in the 1970s. A young, probably gay, boy named Gordo puts on a wrestler’s mask and throws fists with a boy in the neighborhood, fighting his own tears as he tries...

This fascinating book "reminds us of the beauty of baseball" and chronicles the unsung men of baseball who serve the job, the hardships they face, and their love for a game that would not always love them back―told partly through the experiences of an MLB veteran. (Jim Abott, former major...

In arguably his most personal and lasting book, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than eighty texts by canonical authors-- texts he has had by heart since childhood. Gone are the polemics. Here, instead, in a memoir of sorts--an...

Sports radio legend Stugotz rewrites the record books, taking rings away from undeserving champions and giving them to the rightful winners. “I’ve been accused of rooting against every team in America, but I am rooting FOR Stugotz’s Personal Record Book.”—Joe Buck Without Tom Brady...

The essential read on disability, spirituality, and social justice that won the 2025 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the 2024 National Jewish Book Award, and more A transformative spiritual companion and deep dive into disability politics that reimagines disability in the Bible and contemporary...

A blazingly honest essay collection from a refreshing new voice exploring the in-between moments for Black women and girls, and what it means to simply exist “At thirty-seven years old I can say Shenequa is a big name and I’m a big, bold woman.” Shenequa Golding doesn’t aim to speak for...

A down-and-out rodeo champion follows a mysterious woman on the run with half a million dollars back to the bright lights of Las Vegas in the sequel to Hey, Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky? “Baxter Black is Mark Twain served up with a little Groucho Marx.”—The Weekly Standard Two years after...

This fun and fiery New York Times bestselling memoir tells the life story of All Star Yankee and five-time World Champion, Paul O’Neill, like you’ve never seen him before. In Swing and Hit​, O’Neill elaborates on his most important hitting principles, lessons, and memories—exploring...

From Mike Pesca, host of the popular Slate podcast The Gist, comes the greatest sports minds imagining how the world would change if a play, trade, injury, or referee's call had just gone the other way. "Intriguing...thought provoking...delightful." --The Washington Post No announcer ever...

Roger Angell, the acclaimed New Yorker writer and editor, returns with a selection of writings that celebrate a view from the tenth decade of an engaged, vibrant life. Long known for his range and supple prose (he is the only writer elected to membership in both the Baseball Hall of Fame and...

New York Times bestselling authors Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski travel the world in a hilarious and heartwarming celebration of fans and the things they love: baseball, basketball, chess, darts, football, futbol, Indigenous North American stickball, pickleball, WWE, Taylor Swift, Star Wars...

This is Your Brain on Sports is the book for sports fans searching for a deeper understanding of the games they watch and the people who play them. Sports Illustrated executive editor and bestselling author L. Jon Wertheim teams up with Tufts psychologist Sam Sommers to take readers on a wild...

A revelatory exposé of modern tennis—the world's most competitive, physically and mentally grueling sport—The Cruelest Game reveals the inside stories of the current legends and tomorrow's young stars, with never-before-reported stories of their struggles and accomplishments on and off the...