Professional Baseball

This smart and funny fan's guide to baseball explains the ins and outs of pitching, hitting, running, and fielding, while offering insider trivia and anecdotes that will appeal to anyone - whether you're a major league couch potato, lifelong season ticket-holder, or a beginner. Combining the narrative voice and attitude of Michael Lewis with the compulsive brilliance of Schott's Miscellany, Watching Baseball Smarter will increase your understanding and enjoyment of the sport-no matter what your level of expertise.

Discover the transformative New York Times bestseller—a step-by-step manual for mastering your inner mind for peak performance and living your life to the fullest. As a professional baseball player, Jim Murphy’s sense of worth revolved around results. He was focused on achievement but also...

This is The Shift, where “for the love of the game” has given way to an exclusive world of wealth and greed. Learn about it from someone who has lived it as a coach, mentor, and most importantly, as a father.

A riveting exposé of professional tennis by revered journalist Matthew Futterman (of The New York Times and The Athletic), The Cruelest Game offers never-before-reported access to the daily routines, mindsets, and personal trials faced by today’s major stars and tomorrow’s rising newcomers...

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | #1 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER In his unfiltered style, Dave Portnoy details the journey of how he built his polarizing media empire, Barstool Sports, while refusing to bend the knee to those who tried to tear him down, staying true to himself and blocking...

Before the floodlights and television deals, before analytics and billion-dollar contracts, baseball was the story of a nation learning who it was. It rose from muddy fields and smoke-filled taverns, from gentlemen’s clubs and back alleys, from dreams stitched into horsehide and hope. It was America in miniature—its courage, its contradictions, its relentless ambition played out between the baselines. In Baseball- The Untold Story of America's Pastime, bestselling author, Tim Cooper, tells the sweeping, cinematic story of baseball’s evolution from a 19th-century curiosity to the ...

Documenting multiple challenges at every turn - as a target for racism from society at large and sexism both inside and outside of the Negro League - this is the unique story of the first woman to play professional baseball on a men's team, breaking barriers in sports while believing, "There's got to be a first in everything. Maybe it will be me." The text explains that as players began to leave the Negro League for major league teams, Toni Stone seized her only opportunity to play professional ball and replaced Henry Aaron on the Negro League's top team.

Layla Voss doesn't do complicated. She does briefs, closing arguments, and the kind of wine that costs enough to be worth it. When she ends up in the seat next to Tanner Harlow on a flight to Denver, she does what any reasonable woman would do: she notices him, writes him off as a distraction, and lands. She doesn't stay written off for long. Tanner plays first base for the Colorado Rockies. He's steady, patient, and quietly certain about the things he wants — which now includes Layla, alongside Nora Quinn, the trauma surgeon who has been in his life long enough to know exactly what she ...

The companion to Ken Burns’s magnificent PBS television series—updated and expanded to coincide with the broadcast of a new, two-part Tenth Inning directed with Lynn Novick. The authors of the acclaimed and bestselling The Civil War, Jazz, and The War turn to another uniquely American...

The complete inside story of the shocking steroids scandal that turned the sports world upside down For years, in the shadowy reaches of the world of sports, there were rumors that some of our nation’s greatest athletes were using steroids, human growth hormone, and other drugs to run faster...

This fascinating book 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. "Reminds us of the beauty of baseball." —Jim Abott, former major league...

A poignant, inspirational story about football, family, and love from Bill Cowher, the Super Bowl–winning, Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers coach, and cohost of CBS’s The NFL Today. Long before the Lombardi Trophy, the Golden Hall of Fame jacket, and successful TV career, legendary head...

In Playing Through the Pain, writer Dan Good seeks to make sense of MLB MVP Ken Caminiti's fascinating, troubled life. The story of Caminiti, the player who opened the lid on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, has never been properly told. Caminiti voluntarily admitted in a 2002 Sports Illustrated cover story that he used steroids during his career, including his 1996 season, and guessed that half of the players were using performance-enhancing drugs. Good's on-the-record sources include Caminiti's steroids supplier, people who attended rehab with him, and more.

A steamy bad boy baseball romance about a broken pitcher, a guarded therapist, and the one game that could change everything. On the mound, Jace Carter is untouchable. Off the field, he’s one bad decision away from suspension. When the Blaze’s star pitcher loses his temper one too many times, management gives him two choices: get help—or get benched. Which is how he ends up in therapy with Tessa Rowe…the one woman immune to his charm, and the last person willing to play his bad boy games. Tessa knows better than to trust an athlete, especially a hot-headed baseball player with ...

Jim Morris escaped the desolation of his youth by dreaming of pitching in the major leagues. But as with most kids, it was just a fantasy, made all the more impossible by injuries he suffered in his early 20s. Years passed, and on his 35th birthday Jim Morris found himself settled as a high...

Experience a vibrant sports history that transforms the baseball diamond into a vivid window into Japanese culture. Perfect for an armchair travel escape or an educational morning commute, this narrative journey explores how a foreign game became a beloved national touchstone. From bustling...

She has exactly one rule about the players: keep it professional. Nora Halstead has spent twelve years building a life she controls—a career she loves as Director of Community Relations for the Albuquerque Isotopes, a careful distance from the kind of wanting that makes people reckless. She knows every player by name and exactly how much space to keep between herself and all of them. Then she has to interview Eli Callaway. Twenty-one years old. First-round pick. A six-foot-three catcher with the focus of someone twice his age and the unsettling habit of meaning everything he says. He ...

This baseball classic that Ernest Hemingway called "beautifully observed and incredibly conceived" includes a foreword from Jane Leavy and never-before-seen content from the Plimpton archives. The first of Plimpton's remarkable forays into participatory journalism, Out of My League chronicles...

Baseball explores the history of organized baseball during the mid-twentieth century, examining the sport on and off the field and contextualizing its development as both sport and business. Steven P. Gietschier begins with the Great Depression, looking at how those years of economic turmoil shaped the sport and how baseball responded. Gietschier covers a then-burgeoning group of owners, players, and key figures whose stories figure prominently in baseball's past and some of whom are still prominent in its collective consciousness.

She wasn't looking for an affair. She wasn't even looking. Maren Ashby has done everything right — good marriage, good address, good life. The fact that it is quiet in the specific way of something that has already ended doesn't mean she has to say so. Not yet. Not until a baseball player in a hotel hallway in Salt Lake City looks at her like he actually sees her, and she realizes she has been waiting to be seen for a very long time. Colt Hargrove doesn't do relationships. He does early practices, long road trips, and two years of working his way back to Pittsburgh after a demotion that ...