Bismarck once said that God looked after drunkards, children and the U.S. of A. Some say that baseball should be added to the list. It must have been divine intervention that led the sport through a series of transformative challenges from the end of World War II to the games first expansion in 1961. During this period baseball was forced to make a number of painful choices. From 1949 to 1954, attendance dropped more than 30 percent, as once loyal fans turned to other activities, started going to see more football, and began watching television. Also, the sport had to wrestle with racial integration, franchise shifts and unionization while trying to keep a firm hold on the minds and emotions of the public. This work chronicles how baseball, with imagination and some foresight, survived postwar challenges. Some of the solutions came about intelligently, some clumsily, but by 1960 baseball was a stronger, healthier and better balanced institution than ever before.

When legendary Chicago Cubs' broadcaster Harry Caray passed away in February of 1998, thousands of baseball fans mourned the loss. In Where's Harry?, Steve Stone pays tribute to one of baseball's biggest legends never to take the field, remembering the unique baseball commentator who was also the game's biggest fan.

Orlando Cepeda enjoyed a stellar baseball career in the late fifties and throughout the sixties, but after it ended in the mid-seventies, his life fell apart. In Baby Bull, Cepeda shares his story for the first time. He reflects on his baseball career and shares his twenty-year struggle to rebuild his life and regain his reputation.

Rube Marquards life was touched by success and scandal at nearly every turn. In 1906, the teenage pitcher defied his father and became a ballplayer. Two years later, the Giants purchased his contract for the then record $11,000. He soon became the best left-handed pitcher in the game; over the course of his career he won 201 games, threw a no-hitter and pitched in five World Series. Off the field, Marquard was a master at marketing himself, recreating his story as it suited him. He wrote his own newspaper column, starred in movies, delighted crowds by catching balls thrown off high buildings, and even appeared as a female impersonator. But it was his affair and brief marriage with vaudeville sensation Blossom Seeley that caused the most uproar. Along with Seeley, Marquard became the toast of Broadway to the chagrin of his baseball fans. Throughout his life, the pitcher re-created his story as it suited him; his largely fanciful account of his career in Lawrence Ritters Glory of Their Times (1966) was largely responsible for his election to the Hall of Fame in 1971. This book gives for the first time the true story of one of the most colorful and controversial baseball players of the century.

Though many of his contemporaries considered him second only to Babe Ruth in the 1920s and 1930s, Mickey Cochrane is often overlooked by fans and historians. The hard-hitting catcher played on three World Series winners. Fiercely competitive on the field, Cochrane was a true gentleman off it. Though he was a highly regarded member of the A's championship teams, it is his career in Depression-era Detroit that he is best remembered. The pressure of the adulation there and his duties as player, manager and Tigers vice president led to a breakdown in 1935. On his way to recovery, he was hit in the head by a pitch thrown by Bump Hadley and was nearly killed, ending his career. This full story of Cochrane's Hall of Fame career and his off-field life was researched from primary documents and interviews with his family.

For one brief period in the early 1940s, Pete Reiser was the equal of any outfielder in baseball, even Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, but his penchant for running into outfield walls while playing defense prematurely ended his journey to Cooperstown. Pitcher Herb Score was a brilliant pitcher until a Gil McDougald line drive shelved his career. And Thurman Munson was one of the games best catchers in the late 1970s until a tragic plane crash ended his life. These three players and fourteen others (Smoky Joe Wood, Vean Gregg, Kirby Puckett, Hal Trotsky, Tony Oliva, Paul Dean, Ewell Blackwell, David Ferris, Steve Busby, J.R. Richard, Tony Conigliaro, Johnny Beazley, Mark Fidrych, and Lyman Bostock) enjoyed brilliant careers--potentially worthy of the Hall of Fame--that were cut short by injury, illness or death. Some enjoyed several seasons of success only to see their playing days end just short of numbers worthy of Cooperstown; others enjoyed only a season or two of brilliance. The profiles concentrate on the players accomplishments and speculate on how their careers might have developed if they had continued.

Many young coaches, over the years have asked me," How does one climb the ladder in the baseball coaching profession?" This book will give you examples, through real life stories, on how you can move ahead in a coaching career. Someone has coined the phrase, Apples don't fall too far from the tree" or" He comes from good genes or good stock." These statements seem to indicate some successful endeavors are related, to some degree, to genetics. O the other hand, some doors may open because of the success of someone in the family. Not being an expert in genetics, let's leave this to speculation In addition, networking and what it is and how it works will be discussed in The Mainieri Factor, and how it may open doors for you in the coaching profession. Getting your foot in the door is only the beginning, being successful and proving yourself at each level is paramount to moving up the later. This book will give general insight into ways in which you can prove yourself as successful coach. You will be judged as having been a successful coach if you are able to substantially improve the players' skills from the time the players initially come under your tutelage. In the final analysis, the ultimate evaluation of you as a coach and leader will be directly related to your win-lost record In addition, it is essential that you develop the total person so that your players have the tools to meet the vicissitudes of their daily living. The game of baseball is a great laboratory for developing these skills. After reading The Mainieri Factor, you should understand better how the road to success in coaching works. You should find these life stories to be practical, helpful, interesting andentertaining.

The extent to which remarkable things can happen on a baseball field is virtually limitless. Bats break, balls carom wildly, personalities clash, and playing fields are invaded by uninvited guests. Mudville Madness is for baseball fans who seek something beyond the standard boxscores-something new or rarely encountered. This book is a jaunt into the realm of the extraordinary and (at times) outright bizarre. Spanning three centuries of baseball history, the most uncommon events in baseball history are recounted here in glorious detail, beginning with the game's earliest days when the rules were in their infancy, through the Deadball years, right up to the 2013 season. The epic brawls, bizarre plays and landmark achievements covered in this book will leave you shaking your head in disbelief.

This is the story of the Asahi, a Japanese Canadian baseball team that was formed in 1914 and competed in Vancouver's Caucasian leagues between 1918 and 1941. Using a strategy called "brain ball," the smaller Japanese defeated the larger white teams and won a number of championships. This describes what happened to some of these Asahi players after Pearl Harbor when British Columbia's Japanese were sent to internment camps in the province's interior. Here they played an important role in establishing baseball leagues. Following the war, many former Asahis came to eastern Canada where they continued to play an important role in baseball as they began new lives. There is a second story here as well. It is about a former Asahi fan who was determined that the Asahi legend would not die and how she insured that what they meant to the Japanese community before World War II would never be forgotten.

Major League Baseball, alone among industries of its size in the United States, operates as an unregulated monopoly. This 20th-century regulatory anomaly has become known as the baseball anomaly. Major League Baseball developed into a major commercial enterprise without being subject to antitrust liability. Long after the interstate commercial character of baseball had been established and even recognized by the Supreme Court, baseball's monopoly remained free from federal regulation. Duquette explains the baseball anomaly by connecting baseball's regulatory status to the larger political environment, tracing the game's fate through four different regulatory regimes. The constellation of institutional, ideological, and political factors within each regulatory regime provides the context for the survival of the baseball anomaly.

Duquette shows baseball's unregulated monopoly persists because of the confluence of institutional, ideological, and political factors which have prevented the repeal of baseball's antitrust exemption to date. However, both the institutional and ideological factors are fading fast. Baseball's owners can no longer claim special cultural significance in defense of their exemption. Nor can they credibly claim that the commissioner system approximates government regulation effectively. Both of these strategies have been discredited by the labor unrest of the 1980s and 1990s. Duquette provides a unique perspective on American regulatory politics, and by explaining a complicated story in comprehensive prose, he has given researchers, policy makers, and fans a fascinating look at the business of baseball.

When the Brooklyn Dodgers recruited Jackie Robinson from the Negro Leagues' Kansas City Monarchs in 1947, it marked a turning point both in baseball and civil rights history. Robinson became the first African American to play in the Major Leagues, and in doing so, led generations of black players into the previously all-white world of professional baseball. As one of the greatest players professional baseball has ever seen, Robinson fought fiercely for civil rights on and off the diamond throughout his lifetime, and in doing so became a great American hero.

Mary Kay Linge recounts the extraordinary story of Robinson's life-from his early childhood in the South, to his college years at UCLA, to becoming a Hall of Famer and a major figure in the NAACP. In analyzing the surrounding social and cultural contexts of Robinson's time, this biography examines the legacy of a man who forever changed baseball. A timeline, statistical appendix, bibliography of print and electronic sources for further reading, and photographs enhance this biography.