Showing titles in Baseball & Softball

Honus Wagner, whose career in baseball (most of it with the Pittsburgh Pirates) stretched from 1895 to 1917, was the first American sports superstar of the twentieth century. One of the first five players to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in its first year (1939), he was probably the best shortstop in baseball's history.

In the 1920s Rogers Hornsby was the National League's foremost star, its biggest since Honus Wagner, and its principal answer to the American League's Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. He was a seven-time National League batting champion, and his 1924 average remains the major-league high for this century.

Babe Ruth was more than baseball's original superstar. For 85 years, he has remained the sport's reigning titan. He has been named Athlete of the Century...more than once. But who was this large, loud, enigmatic man? In The Big Bam, Leigh Montville brings his trademark touch to this groundbreaking, revelatory portrait of the Babe.

The 1951 regular season was as good as over. The Brooklyn Dodgers led the New York Giants by three runs with just three outs to go in their third and final playoff game. And not once in Major League Baseball's 278 preceding playoff and World Series games had a team overcome a three-run deficit in the ninth inning. But New York rallied, and at 3:58 p.m. on October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson hit a home run off Ralph Branca. The Giants won the pennant.

Tell your man: "Take me out to the ball game" and mean it! Is your favorite male spending more time talking to the "tube" than to you? Would you like to score with that nice looking single guy at the sports bar? Well, ladies, it's time to step up to the plate and get into the game with this relationship hit that's just in time for the playoffs!

On October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson's "shot heard around the world" ended one of the most dramatic pennant races ever. Interviews, contemporary newspaper articles, and memoirs of participants are used to describe the intense rivalry and provide a day-by-day look at the Giants' pennant run, including a fascinating examination of the strategy of the final game.

Best-selling author George Vecsey is an esteemed and award-winning sports journalist for the New York Times. In Baseball, he recounts the history of America's national pastime. Baseball has been around in various forms for thousands of years, but only within the last 200 years has it become an American institution. Growing from a sport played in open fields and big-city streets, baseball has seen its share of innovators and detractors, heroes and villains.

He was the biggest man baseball has ever produced. Babe Ruth transcended the sport that brought him fame, money, and adulation, moving beyond the limits of baselines and outfield fences into the mainstream of American life. In this extraordinary biography, Creamer uncovers the complex and captivating man behind the legend.

Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin's touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball. She re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans.

This book recounts the slugger's life before, during, and after his headline season of 1961, when the taciturn North Dakota native topped Babe Ruth's all-time record by hitting 61 homers. From his youth as a star high-school athlete and American Legion baseball player, Maris went on to big-time sports with the Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Athletics, New York Yankees, and St. Louis Cardinals.

Baseball's all-time Iron Man, Cal Ripken, Jr., retired from baseball in 2001 after breaking countless records, including Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played. Ripken is admired by thousands of fans not only for his relentless perseverance, but also for his unparalleled integrity. Now, in a stirring audiobook that draws on his exhilarating career as well as the wisdom of his legendary father, Ripken shares rousing advice centered around his proven Eight Elements of Perseverance.

Drawing on interviews with surviving players, sportswriters, and eyewitnesses, as well as newly discovered material from archives around the country, Jonathan Eig presents a fresh portrait of a ferocious competitor who embodied integration's promise and helped launch the modern civil-rights era. Full of new details and thrilling action, Opening Day brings to life baseball's ultimate story.

When Joe Torre was fired as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1995, he thought his career in baseball was over. After more than three decades and 4,200 games as a player and manager, one thing had always eluded him: winning a World Series. He had all but given up his dream when the New York Yankees made him an offer to manage their 1996 club. Encouraged by his wife and others, he accepted, and so began one of the greatest seasons in the fabled history of the New York Yankee franchise.

Matty, as he was called, makes the listener feel that tense moment when a player in a pinch must use his head. Pitching in a Pinch, originally published in 1912, is an insider's account of the world of baseball, blending anecdote, biography, instruction, and social history. It celebrates baseball as it was played in the first decade of the 20th century by famous contemporaries like Honus Wagner and Rube Marquand, managers like John McGraw and Connie Mack, and many others.

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.

A straightforward yet inspiring story of what it took to be the first man of color to break into the white world of professional sports. Jackie Robinson's story is more than a telling of his tremendous talent; it is also a recollection that showcases his tenacious spirit, bravery and the courage of his ideals.

Baseball has been celebrated as "America's National Pastime" for more than one hundred and fifty years, and recalls what seems to be a more innocent age - long summer afternoons and sandlot ball, fresh rural air and brownstone stoops. This course, presented by Kenyon College professor Dr. Timothy B. Shutt, is a celebration of baseball's rich past and of a game stronger than ever.

Stories from the National Public Radio archives honor America's national pastime. Stories so compelling you'll stay in your car to hear them through - even if you're sitting in your own driveway. Peabody-winning Talk of the Nation host Neal Conan presents tales about the big leagues and the little, the fans in the stands, the players, the history, and the lore.

Sports fans are familiar with the thrill of a victory in Game 7 - and the agony of being on the losing end. What underlies these emotions? Your Brain on Cubs centers on America's pastime but draws in other sports as well for an intriguing examination of talent and triumph on the field and devotion in the stands.

Reporting for his first day as a Boston Red Sox player, Mickey Rawlings discovers a faceless body in the empty stadium. When police name him as their suspect, he knows he must clear his name or give up baseball and his freedom. But nameless foes are trying to silence him with warnings that become increasingly dangerous. A member of the Society for American Baseball Research, Troy Soos creates delightfully authentic ballplayers and places them in believable, colorful settings.