Blending scientific fact and sports trivia, Robert Adair examines what a baseball or player in motion does-and why. How fast can a batted ball go? What effect do stitch patterns have on wind resistance? How far does a curve ball break? Who reaches first base faster after a bunt, a right- or left-handed batter? The answers are often surprising -- and always illuminating.

This newly revised third edition considers recent developments in the science of sport such as the neurophysiology of batting, bat vibration, and the character of the "sweet spot." Faster pitchers, longer hitters, and enclosed stadiums also get a good, hard scientific look to determine their effects on the game.

Filled with anecdotes about famous players and incidents, The Physics of Baseball provides fans with fascinating insights into America's favorite pastime.

The influence of baseball heritage in society and culture Baseball's past has been lauded, romanticized, and idealized, and much has been written about both the sport and its history. This is the first volume to explore the understudied side of baseball-how its heritage is understood, interpreted, commodified, and performed for various purposes today. These essays reveal how baseball's heritage can be a source of great enjoyment and inspiration, tracing its influence on constructed environments, such as stadiums and monuments, and food and popular culture. The contributors discuss how its heritage can be used to address social, political, and economic aims and agendas and can reveal tensions about whose past is remembered and whose is laid aside. Contributors address race and racism in the sport, representations of women in baseball, ballparks as repositories for baseball's heritage, and the role of museums in generating the game's heritage narrative. Providing perspectives on the social impact and influence of baseball in the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United Kingdom, Baseball and Cultural Heritage shows how the performance of baseball heritage can reflect the culture and heritage of a nation. A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

With its sprawl of teams in major, minor, and independent leagues, with its narrative interwoven with our national history, with its catalog of larger-than-life characters, baseball is always a story. The story of baseball is often told by the players and the managers whose faces we recognize. Those storytellers are always men. But this baseball story is a girl's coming-of-age memoir. Addie Beth Denton's 108 Stitches reminds us of the women and girls whose lives were shaped by America's national pastime. Denton's father and uncle were baseball men: her uncle, Harry Craft, was a manager for major league franchises in Kansas City, Chicago, and Houston. As a minor league coach, Harry Craft was Mickey Mantle's first manager. 108 Stitches captures the sights, smells, and sensations of growing up with baseball from Addie Beth's unique vantage point. There are home runs, no-hitters, cantankerous old-timers, and ambitious young gunners, but there are also warmhearted family stories, adolescent melodramas, and the multifaceted experiences of girlhood lived within a man's world. Written for fans young and old, male and female, Addie Beth Denton's memoir stitches together her heartfelt memories of a nostalgic period in American and baseball history.