Baseball Writing

When Sports Illustrated was launched in 1954, baseball was, indisputable, the national pastime, its stars America's epic heroes, its rivalries the era's mythology. As baseballs fortunes rose and fell over the next 50 years - and then rose again to new heights, drawing more than 65 million fans to ballparks in 2004 - the game never failed to produce great drama and inspired storytelling.

In 1943, while the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals were winning pennants and meeting in that year's World Series, one of the nation's strongest baseball teams practiced on a skinned-out college field in the heart of North Carolina. Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, and Johnny Sain were among a cadre of fighter-pilot cadets who wore the Cloudbuster Nine baseball jersey at an elite Navy training school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Acclaimed baseball writer Roger Kahn gives us a memoir of his Brooklyn childhood, a recollection of a life in journalism, and a record of personal acquaintance with the greatest ballplayers of several eras. His father had a passion for the Dodgers; his mother’s passion was for poetry. Somehow, young Roger managed to blend both loves in a career that encompassed writing about sports for the New York Herald Tribune, Sports Illustrated, the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and Time.

Baseball has been defaced and consumed by corporate America. As Moneyball-thinking and Ivy League graduates grabbed hold of the sport, the Astros set out to build a cost-efficient winning machine on the principles of the outside business world, squeezing every dollar out of every transaction, player and employee. In less than a decade, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow helped revolutionize the game and create an environment that led to one of the worst cheating scandals in baseball history, a Shakespearean tragedy of innovation and failed change management.

There was a turning point in Michael Lewis' life, in a baseball game when he was 14 years old. The irascible and often terrifying Coach Fitz put the ball in his hand with the game on the line and managed to convey such confident trust in Lewis's ability that the boy had no choice but to live up to it. "I didn't have words for it then, but I do now: I am about to show the world, and myself, what I can do."

A philosophical musing on sports and play, this wholly inspiring and utterly charming reissue of Bart Giamatti's long-out-of-print final book, Take Time for Paradise, puts baseball in the context of American life and leisure. Giamatti begins with the conviction that our use of free time tells us something about who we are. He explores the concepts of leisure, American-style. And in baseball, the quintessential American game, he finds its ultimate expression.

Roger Kahn's first major league hit was a grand slam: The Boys of Summer, his runaway best seller that immortalized the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers. Now Kahn does the same for players whose moment in the sun has not yet arrived. Good Enough to Dream is the story of his year as owner of the Class A, very minor league, Utica Blue Sox. Most of the Blue Sox will never make it to the majors, but they all share the dream that links the small child in the sandlot with the bonus baby who has just smacked one out of the stadium.

In 1937, the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo sent his representative, Dr. Enrique Aybar to America to enlist the greatest Negro League players—Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell—to represent his country in a national baseball tournament. The players quickly found themselves celebrated in a country with no race prejudice. What they couldn't know is that they were pawns in a deadly, winner-take-all political game for the soul of the country.

The former ESPN columnist and analytics pioneer dramatically recreates an action-packed 2017 game between the Oakland A’s and eventual World Series champion Houston Astros to reveal the myriad ways in which Major League Baseball has changed over the last few decades.

A tribute to America's favorite past time, Chicken Soup for the Baseball Fan's Soul is written by people at every level of competition, from World Series champions to tee-ball moms. Their inspiring stories highlight the best of baseball, the importance of sportsmanship and a love of the game. Whether these stories take place on the field of a local YMCA or under the bright lights of a major league ballpark, the focus is the same: The Love of the Game.

In State of Play, 12-year Major League veteran, Emmy Award-winning MLB Network analyst, and best-selling author Bill Ripken breaks down these modern statistical methods to explain which ones make sense in the game's historical context, bringing them together with proven old-school strategies. He simplifies those sabermetric terms hastily added to the baseball lexicon without being fully realized, taking new-school confusion out of old-school baseball's tried-and-true common sense.

Kinky Friedman, the original Texas Jewboy, takes us on a rollicking, rock-and-rolling tour of his favorite city: Austin.

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. Upon Further Review takes classic arguments conducted over pints in a pub and places them in the hands of writers, athletes, and historians. From turning points that every sports fan rues or celebrates to the forgotten would-be inflection points that defined sports, it answers age-old questions, and settles the score, even if the score bounced off the crossbar.

The year 2016 is the 60th Anniversary of Mantle's Triple Crown season, which many baseball experts consider one of the best seasons ever for a ball player. Of course, those who experienced that season are decreasing in numbers. But Mickey Mantle is more popular than ever. The value of his memorabilia is second to none. He remains respected and admired for the redemptive quality of his life.

In these essays, written between 1954 and 1990, bestselling author Roger Kahn touches on locker-room controversies and politics, while inviting readers to share in the passion, grace, energy, and intense concentration involved in playing sports. Kahn pays warm tribute to his special heroes, Jackie Robinson, Roger Maris and Carl Furillo, along with those he particularly admired in the press box, John Lardner and Red Smith. Kahn also esteems football lineman Merlin Olsen, hockey goalie Glenn Hall, cager Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, outfielder Mickey Mantle, boxing promoter Don King, and Pete Rose.

This compendium of baseball writing covers it all—recollections of Hall of Famers and narratives from top baseball writers; stories on the rich iconography and history of the game across the full diversity of players, teams, and leagues; and reflections on the way America's pastime has shaped our culture. Selected from the Baseball Hall of Fame's member magazine, Memories & Dreams brings to life the best of baseball, showcasing the best of baseball facts, baseball biographies, and baseball media personalities into a robust catalogue of known and unknown information.

In 1976 Roger Kahn spent an entire baseball season, from spring training through the World Series, with players of every stripe and competence. The result is this book,in which Kahn reports on a small college team’s successes and hopes, a young New England ball club, a failing major league franchise, and a group of heroes on the national stage.

Robert Frost, Claudio Arrau, John Lardner, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Leo Durocher, Bobby Thomson, Al Rosen, Jascha Heifetz, and other heroic figures in their years of glory, in their times of trial. This is a book about people to be remembered, and what it was like in America at a very special time.

This Highlights Listen & Learn! Audio Study, intended for those in grade four, follows Mike Blunt, a smaller-than-average boy who becomes a batboy for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He is constantly teased by the players for being so small. However, one of the players, Roberto Clemente, stands up for him and serves as a role model for how to handle discrimination and prejudice. This audio study presents concepts such as elements of plot and mood, as well as key vocabulary words.

In The Bases Were Loaded (and So Was I), sportswriter Tom Callahan brings to life the most fascinating - and often least understood - figures in the world of sports. This is the ultimate collection of Callahan’s sports profiles, with subjects ranging from Muhammad Ali to Pete Rose, and Joe Montana to Michael Jordan. Based on decades of sports reporting as well as featuring material original to this book, The Bases Were Loaded (and So Was I) takes athletes we thought we knew and reveals how wrong we often are. This is a rare and surprising work of reportage that will appeal to sports fans and non–sports fans alike.