If not for the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, Minnesota might never have known one of its most popular baseball players, Twins three-time batting champion and eight-time All-Star Tony Oliva. In April 1961, the twenty-two-year-old Cuban prospect failed to impress the Twins in a tryout, but the sudden rupture in U.S.–Cuba relations made a return visa all but impossible. The story of how Oliva’s unexpected stay led to a second chance and success with the Twins—as well as decades of personal and cultural isolation—is told for the first time in this full-scale biography of the man the fans affectionately call “Tony O.� With unprecedented access to the very private Oliva, baseball writer Thom Henninger captures what life was like for the Cuban newcomer as he adjusted to major league play and American culture—and at the same time managed to earn Rookie of the Year honors and win the American League batting title in his first two seasons, all while playing with a knuckle injury. Packed with never-before-published photographs, the book follows Oliva through the 1965 season, all the way to the World Series, and then, with repaired knuckle and knee, into one of the most dramatic pennant races in baseball history in 1967. Through the voices of Oliva, his family, and his teammates—including the Cuban players who shared his cultural challenges and the future Hall of Famers he mentored, Rod Carew and Kirby Puckett—the personal and professional highs and lows of the years come alive: the Gold Glove Award in 1966, a third batting title in 1971, the devastating injury that curtailed his career, and, through it all, the struggle to build a family and recover the large and close-knit one he had left behind in Cuba. Nearly forty years after Oliva’s retirement, the debate continues over whether his injury-shortened career was Hall of Fame caliber—a question that gets a measured and resounding answer here.

An in-depth look at the intersection of judgment and statistics in baseball Scouting and scoring are considered fundamentally different ways of ascertaining value in baseball. Scouting seems to rely on experience and intuition, scoring on performance metrics and statistics. In Scouting and Scoring, Christopher Phillips rejects these simplistic divisions. He shows how both scouts and scorers rely on numbers, bureaucracy, trust, and human labor in order to make sound judgments about the value of baseball players. Tracing baseball's story from the nineteenth century to today, Phillips explains that the sport was one of the earliest and most consequential fields for the introduction of numerical analysis. New technologies and methods of data collection were supposed to enable teams to quantify the drafting and managing of players-replacing scouting with scoring. But that's not how things turned out. Over the decades, scouting and scoring started looking increasingly similar. Scouts expressed their judgments in highly formulaic ways, using numerical grades and scientific instruments to evaluate players. Scorers drew on moral judgments, depended on human labor to maintain and correct data, and designed bureaucratic systems to make statistics appear reliable. From the invention of official scorers and Statcast to the creation of the Major League Scouting Bureau, the history of baseball reveals the inextricable connections between human expertise and data science. A unique consideration of the role of quantitative measurement and human judgment, Scouting and Scoring provides an entirely fresh understanding of baseball by showing what the sport reveals about reliable knowledge in the modern world.

Iconic ballplayer Rocky Colavito captivated fans during the 1950s and 1960s with his movie-star looks, boyish enthusiasm, powerful batting and cannon-like arm. This comprehensive biography of "the Rock"-the first in more than half a century-recounts his origins in an Italian immigrant family, his close friendships with Herb Score and Roger Maris, and his rise through the minors to become one of the Cleveland Indians' most beloved players before retiring fifth in home runs by a right-handed batter in American League history. The author tells the story of baseball's perhaps most controversial trade-Colavito, the AL's 1959 home run champion, for the Detroit Tigers' batting champion, Harvey Kuenn. Colavito's departure was a crushing blow to Indians fans and the team's subsequent 34-year slump was dubbed "the Curse of Colavito.

For a dozen years in the 1940s and 1950s, more than 700 women played professional baseball in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Though some saw their brand of ball as a sideshow or wartime diversion, the women were all tough competitors and superb athletes. They set records that remain unequaled by their male counterparts, including Sophie Kurys' 201 stolen bases in a single season and Joanne Winter's 63 consecutive scoreless innings. And the 1944 AAGPBL All-Star game was the first night game at Chicago's Wrigley Field. This is the most comprehensive look ever at the players of this women's league. From Velma Abbott to Agnes ""Aggie"" Zurkowski, over 600 players are profiled. For each player, vital dates, place of birth, height, weight, defensive position, teams played for and seasons active are provided, along with complete career statistics. These data are followed (in most cases) by a brief biographical sketch that details the player's career, how she came to play in the league and information on her post-baseball career. Most of the photographs are from the personal files of the players and have never before been published.

Ted Strong Jr. (1917-1978) was a two-sport athlete, a major star of the Negro Leagues and one of the original Harlem Globetrotters. His prominence in the Negro Leagues led Branch Rickey and other white baseball league owners to consider Strong as one of several possible players to integrate major league baseball, and he was a key force on the basketball court when the Globetrotters defeated the then-invincible Minneapolis Lakers in 1948. Despite his athletic dominance in the 1930s and 40s, Strong Jr. has largely been forgotten in American sports history. In Ted Strong Jr.: The Untold Story of an Original Harlem Globetrotter and Negro Leagues All-Star, Sherman L. Jenkins finally shares the fascinating story of this star athlete. Born Theodore Relighn Strong Jr. in South Bend, Indiana, Strong Jr., the eldest of fourteen children, was fortunate to have a positive influence in his father-a baseball player himself. Strong Jr. went on to play in seven Negro League Baseball East-West All-Star games, receiving the most votes in all of Black baseball history in 1939, and was a key member of the 1940 Harlem Globetrotter basketball team that won the World Professional Basketball Championship. Jenkins details all of this and more, including Strong Jr.'s frustrations with integration efforts promised by white baseball team owners and the eventual decline of the Negro Leagues after the entrance of Jackie Robinson into Major League Baseball. Through hours of interviews with Strong Jr.'s father and with friends and teammates of his brother Othello, along with extensive research of newspaper archives, this book provides rich insights into an unsung hero in the American sports landscape. For baseball and basketball fans of all ages, Ted Strong Jr.'s biography displays for the first time the determination and guts of a man who was idealized by many African Americans in the early twentieth century.

Written for coaches, this book-in its expanded 3rd edition-presents more than 200 baseball and softball games and activities for young children and adolescents, focusing on teaching, improvement of skills and enjoyment. Games emphasizing base running, bunting, catching, fielding, hitting, throwing and pitching are covered. Each section reviews fundamentals, introduces creative skills and drills for group practice, and details the age group, objective, equipment and rules for each activity.

Many of the most powerful trends in baseball today have their roots in the 1970s. Baseball entered that decade seriously behind the times in racerelations, attitudes toward conformity versus individuality, and the manager-player relationship. In a sense, much of the wrenching change that American society as a whole experienced in the 1960s was played out in baseball in the following decade. Additionally, the game itself was rapidly evolving, with the inauguration of the designated hitter rule in the American League, the evolution of the closer, the development of the five-man starting rotation, the acceptance of strikeout lions like Dave Kingman and Bobby and the proliferation of stolen bases.

This book opens with a discussion of the challenges that faced baseballs movers and shakers when they gathered in Bal Harbour, Florida, for the annual winter meetings on December 2, 1969. Their worst nightmares would be realized in the coming years. The many and often contradictory reasons the 1970s game evolved into a war of competing ideologies-escalating salaries, an acrimonious strike, Sesame Street-style team mascots, and the breaking of the time-honored tradition that all players, including the pitcher, must play on offense as well as de fense-found many teams ill-equipped to adapt.

Team Sports Training: The Complexity Model presents a novel approach to team sports training, examining football (soccer), rugby union, field hockey, basketball, handball and futsal through the paradigm of complexity. Under a traditional prism, these sports have been analysed using a deterministic perspective, where the constituent dimensions of the sportsmen were independently examined and treated in isolation. It was expected that the body worked as a perfect machine and, once all the components were maximised, the sportsmen improved their performance. If the same closed recipe was applied to all of the players who formed part of the squad, the global team performance was expected to be enhanced. As much as these reductionist models seem coherent, when contrasted in practice we see that the reality of team sports is far more different from the closed conditions in which they were idealised. Team sports contain variable, heterogeneous and non-linear constraints which require the development of a different logic to organise their training. During the last few years, ecological psychology, the dynamical systems theory or the constraints-led approach have opened interesting fields of research from which many conceptual foundations can be applied to team sports. Based on this contemporary framework, the current book presents the study of the players and the teams as complex systems, using coordination dynamics to explain the emergence of the self-organisation episodes that characterise them. In addition, this thinking line provides the reader with the ability to apply all of these innovative concepts to their practical training scenarios. Altogether, it is intended to challenge the reader to re-think their training strategy and to develop an original theory and practice of training specific to team sports.

Author and scholar Braham Dabscheck muses upon some of baseball's silent yet magnificently important treasures. He examines several topics, including the business of the game (industrial and labor relations, Curt Flood, law, and organized baseball); social commentary and biographies (the work of Stephen Jay Gould and Ken Burns, for example); and culture of the game as it spreads across the globe to places like Australia, Japan, and Latin America. This collection of essays is both insightful and remarkable, and is a valuable companion to any enthusiast.

Everyone knows Yogi Berra, the American icon. He was the backbone of the New York Yankees through ten World Series Championships, managed the National League Champion New York Mets in 1973, and his inscrutable Yogi-isms remain an indelible part of our lexicon. But no one knew him like his family did. My Dad, Yogi is Dale Berra's story of his unshakeable bond with his father, as well as a unique and intimate perspective on one of the great sports figures of the 20th Century. When Yogi wasn't playing or coaching, or otherwise in the public eye, he was home in the New Jersey suburbs, spending time with his beloved wife, Carmen, and his three boys, Larry, Tim, and Dale. Dale chronicles--as only a son could--his family's history, his parents' enduring relationship, and his dad's storied career. Throughout Dale's youth, he had a firsthand look at the Major Leagues, often by his dad's side during Yogi's years as a coach and manager. Dale got to know players like Tom Seaver, Bud Harrelson, and Cleon Jones. Mickey Mantle, Don Larsen, and Phil Rizzuto were lifelong family friends. Dale and his brothers all became professional athletes, following in their dad's footsteps. Dale came up with a great Pittsburgh Pirates team, playing shortstop for several years before he was traded to the New York Yankees and briefly united with his dad. But there were extraordinary challenges. Dale was implicated in a major cocaine scandal involving some of the biggest names in the sport, and his promising career was cut short by his drug problem. Yogi supported his son all along, ultimately staging an intervention. Dale's life was saved by his father's love, and My Dad, Yogi is Dale's tribute, and a must-have for baseball fans and fathers and sons everywhere.

This book follows Dizzy and Daffy Dean’s All-Stars as they barnstormed across the country in 1934, taking the field against the greatest teams in the Negro Leagues. It shows the glory of the games as well as the disingenuous journalistic tactics that proliferated during the tour with an introspective look at its impact on race relations. In 1934, brothers Dizzy and Daffy Dean were stars of Major League Baseball’s regular season and World Series. Following their St. Louis Cardinals’ victory over the Detroit Tigers in Game Seven, Dizzy and Daffy went on a fourteen game barnstorming tour against the best African-American baseball players in the country. The Dizzy and Daffy Dean Barnstorming Tour: Race, Media, and America’s National Pastime examines for the first time the full barnstorming series in its original and uncensored splendor. Phil S. Dixon profiles not only the men who were part of the Deans’ All-Star teams but also the men who played against them, including some of baseball’s most monumental African-American players. Dixon highlights how the contributions during the tour of Negro League stars such as Satchel Paige, Chet Brewer, Charlie Beverly, and Andy Cooper were glossed over by sports writers of the day and grants them their rightful due in this significant slice of sports history. The Dizzy and Daffy Dean Barnstorming Tour gives careful consideration to the social implications of the tour and the media’s biased coverage of the games, providing a unique window for viewing racism in American sports history. It is more than a baseball story—it is an American story.

When the Philadelphia Phillies signed Dick Allen in 1960, fans of the franchise envisioned bearing witness to feats never before accomplished by a Phillies player. A half-century later, they're still trying to make sense of what they saw. Carrying to the plate baseball's heaviest and loudest bat as well as the burden of being the club's first African American superstar, Allen found both hits and controversy with ease and regularity as he established himself as the premier individualist in a game that prided itself on conformity. As one of his managers observed, "I believe God Almighty hisself would have trouble handling Richie Allen." A brutal pregame fight with teammate Frank Thomas, a dogged determination to be compensated on par with the game's elite, an insistence on living life on his own terms and not management's: what did it all mean? Journalists and fans alike took sides with ferocity, and they take sides still. Despite talent that earned him Rookie of the Year and MVP honors as well as a reputation as one of his era's most feared power hitters, many remember Allen as one of the game's most destructive and divisive forces, while supporters insist that he is the best player not in the Hall of Fame. God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen explains why. Mitchell Nathanson presents Allen's life against the backdrop of organized baseball's continuing desegregation process. Drawing out the larger generational and business shifts in the game, he shows how Allen's career exposed not only the racial double standard that had become entrenched in the wake of the game's integration a generation earlier but also the forces that were bent on preserving the status quo. In the process, God Almighty Hisself unveils the strange and maddening career of a man who somehow managed to fulfill and frustrate expectations all at once.

From Albert Spalding, who settled in San Diego in the latter part of his life, to late Hall of Famers Ted Williams and Tony Gwynn, San Diego has been called home by some giants of baseball lore. But San Diego was also the minor league home of Johnny Ritchey, who broke the "color barrier" in the Pacific Coast League, and Bill "Chick" Starr, the former player turned owner who signed him. In 1909 San Diego was the site of a game between the "Japanese Base Ball Association"-an aspiring pro team of Japanese-born players-against the local California Winter League champions, while during a few months of 1946 a Negro League team known as the San Diego Tigers played there, all before expansion brought the National League to the West Coast. Of course, the PCL Padres were superseded by the NL Padres, who play there today. The NL Padres remain the only team in MLB without a no-hitter, but the PCL Padres had one, at least by 1938 rules. The Padres have had their heroes (Garvey and Gossage, Hoffman and Templeton) and their goats, as well as The Chicken, whom The New York Times called "perhaps the most influential sports mascot in history." All of their stories and more from San Diego and environs are included in this issue of The National Pastime, to coincide with the national SABR convention taking place there in 2019.

When most baseball fans think back to the 1988 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland Athletics, they probably remember Kirk Gibson's dramatic home run off Dennis Eckersley, Orel Hershiser's shutout streak and dominant postseason pitching that got them there, or perhaps the fact that it remains, to this day, the last World Championship for the Dodgers. In The 1988 Dodgers: Reliving the Championship Season, K. P. Wee tells the story of this incredible year. More than just Gibson or Hershiser, the team's success came from a true collective effort in which all 25 players on the roster made significant contributions throughout the season. Featuring dozens of interviews with players-including those lesser-known Dodgers who were just as important to the team as the stars-coaches, scouts, and general manager Fred Claire, Wee provides a refreshing view of the 1988 season, sharing personal stories and little-known anecdotes told to him by the players and staff. The players also reflect on the importance of the entire team that season, their careers following the World Championship, and life after baseball, giving readers a complete inside look at a season and team to remember.

'"San Francisco Chronicle" bestseller. From the speedy rise of the Big Three to their stunning breakup, Urban's book says it all' - John Shea, National baseball Writer, "San Francisco Chronicle". During the 2004 season, each of Oakland's Big Three aces had something to prove. Tim Hudson was determined to demonstrate his recovery from a recurring injury. Barry Zito had to show the world that after a ho-hum 2003, his 2002 Cy Young Award was not a fluke. Mark Mulder missed the 203 playoffs entirely with a stress fracture, but the way he saw it, he simply needed to be himself - the natural-born pitcher. Given unprecedented access to the Big Three , Mychael Urban recreates their tumultuous season through their eyes. He explores the nuts and bolts of major league pitching, examining each player's unique approach to this craft while revealing how three very different personalities cope with the demands, rewards, and challenges of sports stardom. Now with a new afterword on the 2005 season Urban traces the fortunes of the Big Three after Hudson was sent to Atlanta and Mulder to St. Louis, trades which held the dramatic promise of them being reunited again-as opponents-in the playoffs. 'Written with great color, style, humor, and grace, Aces takes readers on a captivating ride' - Mike Silver, "Sports Illustrated". 'Mychael Urban's book is a fabulous read...This is hardly just a baseball book. It's about life, and he tremendous burden each pitcher carried while trying to lead the Oakland A's to the playoffs. I absolutely loved it' - Bob Nightengale, Senor Writer/Columnist, "USA Today Sports Weekly". 'From the southern fried heat of Tim Hudson to Mark Mulder's cool aloofness to Barry Zito's cerebral wanderings, Urban captures the engine of Oakland's Little Engine That Could of a team with grace and aplomb' - Scott Miller, National Baseball Columnist, CBS.SportsLine.com.

Colorful, shaggy, and unkempt, misfits and outlaws, the 1993 Phillies played hard and partied hard. Led by Darren Daulton, John Kruk, Lenny Dykstra, and Mitch Williams, it was a team the fans loved and continue to love today. Focusing on six key members of the team, Macho Row follows the remarkable season with an up-close look at the players' lives, the team's triumphs and failures, and what made this group so unique and so successful. With a throwback mentality, the team adhered to baseball's Code. Designed to preserve the moral fabric of the game, the Code's unwritten rules formed the bedrock of this diehard team whose players paid homage and respect to the game at all times. Trusting one another and avoiding any notions of superstardom, they consistently rubbed the opposition the wrong way and didn't care. William C. Kashatus pulls back the covers on this old-school band of brothers, depicting the highs and lows and their brash style while also digging into the suspected steroid use of players on the team. Macho Row is a story of winning and losing, success and failure, and the emotional highs and lows that accompany them.

​2021 Seymour Medal Finalist  Named a Best Baseball Book of 2020 by Sports Collectors Digest New York Times 2020 Summer Reading List From the day he first stepped into the Yankee clubhouse, Jim Bouton (1939–2019) was the sports world’s deceptive revolutionary. Underneath the crew cut and behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks lurked a maverick with a signature style. Whether it was his frank talk about player salaries and mistreatment by management, his passionate advocacy of progressive politics, or his efforts to convince the United States to boycott the 1968 Olympics, Bouton confronted the conservative sports world and compelled it to catch up with a rapidly changing American society.                Bouton defied tremendous odds to make the majors, won two games for the Yankees in the 1964 World Series, and staged an improbable comeback with the Braves as a thirty-nine-year-old. But it was his fateful 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and his resulting insider’s account, Ball Four, that did nothing less than reintroduce America to its national pastime in a lasting, profound way. In Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original, Mitchell Nathanson gives readers a look at Bouton’s remarkable life. He tells the unlikely story of how Bouton’s Ball Four, perhaps the greatest baseball book of all time, came into being, how it was received, and how it forever changed the way we view not only sports books but professional sports as a whole. Based on wide-ranging interviews Nathanson conducted with Bouton, family, friends, and others, he provides an intimate, inside account of Bouton’s life. Nathanson provides insight as to why Bouton saw the world the way he did, why he was so different than the thousands of players who came before him, and how, in the cliquey, cold, bottom‑line world of professional baseball, Bouton managed to be both an insider and an outsider all at once.

Step up to the plate with baseball’s top players, from mainstays like Mookie Betts and Gerrit Cole to rising stars like Shohei Ohtani and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Young fans will enjoy these lively profiles of the game’s biggest stars, which explore their life stories, their playing styles, and their greatest baseball moments. Stars of Major League Baseball is illustrated with colourful photos and includes key statistics for each player. Athletes included: José Abreu (White Sox); Ronald Acuña Jr. (Braves); Sandy Alcantara (Marlins); Pete Alonso (Mets); Yordan �lvarez (Astros); Tim Anderson (White Sox); Nolan Arenado (Cardinals); Mookie Betts (Dodgers); Gerrit Cole (Yankees); Jacob deGrom (Mets); Edwin Díaz (Mets); Freddie Freeman (Dodgers); Paul Goldschmidt (Cardinals); Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Blue Jays); Bryce Harper (Phillies); Aaron Judge (Yankees); Manny Machado (Padres); Shohei Ohtani (Angels); José Ramírez (Guardians); Austin Riley (Braves); Julio Rodríguez (Mariners); Max Scherzer (Mets); Corey Seager (Rangers); Juan Soto (Padres); Fernando Tatís Jr. (Padres); Mike Trout (Angels); Trea Turner (Dodgers); Justin Verlander (Astros).

In descriptions of athletes, the word "hero" is bandied about and liberally attached to players with outstanding statistics and championship rings. Gil Hodges: A Hall of Fame Life is the story of a man who epitomized heroism in its truest meaning, holding values and personal interactions to be of utmost importance throughout his life-on the diamond, as a marine in World War II, and in his personal and civic life. A New York City icon and, with the Brooklyn Dodgers, one of the finest first basemen of all time, Gil Hodges (1924-72) managed the Washington Senators and later the New York Mets, leading the 1969 "Miracle Mets" to a World Series championship. A beloved baseball star, Hodges was also an ethical figure whose sturdy values both on and off the field once prompted a Brooklyn priest to tell his congregation to "go home, and say a prayer for Gil Hodges" in order to snap him out of the worst batting slump of his career. Mort Zachter examines Hodges's playing and managing days, but perhaps more important, he unearths his true heroism by emphasizing the impact that Hodges's humanity had on those around him on a daily basis. Hodges was a witty man with a dry sense of humor, and his dignity and humble sacrifice sometimes masked a temper that made Joe Torre refer to him as the "Quiet Inferno." The honesty and integrity that made him so popular to so many remained his defining elements. Firsthand interviews of the many soldiers, friends, family, former teammates, players, and managers who knew and respected Hodges bring the totality of his life into full view, providing a rounded appreciation for this great man and ballplayer. Purchase the audio edition.

In Baseball: The People's Game, Dorothy Seymour Mills and Harold Seymour produce an authoritative, multi-volume chronicle of America's national pastime. The first two volumes of this study -The Early Years and The Golden Age -won universal acclaim. The New York Times wrote that they "will grip every American who has invested part of his youth and dreams in the sport," while The Boston Globe called them "irresistible."
Now, in The People's Game, the authors offer the first book devoted entirely to the history of the game outside of the professional leagues, revealing how, from its early beginnings up to World War II, baseball truly became the great American pastime. They explore the bond between baseball and boys through the decades, the game's place in institutions from colleges to prisons to the armed forces, the rise of women's baseball that coincided with nineteenth century feminism, and the struggles of black players and clubs from the later years of slavery up to the Second World War.
Whether discussing the birth of softball or the origins of the seventh inning stretch, the Seymours enrich their extensive research with fascinating details and entertaining anecdotes as well as a wealth of baseball experience. The People's Game brings to life the central role of baseball for generations of Americans.
Note: On August 2, 2010, Oxford University Press made public that it would credit Dorothy Seymour Mills as co-author of the three baseball histories previously "authored" solely by her late husband, Harold Seymour. The Seymours collaborated on Baseball: The Early Years (1960), Baseball: The GoldenAge (1971) and Baseball: The People's Game (1991).

Lively and filled with vivid anecdotes, Viva Baseball! chronicles the struggles of Latin American professional baseball players in the United States from the late 1800s to the present. As Latino players, managers, and owners continue to blossom into baseball's biggest stars, they have benefited from a growing Spanish-language media, a group identity, an increase in financial leverage and attention, and a burgeoning Latino culture in the United States. Although there have been several positive developments in the treatment of Latin American players, many, such as Albert Pujols, Pedro Martinez, Alex Rodriguez, and Ozzie Guillen, still face shocking racism. Samuel O. Regalado draws upon archives and rich interviews with Latin baseball stars like Felipe Alou, Orlando Cepeda, and Minnie Minoso to show the changing tenor of discrimination in the twenty-first-century game.

Are baseball and cricket two sports divided by a common language? Both employ bats, balls, and innings. Fans of both love statistics, revel in nostalgia, and use baffling jargon. In "Right Off the Bat," baseball nut Evander Lomke and cricket buff Martin Rowe explain "their" sport to the other sport's fans--through anecdotes, diagrams, photographs, and a curve (or dipper) or two.

Cricket and baseball share a parallel and occasionally intertwined history (the first international cricket match was played in the United States). Indeed, they have mirrored their countries' struggles with identity and race, and have expanded beyond the shores of their founding countries to become multinational sports commanding global followings that are, even now, challenging the future of both sports.

"Right off the Bat" is the perfect present for fans of either sport, as well as a handy introduction to those who want to divine the deeper rhythms of play.

Evander Lomke has worked in book publishing for over thirty years and is the executive director of the American Mental Health Foundation. A lifelong Yankees fan, it's only right and proper that he lives in the Bronx, New York.

Martin Rowe is the co-founder of Lantern, a book publishing and media company, and author of "Nicaea: A Book of Correspondences." A long-suffering supporter of the England cricket team, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

An essential experience of being a baseball fan is the hopeful anticipation of seeing the hometown nine make a run at winning the World Series. In "Paths to Glory," Mark L. Armour and Daniel R. Levitt review how teams build themselves up into winners. What makes a winning team like the 1900 Brooklyn Superbas or the 1917 White Sox or the 1997 Florida Marlins? And how are these teams different? What makes each championship team a unique product of its time? Armour and Levitt provide the historical context to show how the sport's business side has changed dramatically but its competitive environment remains the same.Utilizing new statistics to evaluate a player's value and career patterns, Armour and Levitt explore the teams that took risks, created their own opportunities, and changed the game. How did the Washington Senators achieve the unthinkable and blow past Babe Ruth's Yankees in 1924 and 1925? How did the 1965 Minnesota Twins quickly rise to the top and why did they just as suddenly fall? Did Charlie Finley assemble the last old-fashioned championship team before free agency, or was the Moustache Gang another example of winning by building from within? Why did the star-laden Red Sox of the 1930s keep falling short? In exploring these teams and more, Armour and Levitt analyze the players, the managers, and the executives who built teams to win and then lived with the consequences.

A loving look at the old ball game, from the cartoonists at "The New Yorker"

America's national pastime engages fans and fanatics across the country and around the world. Across the magazine's eight decades, the artists at "The New Yorker" have captured the emotional essence of the game, and "The New Yorker Book of Baseball Cartoons, Second Edition" brings an all-star lineup of cartooning greats together in one delightful collection.Collects over 100 drawings that present a playful view of the all-American sportIncludes an introduction by Michael CrawfordFeatures classic cartoons by "New Yorker" legends from Charles Addams to Jack Ziegler

Selected by Robert Mankoff, acclaimed cartoonist and cartoon editor of "The New Yorker," "The New Yorker Book of Baseball Cartoons" is a home run for baseball fans of all ages.