The modern game of baseball is a stark contrast to the game of the past and statistics have continued to move to the forefront of the game. Watching a game on TV or listening to it on the radio, one is constantly bombarded with numbers of all kinds - how can one make sense of it all? Numbers constantly fly across your screen during each game and even the more mature fans may not truly understand what they mean. As one can imagine, the diversity of baseball statistics, the methods that create them and the fans who follow them is immense. This book makes no attempt to develop the next 'super stat' or tell you why Babe Ruth is better than Barry Bonds (or visa-versa). It merely attempts to not only present all well-known baseball statistics, but to present it in a way as to help the reader truly understand what the statistic really means and how that statistic can be used. If you have ever flipped through the many books or encyclopedias on baseball statistics one will quickly come to a conclusion - any real explanation of these statistics are placed in the very back of the book (usually in very tiny text) and typically with no real discussion on their calculation, context, or application. This text attempts to not only standardize baseball statistics as a subject, but to allow anyone to understand these statistics as well calculate them - no PhD required (but I suppose it helps).

While Jackie Robinson's 1947 season with the Brooklyn Dodgers made him the first African American to play in the Major Leagues in the modern era, the rest of Major League Baseball was slow to integrate while its Minor League affiliates moved faster. The Pacific Coast League (PCL), a Minor League with its own social customs, practices, and racial history, and the only legitimate sports league on the West Coast, became one of the first leagues in any sport to completely desegregate all its teams. Although far from a model of racial equality, the Pacific Coast states created a racial reality that was more diverse and adaptable than in other parts of the country. The Integration of the Pacific Coast League describes the evolution of the PCL beginning with the league's differing treatment of African Americans and other nonwhite players. Between the 1900s and the 1930s, team owners knowingly signed Hawaiian players, Asian players, and African American players who claimed that they were Native Americans, who were not officially banned. In the post-World War II era, with the pressures and challenges facing desegregation, the league gradually accepted African American players. In the 1940s individual players and the local press challenged the segregation of the league. Because these Minor League teams integrated so much earlier than the Major Leagues or the eastern Minor Leagues, West Coast baseball fans were the first to experience a more diverse baseball game.

In the last two decades, innovation, data analysis and technology have driven a tectonic shift in the sports business. Game of Edges is the story of how sports franchises evolved, on and off the field, from raggedly run small businesses into some of the most systematically productive companies around. In today’s game, everyone from the owners to the marketing staff are using information—data—to give their team an edge. For analysts, an edge is their currency. Figuring out that bunting hurts your offence? That’s an edge. So is discovering metrics that can predict the career arc of your free agent shooting guard. Or combing through a decade of ticket-buying data to target persuadable fans. These small, incremental steps move a sports franchise from merely ordinary to the leading edge. Franchises today are more than just sports; they integrate a whole suite of other businesses—television and digital content, gambling and real estate, fashion and clothing, entertainment, catering and concessions and much more. But an optimised franchise has no room for error. Teams must do what the numbers say, reducing the element of chance, limiting those random moments of athletic heroism that make sports thrilling to watch. Optimisation also means the franchise’s main goal isn’t championships anymore; it’s keeping you, the viewer, engaged with the product. Drawing on extensive interviews with franchise owners, managers, executives and players, Bruce Schoenfeld introduces dynamic leaders who are radically reimagining the operations of these decades-old teams—and producing mind-boggling valuations. He joins the architects of the Golden State Warriors dynasty for an exclusive reception before tip-off. He stands among the faithful at Anfield, watching Liverpool’s analytics guru size up a prized midfielder. And he watches the president of the Chicago Cubs break ground on a new DraftKings gambling parlour at Wrigley Field, not ten miles from the site of the original Black Sox betting scandal. Essential reading for anyone interested in sports, business or technology Game of Edges explores a world where winning the game is only the beginning.

In the spring of 1964, the Nankai Hawks of Japan's Pacific League sent nineteen-year-old Masanori Murakami to the Class A Fresno Giants to improve his skills. To nearly everyone's surprise, Murakami, known as Mashi, dominated the American hitters. With the San Francisco Giants caught in a close pennant race and desperate for a left-handed reliever, Masanori was called up to join the big league club, becoming the first Japanese player in the Major Leagues. Featuring pinpoint control, a devastating curveball, and a friendly smile, Mashi became the Giants' top lefty reliever and one of the team's most popular players-as well as a national hero in Japan. Not surprisingly, the Giants offered him a contract for the 1965 season. Murakami signed, announcing that he would be thrilled to stay in San Francisco. There was just one problem: the Nankai Hawks still owned his contract. The dispute over Murakami's contract would ignite an international incident that ultimately prevented other Japanese players from joining the Majors for thirty years. Mashi is the story of an unlikely hero caught up in an American and Japanese baseball dispute and forced to choose between his dreams in the United States and his duty in Japan.

This is the untold story of black semi-professional baseball in the Lone Star State. While baseball may have long been considered an all-American sport in which a melting pot could celebrate ethnic heroes like Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Connie Mack, and Stan Musial, racial segregation excluded blacks from an otherwise democratic picture. Such was certainly the case in Texas, where, in the state's first professional matchup soon after the Civil War, the R. E. Lees faced the Stonewalls-and African Americans, not surprisingly, played no part. Drawing upon oral histories and mining such rare sources as rosters and box scores from black newspapers, Rob Fink situates Texas' African American teams and players against the rise and decline of professional Negro Leagues. From the 1880s Galveston Flyaways through Dallas shortstop Ernie Banks' signing with the Chicago Cubs in 1953, ""Playing in Shadows"" brings to light an important but little-studied inning in American sport.

How to Umpire Baseball and Softball is an insider's guide to the basic skills necessary to excel as an umpire. It is the product of Boga's countless discussions with partners, hours of field time, and much reflection. The book is designed to help both individual umpires and those charged with training umpires at all levels of baseball and softball.

In an era when black baseball players had limited playing prospects in the United States, they found a more hospitable and level playing field in Canada. The entries in this dictionary contain biographical sketches, career highlights and statistics for hundreds of players, as well as information about their teams and leagues.

While Jackie Robinson is justly famous for breaking the color line in major league baseball in 1947, other young African American players, among them Hank Aaron, continued to struggle for acceptance on southern farm teams well into the 1960s. As Bruce Adelson writes, their presence in the South Atlantic, Carolina, and other minor leagues represented not only a quest for individual athletic achievement; simply by hitting, fielding, and signing autographs alongside their white teammates, African-American ballplayers helped to end segregation in the Jim Crow South.

In writing this book, Adelson interviewed dozens of athletes, managers, and sportswriters who witnessed this important but largely unrecognized front in the ongoing civil rights movement. When nineteen-year-old Percy Miller took the field for the Danville (Virginia) Leafs in 1951, his presence on the roster was not the result of altruism: the team's white owners saw attendance flagging and recognized the need for more African-American fans. Two years later, Hank Aaron and his two black teammates for the Milwaukee Braves' Jacksonville (Florida) farm team were regularly greeted by racial invective, even bottles and stones, on the road. And Ed Charles endured nine years of discrimination in the southern minor leagues before breaking into the majors and finally winning the World Series with the Mets in 1969.

Slowly, through the vehicle of baseball, these African Americans shattered Jim Crow restrictions and met the backlash against Brown v. Board of Education while simultaneously challenging long-held perceptions of racial inadequacy by performing on the field. Brushing Back Jim Crow weaves their firsthand accounts into a narrative that spans the long season of racism in the United States, gripping fans of history and baseball as surely as a pennantor a home run--race.

The Chicago Cubs of the mid-1920s through 1940 were one of the most talented and exciting ball clubs the city ever produced. The Northsiders enjoyed 14 consecutive winning seasons and claimed the National League pennant four times (1929, 1932, 1935, and 1938), but fell to a dominant American League club in each World Series appearance. Four legendary baseball names led these Cub teams during this amazing stretch. Three eventually landed in Cooperstown (McCarthy, Hornsby, Hartnett), and many believe the fourth (Grimm) should have joined them. This was also the era when Cubs Park was transformed into Wrigley Field, under the guidance of Bill Veeck Jr., with its trademark bricks and ivy, hand-operated scoreboard, and outfield bleachers.

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.

""Cecilia Tan has written a Yankee Doodle Dandy of a book. The reader is taken through the dramatic ebb and flow of the 50 greatest Yankee games. We learn a lot about the team from the Bronx in this fact-filled, entertainingly written opus. Should be required reading for all fans of the New York Yankees.""
--Harvey Frommer, author of A Yankee Century and The New York Yankee Encyclopedia
Every Yankee fan has a memory they will never forget or a game they wish they had seen. Covering an entire century of New York Yankees baseball, The 50 Greatest Yankee Games brings together the best (and sometimes worst) moments experienced by the most successful sports franchise on the planet. You'll be there as:
* Babe Ruth performs the most debated gesture in sports history
* Joe DiMaggio reaches one milestone on his way to another
* ""The Wild Man"" tames the Dodgers, but the Bombers fail to score
* Bobby Murcer delivers the game-winning hit just hours after delivering the eulogy at Thurman Munson's funeral
* Dave Righetti throws his no-hitter against the Red Sox
* Don Mattingly shines, but Seattle savors the day
* Derek Jeter saves the game and the season with a ""shovel pass""

From the Yankees' first World Series to the pennant race that pitted Joe DiMaggio against Ted Williams to the Bucky Dent home run game, you'll have the best seat in the stadium as you experience all the excitement and drama. Featuring fascinating anecdotes and vintage photographs, The 50 Greatest Yankee Games is the perfect book for every Yankee fan and anyone who cherishes the game.
""Tan does a fine job choosing the most important contests from 100 seasons of Yankee baseball and recounting them in a gripping style . . . developing entertaining, dramatic story lines.""
--Publisher's Weekly

Little-known facts, statistics, stories, quotes, nicknames, all-time leaders, rosters, puzzles, and more from over one hundred years of Red Sox history
The Boston Red Sox were originally named the Pilgrims--but for over one hundred years they have always been Beantown's favorite team, with a history that has been celebrated and mourned by generations of fans.
If you love the Red Sox, you'll find hours of challenging trivia in this book. Packed with text and information, it includes: *A history of the Red Sox from their origins to the present * Trvia questions designed to test your baseball memory * Corssword puzzles, word games, unusual quotes, funny nicknames, and anecdotes about the Sox *Complete all-time Red Sox roster of players, with stats * Comprehensive leader tables for batters and pitchers *Award winners, Hall of Famers, and other honors *And much more!
Do You Know...
- Who was the first pitcher to throw a perfect game in the twentieth century?
- Who decided to turn Babe Ruth into an outfielder?
- What was Ted Williams's batting average with one day left in the 1941 season: .406, .399, .3996, or .4001? What happened on that day?
- How many batting titles did Carl Yastrzemski win in his career?
- Which team Roger Clemens's had 20 strikeouts against in a 1986 game?
Bring this book to Fenway, or keep it next to your favorite armchair at home, to liven up commercial breaks and rain delays. In no time you'll be an expert on Red Sox trivia!

"Even before the start of spring training, Herzog had said, 'If Rich Billings is the starting catcher again, we're in deep trouble.' When that evaluation was passed along to Billings, he simply nodded and said, 'Whitey, obviously, has seen me play.'" In early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire agreed to cover the Texas Rangers for the "Fort-Worth Star-Telegram," not realizing that the Rangers were arguably the worst team in baseball history. "Seasons in Hell" is a riotous, candid, irreverent behind-the-scenes account in the tradition of "The Bronx Zoo" and "Ball Four," following the Texas Rangers from Whitey Herzog's reign in 1973 through Billy Martin's tumultuous tenure. Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique (and likely never-to-be-seen-again) baseball personalities, "Seasons in Hell" recounts some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game and brings to life the no-holds-barred culture of major league baseball in the mid-seventies

Advance Praise for Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot?
""Aron has found the Rosetta stone to all of baseball's enduring mysteries, and he skips it along the pond with utter disregard for the ducks. His fortunate readers will have so much fun they may not even notice that they are becoming, page by page, real experts. Here is surefire water-cooler ammo.""
--JOHN THORN, editor of Total Baseball
""Paul Aron puts a distant replay on the most famous controversies in baseball history. This is more fun than if he'd been there with a camcorder.""
--ALLEN BARRA, author of Clearing the Bases and Brushbacks and Knockdowns
""Paul Aron has hit a home run for baseball fans. He dissects the evidence on baseball's 28 most charming mysteries. The result is a well-written, enjoyable, enlightening tour of the last hundred years of baseball history.""
--ANDREW ZIMBALIST, author of Baseball and Billions
""Paul Aron's book on elements of baseball is both wise and fun, illuminating and entertaining.""
--ROBERT ADAIR, author of The Physics of Baseball
""The essential last word for every fan who loves to debate baseball fact and fiction.""
--MICHAEL SHAPIRO, author of The Last Good Season

Almost Yankees is a poignant and nostalgic narrative of the lives and travails of Minor League Baseball, focusing on the 1981 championship season of the New York Yankees' Triple-A farm club, the Columbus Clippers. That year was especially notable in the annals of baseball history as the year Major League Baseball went on strike in midseason. When that happened, the Clippers were suddenly the best team in baseball and found themselves the focus of national media attention. Many of these Minor Leaguers sensed this was their last, best chance to make an impression and fulfill their dreams to one day reach the majors. The Clippers' raw recruits, prospects, and Minor League veterans responded to this opportunity by playing the greatest baseball of their lives on the greatest team most of them would ever belong to. Then the strike ended, leaving them to return to their ordinary aspirational lives and to be just as quickly forgotten. Almost Yankees is the previously untold baseball story of a team and its players performing in the shadow of one of the sport's most famous teams and infamous owners. Featuring interviews with more than thirty former players (including Steve Balboni, Dave Righetti, Buck Showalter, and Pat Tabler) and dozens of other baseball and media figures, this season's narrative chronicles success, failure, resilience, and redemption as told by a special group of players with hopes and dreams of big-league glory. J. David Herman, who worshipped the team as an eleven-year-old, tracked down his old heroes to learn their stories-and to better understand his own. The season proved to be a launching pad for some, a final chance for others, and the end of the dream for many others.

A suspenseful account of the glorious days a century ago when our national madness began
A post-season series of games to establish supremacy in the major leagues was not inevitable in the baseball world. But in 1903 the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates (in the well-established National League) challenged the Boston Americans (in the upstart American League) to a play-off, which he was sure his team would win. They didn't--and that wasn't the only surprise during what became the first World Series. In" Autumn Glory," Louis P. Masur tells the riveting story of two agonizing weeks in which the stars blew it, unknown players stole the show, hysterical fans got into the act, and umpires had to hold on for dear life.
Before and even during the 1903 season, it had seemed that baseball might succumb to the forces that had been splintering the sport for decades: owners' greed, players' rowdyism, fans' unrest. Yet baseball prevailed, and Masur tells the equally dramatic story of how it did so, in a country preoccupied with labor strife and big-business ruthlessness, and anxious about the welfare of those crowding into cities such as Pittsburgh and Boston (which in themselves offered competing versions of the American dream). His colorful history of how the first World Series consolidated baseball's hold on the American imagination makes us see what one sportswriter meant when he wrote at the time, Baseball is the melting pot at a boil, the most democratic sport in the world. All in all, Masur believes, it still is.

Baseball is a strange sport: it consists of long periods in which little seems to be happening, punctuated by high-energy outbursts of rapid fire activity. Because of this, despite ever greater profits, Major League Baseball is bent on finding ways to shorten games, and to tailor baseball to today's shorter attention spans. But for the true fan, baseball is always compelling to watch-and intellectually fascinating. It's superficially slow-pace is an opportunity to participate in the distinctive thinking practice that defines the game. If baseball is boring, it's boring the way philosophy is boring: not because there isn't a lot going on, but because the challenge baseball poses is making sense of it all. In this deeply entertaining book, philosopher and baseball fan Alva Noe explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game. He ponders how, for example, observers of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or blame. To put it another way, in baseball-as in the law-we decide what happened based on who is responsible for what happened. Noe also explains the curious activity of keeping score. A score card is not merely a record of the game, like a video recording; it is an account of the game. Baseball requires that true fans try to tell the story of the game, in real time, as it unfolds, and thus actively participate in its creation. Some argue that baseball is fundamentally a game about numbers. Noe's wide-ranging, thoughtful observations show that, to the contrary, baseball is not only a window on language, culture, and the nature of human action, but is intertwined with deep and fundamental human truths. The book ranges over different baseball topics, from the nature of umpiring and the role of instant replay, to the nature of the strike zone, from the rampant use of surgery to controversy surrounding performance enhancing drugs.

With a new introduction by celebrated baseball writer Roger Kahn and a new afterword by the author, updating John Henry's first year of ownership after nearly six decades of the Yawkey dynasty, the legacy of the late Will McDonough, and the author's return to his native Boston after a seventeen-year absence, "Shut Out" has reopened the discussion of baseball, race, and Boston with a new candor.

A new type of player is stepping into the batter's box, and it's about time. The last major boost for baseball's offense came in 1973 with the designated hitter in the American League. In recent years, however, pitching has dominated hitting, and run production has been consistently on the decline. That is about to change. This player will introduce a dynamic new strategy for the offense. He will get on base more frequently than any other batter. Even better, he will be more successful in getting on base than opposing pitchers will be in getting him out. Most importantly, he will help his team score more runs and win more games. This is the first book ever to thoroughly address the concept of this player, even though that concept has been right under our noses for more than a century and a half and is completely within the rules. The reasoning behind this concept is logical. The statistics supporting the conclusions are sound. The implications are game-changing.

You love to argue about the game and its players, delving into baseball history and lore in search of support for your points of view. You'll find plenty of food for thought -- and argument! -- in Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups.

• All-time Red Sox starting pitcher -- Pedro or the Rocket?
• Gold Glovers -- who looked like one, who was one, and who ought to have been one?
• Lopsided trades that'll sting forever, and phenoms who seemed so real
• Classic nicknames -- from "Charlie Hustle" to "Big Hurt" to "The Mad Hungarian"

Neyer presents a series of lineups for each franchise -- from the All-Time and the All-Rookie to the All-Bust and the Traded Away. In notes, sidebars, and essays, he explores the careers of players both famous and obscure. The book includes information on all thirty current teams, as well as a special section covering legendary clubs like the Brooklyn Dodgers and Washington Senators. Neyer's Big Book is an unparalleled reference for settling the debates that arise every day in the lives of baseball fans.