"That's what this book is about . . . how integration has come to baseball and how it can be achieved in every corner of the land."--Jackie Robinson

Back in print for the first time since its initial publication in 1964, "Baseball Has Done It" is an oral history of baseball and racial integration as told by its greatest players to the man who broke the color line, Jackie Robinson. This one-of-a-kind classic features rare and candid interviews conducted by Robinson with ballplayers who played and lived through the first generation of racial integration in baseball. A who's who of baseball legends--Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, Alvin Dark, Larry Doby, Carl Erskine, Elston Howard, Monte Irvin, Don Newcombe, Frank Robinson and Bill White--share the spotlight with players from the Negro Leagues, baseball executives like Branch Rickey and Ford Frick and Jackie Robinson himself to create a diverse look at the effects of integration on baseball and society. Much more than a sports book, "Baseball Has Done It" is an important document of the struggle for civil rights in the United States, one that speaks to the past while looking toward the future, with the belief that if baseball has done it--achieve integration--the rest of society can too. As Jackie Robinson said, "The ballplayers who have spoken in these pages have told the truth. They reveal that total integration is the only cure for the disease of hatred which is afflicting our America "

This first-ever reprint edition will feature an introduction from the Academy Award-winning director Spike Lee as well as a selection of vintage photographs that were specifically selected for this new edition.

WINNER OF THE 2014 SEYMOUR MEDAL sponsored by the Society for American Baseball Research and finalist for 2014 SABR Larry Ritter Award Though his pitching career lasted only a few seasons, Howard Ellsworth "Smoky Joe" Wood was one of the most dominating figures in baseball history-a man many consider the best baseball player who is not in the Hall of Fame. About his fastball, Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson once said: "Listen, mister, no man alive can throw harder than Smoky Joe Wood." Smoky Joe Wood chronicles the singular life befitting such a baseball legend. Wood got his start impersonating a female on the National Bloomer Girls team. A natural athlete, he pitched for the Boston Red Sox at eighteen, won twenty-one games and threw a no-hitter at twenty-one, and had a 34-5 record plus three wins in the 1912 World Series, for a 1.91 ERA, when he was just twenty-two. Then in 1913 Wood suffered devastating injuries to his right hand and shoulder that forced him to pitch in pain for two more years. After sitting out the 1916 season, he came back as a converted outfielder and played another five years for the Cleveland Indians before retiring to coach the Yale University baseball team. With details culled from interviews and family archives, this biography, the first of this rugged player of the Deadball Era, brings to life one of the genuine characters of baseball history.

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.

This fast-paced, richly detailed biography, based on more than eighty interviews, digs deep beneath the surface to reveal a more complicated and profound story of sports pioneering than we've come to expect from the genre. Perry Wallace's unusually insightful and honest introspection reveals his inner thoughts throughout his journey.

Wallace entered kindergarten the year that "Brown v. Board of Education" upended "separate but equal." As a twelve-year- old, he snuck downtown to watch the sit-ins at Nashville's lunch counters. A week after Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, Wallace entered high school, and later saw the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. On March 16, 1966, his Pearl High School basketball team won Tennessee's first integrated state tournament----the same day Adolph Rupp's all-white Kentucky Wildcats lost to the all-black Texas Western Miners in an iconic NCAA title game.

The world seemed to be opening up at just the right time, and when Vanderbilt recruited him, Wallace courageously accepted the assignment to desegregate the SEC. His experiences on campus and in the hostile gymnasiums of the Deep South turned out to be nothing like he ever imagined.

On campus, he encountered the leading civil rights figures of the day, including Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, and Robert Kennedy---and he led Vanderbilt's small group of black students to a meeting with the university chancellor to push for better treatment.

On the basketball court, he experienced an Ole Miss boycott and the rabid hate of the Mississippi State fans in Starkville. Following his freshman year, the NCAA instituted "the Lew Alcindor rule," which deprived Wallace of his signature move, the slam dunk.

Despite this attempt to limit the influence of a rising tide of black stars, the final basket of Wallace's college career was a cathartic and defiant dunk, and the story Wallace told to the Vanderbilt Human Relations Committee and later "The Tennessean" was not the simple story of a triumphant trailblazer that many people wanted to hear. Yes, he had gone from hearing racial epithets when he appeared in his dormitory to being voted as the university's most popular student, but, at the risk of being labeled "ungrateful," he spoke truth to power in describing the daily slights and abuses he had overcome and what Martin Luther King had called "the agonizing loneliness of a pioneer."

In Winning in Both Leagues J. Frank Cashen looks back over his twenty-five-year career in baseball. Best known as the general manager of the New York Mets during their remaking and rise to glory in the 1980s, Cashen fills the pages with lively stories from his baseball tenure during the last half of the twentieth century. His career included a stint with the Baltimore Orioles of the late '60s and '70s, working with manager Earl Weaver and the great teams of the early '70s, including such players as Jim Palmer, Frank Robinson, and Brooks Robinson. Later, tapped by Mets owner Nelson Doubleday Jr. to bring the Mets to the pinnacle of Major League Baseball, Cashen, with the rise of superstars Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden, led the Mets to the thrilling come-from-behind victory over the Boston Red Sox leading to the World Series championship in 1986.

"Winning in Both Leagues" also chronicles the drafting of Billy Beane, who would later be the focus of the "New York Times" bestseller "Moneyball." Cashen, who was a central figure in the fierce competition with New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, excelled at building winning ball clubs and remains one of only two general managers ever to win a World Series in both leagues.

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.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the first publication of Skinnybones, bestselling author Barbara Park has updated the text of this award-winning novel and made it even more hilarious. A whole new generation of kids will meet Alex "Skinnybones" Frankovich, the smallest player on his baseball team, who is famous for his big mouth. Alex knows he's gone too far when he brags his way into a battle of skills with T.J. Stoner, a cocky Little League legend with a perfect hitting record. Can blabbermouth Alex talk his way out of this mess?

Maybe your dad took you to ball games at Fenway, Wrigley, or Ebbets. Maybe the two of you watched broadcasts from Yankee Stadium or Candlestick Park, or listened as Red Barber or Vin Scully called the plays on radio. Or maybe he coached your team or just played catch with you in the yard. Chances are good that if you're a baseball fan, your dad had something to do with it--and your thoughts of the sport evoke thoughts of him. If so, you will treasure The Final Season, a poignant true story about baseball and heroes, family and forgiveness, doubts and dreams, and a place that brings them all together.

Growing up in the 60s and 70s, Tom Stanton lived for his Detroit Tigers. When Tiger Stadium began its 88th and final season, he vowed to attend all 81 home games in order to explore his attachment to the place where four generations of his family have shared baseball. Join him as he encounters idols, conjures decades past, and discovers the mysteries of a park where Cobb and Ruth played. Come along and sit beside Al Kaline on the dugout bench, eat popcorn with Elmore Leonard, hear Alice Cooper's confessions, soak up the warmth of Ernie Harwell, see McGwire and Ripken up close, and meet Chicken Legs Rau, Bleacher Pete, Al the Usher, and a parade of fans who are anything but ordinary. By the autumn of his odyssey, Stanton comes to realize that his anguish isn't just about the loss of a beloved ballpark but about his dad's mortality, for at the heart of this story is the love between fathers and sons--a theme that resonates with baseball fans of all ages.

Richard D. Cramer has been doing baseball analytics for just about as long as anyone alive, even before the term "sabermetrics" existed. He started analyzing baseball statistics as a hobby in the mid-1960s, not long after graduating from Harvard and MIT. He was a research scientist for SmithKline and in his spare time used his work computer to test his theories about baseball statistics. One of his earliest discoveries was that clutch hitting-then one of the most sacred pieces of received wisdom in the game-didn't really exist. In When Big Data Was Small Cramer recounts his life and remarkable contributions to baseball knowledge. In 1971 Cramer learned about the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and began working with Pete Palmer, whose statistical work is credited with providing the foundation on which SABR is built. Cramer cofounded STATS Inc. and began working with the Houston Astros, Oakland A's, Yankees, and White Sox, with the help of his new Apple II computer. Yet for Cramer baseball was always a side interest, even if a very intense one for most of the last forty years. His main occupation, which involved other "big data" activities, was that of a chemist who pioneered the use of specialized analytics, often known as computer-aided drug discovery, to help guide the development of pharmaceutical drugs. After a decade-long hiatus, Cramer returned to baseball analytics in 2004 and has done important work with Retrosheet since then. When Big Data Was Small is the story of the earliest days of baseball analytics and computer-aided drug discovery.

When Major League Baseball first expanded in 1961 with the addition of the Los Angeles Angels and the Washington Senators, it started a trend that saw the number of franchises almost double, from sixteen to thirty, while baseball attendance grew by 44 percent. The story behind this staggering growth, told for the first time in Baseball's New Frontier, is full of twists and unexpected turns, intrigue, and, in some instances, treachery. From the desertion of New York by the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants to the ever-present threat of antitrust legislation, from the backroom deals and the political posturing to the impact of the upstart Continental League, the book takes readers behind the scenes and into baseball's decision-making process. Fran Zimniuch gives a lively team-by-team chronicle of how the franchises were awarded, how existing teams protected their players, and what the new teams' winning (or losing) strategies were. With its account of great players, notable characters, and the changing fortunes of teams over the years, the book supplies a vital chapter in the history of Major League Baseball.

Baseball programs at all levels recognize the competitive edge that can be gained by their athletes through targeted resistance training programs. Every Major League Baseball team, most minor league teams, the top 25 ranked college baseball teams, and even some high schools (depending on the level and size) have a full-time strength and conditioning professional on staff. With Strength Training for Baseball, you will gain insights into to how amateur to professional baseball players are trained, and you will learn to apply those best practices with your own team to gain a winning advantage. Developed with the expertise of the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), Strength Training for Baseball explains the value of resistance training for baseball athletes-backed by practical experience, evidence-based training methodologies, and research. The book will help you understand the specific physical demands of each position-pitchers, catchers, middle infielders, corner infielders, center fielders, and corner outfielders-so you can design program that translate to performance on the field. You will also find the following: 13 detailed protocols to test baseball athletes' strength, power, speed, agility, body composition, and anthropometry 11 total body resistance exercises with 13 variations 19 lower body exercises with 29 variations 28 upper body exercises with 38 variations 23 anatomical core exercises with 11 variations 34 sample programs for off-season, preseason, in-season, and postseason resistance training Each resistance training exercise consists of a series of photos and a detailed list of primary muscles trained, beginning position and movement phases, modifications and variations, and coaching tips to guide you in selecting the right exercises for a program. You'll also learn how to structure those programs based on the goals and length of each season and for each position. Backed by the NSCA and the knowledge and experience of successful high school, college, and professional baseball strength and conditioning professionals, Strength Training for Baseball is the authoritative resource for creating baseball-specific resistance training programs to help your athletes optimize their strength and successfully transfer that strength and power to the baseball field.

In Beep, David Wanczyk illuminates the sport of blind baseball to show us a remarkable version of America's pastime. With balls tricked out to squeal three times per second, and with bases that buzz, this game of baseball for the blind is both innovative and intense. And when the best beep baseball team in America, the Austin Blackhawks, takes on its international rival, Taiwan Homerun, no one's thinking about disability. What we find are athletes playing their hearts out for a championship. Wanczyk follows teams around the world and even joins them on the field to produce a riveting inside narrative about the game and its players. Can Ethan Johnston, kidnapped and intentionally blinded as a child in Ethiopia, find a new home in beep baseball, and a spot on the all-star team? Will Taiwan's rookie MVP Ching-kai Chen-whose superhuman feats on the field have left some veterans suspicious-keep up his incredible play? And can Austin's Lupe Perez harness his competitive fire and lead his team to a long-awaited victory in the beep baseball world series? Beep is the first book about blind baseball.

Most fans don't know how far the Jewish presence in baseball extends beyond a few famous players such as Greenberg, Rosen, Koufax, Holtzman, Green, Ausmus, Youkilis, Braun, and Kinsler. In fact, that presence extends to the baseball commissioner Bud Selig, labor leaders Marvin Miller and Don Fehr, owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Stuart Sternberg, officials Theo Epstein and Mark Shapiro, sportswriters Murray Chass, Ross Newhan, Ira Berkow, and Roger Kahn, and even famous Jewish baseball fans like Alan Dershowitz and Barney Frank.

The life stories of these and many others, on and off the field, have been compiled from nearly fifty in-depth interviews and arranged by decade in this edifying and entertaining work of oral and cultural history. In "American Jews and America's Game" each person talks about growing up Jewish and dealing with Jewish identity, assimilation, intermarriage, future viability, religious observance, anti-Semitism, and Israel. Each tells about being in the midst of the colorful pantheon of players who, over the past seventy-five years or more, have made baseball what it is. Their stories tell, as no previous book has, the history of the larger-than-life role of Jews in America's pastime.

Of all the New York Yankees championship teams, the 1947 club seemed the least likely. Bridging the gap between the dynasties of Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel, the team, managed by Bucky Harris, was coming off three non-pennant-winning seasons and given little chance to unseat the defending American League champion Boston Red Sox. And yet, led by Joe DiMaggio, this un-Yankees-like squad of rookies, retreads, and a few solid veterans easily won the pennant over the Detroit Tigers and the heavily favoured Red Sox, along the way compiling an American League-record nineteen-game winning streak. They then went on to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a dramatic seven-game World Series that was the first to be televised and the first to feature an African American player. Bridging Two Dynasties commemorates this historic club - the players, on the field and off, and the events surrounding their remarkable season. Along with player biographies, including those of future Hall of Famers DiMaggio, Bucky Harris, Yogi Berra, and Phil Rizzuto, the book features a seasonal timeline and covers pertinent topics such as the winning streak, the Yankees' involvement in Leo Durocher's suspension, and the thrilling World Series.

Being a Phillies fan has never been easy. The team has amassed the most losses of any professional sports franchise in history, as well as the longest losing streak and the most last-place finishes in the major leagues. The year 1980 was redemption for a miserable, century-old legacy of losing. It was also the beginning of the end for a team that could have been among the very best in baseball throughout the decade. Between 1980 and 1983 the Philadelphia Phillies captured two pennants and a world championship. Legends like Tug McGraw, Steve Carlton, Mike Schmidt, and Pete Rose led the collection of homegrown products, veteran castoffs, and fair-haired rookies. If they had won another World Series, the team not only would have distanced themselves from a history of losing but would have established a championship dynasty. It never happened. The 1981 season was a watershed for both the Phillies and baseball. A players' strike led to a sixty-day work stoppage. The Phils, who had been in first place before the strike, were unable to regain their winning ways after play resumed. Labor relations between an increasingly powerful Players Association and inflexible owners became more acrimonious than ever before. Player salaries skyrocketed. Old loyalties were forgotten, and the notion of a homegrown team, like the 1980 Phillies, was a thing of the past. Almost a Dynasty details the rise and fall of the 1980 World Champion Phillies. Based on personal interviews, newspaper accounts, and the keen insight of a veteran baseball writer, the book convincingly explains why a team that had regularly made the post-season in the mid- to late 1970s, only to lose in the playoffs, was finally able to win its first world championship.

By the mid-1950s, New York had been the unrivaled capital of America’s national pastime for a century, a place where baseball was followed with truly fanatical fervor. The city’s three teams—the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers—had over the previous decade rewarded their fans’ devotion with stellar performances: from 1947 to 1957, one or more of these teams had played in the World Series every year but one. Yet on opening day 1958, the Giants and the Dodgers were gone. Their owners, Walter O’Malley and Horace Stoneham, had ripped them away from their longtime home and from the hearts of millions of devoted and passionate fans and taken the teams to California. How did it happen? Who was to blame? The relocation of the Giants and the Dodgers, an event that transcended sports and altered the landscape of New York City, has never been addressed with the depth, detail, and insight offered here by Robert E. Murphy. As informed as it is entertaining, After Many a Summer is rich in baseball lore, civic history, and the wheeling and dealing, alliances and betrayals, and sharp-elbowed machinations of big-city business and politics.

George Edward "Rube" Waddell was one of the zaniest characters ever to play baseball. The legendary Connie Mack, who saw quite a few cards during his nearly seven decade stint in the majors, once observed that no other screwball he ever saw could hold a candle to Rube. Mack also said that Rube's curveball was the best he'd ever seen. Indeed, Waddell was one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the game. Rube won 191 games in 13 seasons, had four straight 20-win seasons for Mack and the Philadelphia A's, and claimed six consecutive strikeout titles. In 1904 he struck out 349 batters, a record that held for six decades. This biography traces his early life in western Pennsylvania, the fits and starts of his first years in professional baseball, his big years with the A's, and his subsequent fade into obscurity and his early death in a sanatorium on April Fool's Day, 1914.

For the Baltimore Orioles, the glory days stretched to decades. Through the 1960s and 1970s, the team arguably had the best players, the best manager, the best Minor League teams, the best scouts and front office-and, unarguably, the best record in the American League. But the best of all, and one of baseball's greatest teams ever, was the Orioles team of 1970. Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers documents that paradoxically unforgettable yet often overlooked World Champion team. Led by the bats of Frank Robinson and Boog Powell and a trio of 20-win pitchers, the Orioles won 108 regular season games and dropped just 1 postseason game on their way to winning the World Series against the Reds. The club featured three future Hall of Fame players (Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, and Jim Palmer), a Hall of Fame manager (Earl Weaver), and several other star players in the prime of their careers. Featuring biographical articles on Weaver, his coaches, the broadcasters, and the players of the 1970 season, this book tells what happened in and out of the game. It details highlights and timelines, the memorable games, spectacular plays, and the team's working philosophy, "the Oriole Way"-and in sum recreates the magic of one of the greatest seasons in baseball history.

As the first great Jewish player in the major leagues and the first African American to play major-league baseball during the twentieth century, respectively, Hank Greenberg and Jackie Robinson are forever linked because of the barriers they encountered, the discrimination they endured, the athletic gifts they exhibited, and especially the courage and dignity they displayed. Both suffered ridicule and abuse as they participated in the national pastime. Nevertheless, each excelled. Greenberg became one of the preeminent sluggers of the 1930s and 1940s who took a break from baseball to serve in the war. Robinson, from the mid-1940s into the following decade, helped bring back speed and a thinking man s approach to the game, both of which had largely been discarded for a generation."Two Pioneers" presents these remarkable players experiences while competing in a nation that was deeply divided on social issues such as anti-Semitism and racism. Both men earned nearly as much attention off the field as they did on it. Greenberg called into question the idea of a master race as Adolf Hitler rose to power and gained supporters all over the world. Likewise, Robinson contested racial notions regarding the supposed inferiority of people of African ancestry, even though segregationists proved determined to maintain social barriers separating blacks and whites. It is only fitting that when Robinson finally crossed baseball s color line, Greenberg was one of the first players to welcome him publicly.Robert Cottrell s well-researched work shows how two baseball superstars became important figures in the civil rights crusade to ensure that all Americans, no matter their religion or race, are given equal opportunity.

The average pitcher has about a .000645 chance of throwing a no-hitter. In the spring of 1938, Cincinnati Reds rookie pitcher Johnny Vander Meer pitched two, back to back. The feat has never been duplicated, which comes as no surprise to sports professionals and aficionados alike. Decade after decade, in one poll after another (from "Sport" magazine, "Sports Illustrated," and ESPN), Vander Meer's consecutive no-hitters turn up as one of baseball's greatest and most untouchable achievements.
"Double No-Hit" offers an inning-by-inning account of that historic second consecutive no-hitter accomplished during the first night game in New York City, with the Cincinnati Reds facing the Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field. James W. Johnson sets the stage and assembles the colorful cast of characters. Highlighting the story with recollections and observations from owners, managers, and players past and present, he fills in the details of Vander Meer's accomplishment--and his baseball career, which never lived up to expectations heightened by his sensational performance. In the end, "Double No-Hit" brings to life a bygone era of the national pastime and one shining spring night, June 15, 1938, when a twenty-two-year-old fireballing left-hander with lousy control pitched his way into the top tier of baseball's record book.