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.

A driving ambition linked Oakland and Kansas City in the 1960s. Each city sought the national attention and civic glory that came with being home to professional sports teams. Their successful campaigns to lure pro franchises ignited mutual rivalries in football and baseball that thrilled hometown fans. But even Super Bowl victories and World Series triumphs proved to be no defense against urban problems in the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s. Matthew C. Ehrlich tells the fascinating history of these iconic sports towns. From early American Football League battles to Oakland's deft poaching of baseball's Kansas City Athletics, the cities emerged as fierce opponents from Day One. Ehrlich weaves a saga of athletic stars and folk heroes like Len Dawson, Al Davis, George Brett, and Reggie Jackson with a chronicle of two cities forced to confront the wrenching racial turmoil, labor conflict, and economic crises that arise when soaring aspirations collide with harsh realities.Colorful and thought-provoking, Kansas City vs. Oakland breaks down who won and who lost when big-time sports came to town.

Go to the Head of the Class with a Baseball Legend Baseball legend Casey Stengel is considered by many to be the greatest manager in baseball history. He was certainly one of the most successful. He managed the fabled New York Yankees from 1949 to 1960 and compiled ten American League pennants and seven world championships during that time. He was also without question one of the game's all-time characters, best known for conversing in a mangled form of English that came to be known as Stengelese."" Beyond the comedy and the world championships, however, his baseball life spanned the ages, from the dead-ball era to Astro Turf. He began his big league career by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1912 and ended it by managing the hapless New York Mets in 1965. Between the first and last stop, Stengel was a World Series hero; a failed manager with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves; a washed-up, aging manager in the minors; and the wacky interloper who took over the stuffy, staid Yankees in 1949 and reformed them into a dynasty. In Casey Stengel: Baseball's ""Old Perfessor, "" dozens of former players, friends, and associates recall the Stengel myth and the Stengel reality. They explore his managing style with great teams and with horrible teams; his pioneering, controversial techniques; his humor, his edginess, and his weaknesses; why some players hated him while others loved him; why some think he was a genius and others think he was merely the right man in the right place at the right time. What emerges is a fascinating ride through baseball history and a thoughtful look at the life of a man who was counted out, mocked, and underestimated--and yet he never gave up, finally findingsuccess in his later years.""

So You Call Yourself A Cincinnati Reds fan offers 100 trivia questions from throughout the Cincinnati Reds' rich history

For OVER fifty years, Lou Piniella has been a fixture in Major League Baseball, making a name for himself first as a player on the legendary New York Yankees of the 1970s and later as a manager for five different teams: the Yankees, the Reds, the Mariners, the Rays, and the Cubs.Now, in this raucous and entertaining memoir, Piniella opens up about his lifetime in the game, telling never-before-heard stories about electrifying wins, painful losses, and why sometimes your only option is to get in an umpire's face. Tracing his baseball life from its journeyman beginnings in the minors, he discusses how he came of age as a player during the wild years of the Bronx Zoo, when personalities like Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Catfish Hunter, and Billy Martin made the Yankee locker room the most controversial and colorful place in baseball. With surprising candor, he details his close yet often contentious reltionship with George Steinbrenner, offering a unique portrait of one of the game's most provocative figures, a man who mentored and supported Lou as a player and a manager while ultimately making life with the Yankees unsustainable for him. Stormy as his time in New York was, it was only the start of Lou's fiery career. From managing the Cincinnati Reds and their divisive owner, Marge Schott, to a World Series win, to transforming the perennially cellar-dwelling Seattle Mariners into one of the league's best teams, he recalls his experiences-both hilarious and heartbreaking-with some of the brightest stars from the last twenty-five years, including Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, and Ichiro Suzuki. For the first time, Lou also describes his important but little-known friendship with Alex Rodriguez, sharing how they formed a connection early in Alex's time with Seattle that spanned decades, teams, and scandals, as Lou helped Alex through his most tumultuous episodes.Whether facing the difficulties of managing his home team in Tampa Bay or helping the Cubs win back-to-back division championships, Lou brings an unforgettable and feisty voice to his rollercoaster ride of a career, going inside the fights, pranks, and seemingly impossible comebacks that defined every Lou Piniella team. Featuring a huge cast of Hall of Fame characters and uproarious stories from three generations of baseball, Lou offers a bridge to a rapidly disappearing era, a time when baseball was a bit more fun, when passion was a virtue, and when kicking a bit of dirt on an umpire was good for everyone.

Chicago Cubs 1969 Almanac offers a day by day account of one of the most famous teams in Chicago Cubs' history. It features a daily account of every game of the 1969 season. It also provides player statistics and other related items.

"Baseball Hacks" isn't your typical baseball book - it's a book about how to watch, research, and understand baseball. It's an instruction manual for the free baseball databases. It's a cookbook for baseball research. Every part of this book is designed to teach baseball fans how to do something. In short, it's a how-to book - one that will increase your enjoyment and knowledge of the game. So much of the way baseball is played today hinges upon interpreting statistical data. Players are acquired based on their performance in statistical categories that ownership deems most important. Managers make in-game decisions based not on instincts, but on probability - how a particular batter might fare against left-handed pitching, for instance. The goal of this unique book is to show fans all the baseball-related stuff that they can do for free (or close to free). Just as open source projects have made great software freely available, collaborative projects, such as Retrosheet and Baseball DataBank have made great data freely available. You can use these data sources to research your favourite players, win your fantasy league, or appreciate the game of baseball even more than you do now. "Baseball Hacks" shows how easy it is to get data, process it, and use it to truly understand baseball. The book lists a number of sources for current and historical baseball data, and explains how to load it into a database for analysis. It then introduces several powerful statistical tools for understanding data and forecasting results. For the uninitiated baseball fan, author, Joseph Adler walks readers through the core statistical categories for hitters (batting average, on-base percentage, etc.), pitchers (earned run average, strikeout-to-walk ratio, etc.), and fielders (putouts, errors, etc.). He then extrapolates upon these numbers to examine more advanced data groups like career averages, team stats, season-by-season comparisons, and more. Whether you're a mathematician, scientist, or season-ticket holder to your favourite team, "Baseball Hacks" is sure to have something for you. Advance praise for "Baseball Hacks": ""Baseball Hacks" is the best book ever written for understanding and practicing baseball analytics. A must-read for baseball professionals and enthusiasts alike." - Ari Kaplan, database consultant to the Montreal Expos, San Diego Padres, and Baltimore Orioles. "The game was born in the 19th century, but the passion for its analysis continues to grow into the 21st. In "Baseball Hacks", Joe Adler not only demonstrates that the latest data-mining technologies have useful application to the study of baseball statistics, he also teaches the reader how to do the analysis himself, arming the dedicated baseball fan with tools to take his understanding of the game to a higher level." - Mark E. Johnson, Ph.D., Founder, SportMetrika, Inc. and Baseball Analyst for the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals.

A.J. has always been an athlete that excels at any sport he tries...until he is introduced to the world of men's competetive softball. A.J. soon learns that its not just a game but a business and everyone from the directors, the sponsors and even the players are in it for the money. Follow A.J. as he tries to take the sport by storm and the interesting line up of characters he is forced to team up with in order to make it in this business. Inspired by true events, the characters are loosely based on real athletes and businessess actively participating in the sport of Men's Competetive Softball today.

Bobby Thomson's home run in the ninth to beat Brooklyn and give the Giants the 1951 National League pennant. Bill Mazeroski's ninth-inning homer for Pittsburgh to beat the Yankees in the 1960 World Series. The Mets' amazing 1969 stretch drive. It's the winners we remember in baseball's most dramatic episodes. But baseball being a game of inches, it's often a fine line between victory and defeat. Losing is unexpected, unpredictable, frequently a consequence of fickle fate. The game is designed to break your heart, Bart Giamatti said. In Heartbreakers, veteran baseball writer John Kuenster recalls fifteen of the game's most painful "disasters" of the last half-century and looks at them from the losers' point of view. With a reporter's skill and a fan's enthusiasm, he sets the scene for these memorable matchups, surveys the players who led each team to the big moment, and tells the story of the game and the emotions that can't be erased. He has interviewed key players who suffered the defeats, providing personal insights and sometimes surprising perspectives on the game action that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Heartbreakers offers a box seat for-and a fresh slant on-the replay of baseball's most thrilling games. With 50 black-and-white photographs.

For half a century the St. Louis Browns were nothing short of spectacular ... when it came to futility. Whatever promise or hope or grandeur dreams held by the franchise and its fans after a second place finish in its inaugural season in St. Louis was quickly replaced by this abysmal reality: the Browns were dead last in the eight-team American League ten times in 52 seasons. Then in 1954 the club began play in Baltimore and its new owners shed the "Browns" and every imaginable link to the club's past. It's not that the Orioles don't respect history ... it's that from the very beginning Baltimore was intent on making its own history. And to that end the franchise has been extraordinarily successful. In St. Louis, the Browns had more 100-loss seasons than any team in baseball history-in Baltimore, it barely took Earl Weaver a decade to manage the Orioles to five 100-win seasons. In St. Louis, the Browns backed into one Pennant in five decades. In Baltimore, the Orioles built a powerhouse that dominated the better part of two decades and won six Pennants. There have been ups-and-downs obviously-like every franchise-and plenty of lean years to go with the championships, but with its successes and the many legends its produced since 1954, the Orioles have achieved the same "status" if you will as its division rivals New York and Boston as being one of baseball's truly great franchises. A virtual who's who of baseball royalty spent time playing in Baltimore-from Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson and Jim Palmer, to Cal Ripken, Jr. and Eddie Murray, to today's superstars Chris Davis and Manny Machado. You can't discuss the game's greatest moments without including the Orioles. You can't tour the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown without seeing the influence of the Birds. This is a book of trivia and history. It's meant for diehard baseball fans, but whether or not you count yourself part of Orioles fandom is irrelevant, because the history of the Birds is inextricably linked with the history of baseball-so sit back and reminisce with ten chapters of Baltimore Orioles history, baseball stories, and 200 brand new trivia questions that will wrack your brain and test your skills. It's your Orioles IQ, the ultimate test of true fandom.

The Love of the Game is a fascinating look at the numbers that make up the history of baseball in America. With style and a passion for the details of this great sport, the authors present the statistics of such great players as Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio as well as new stars like Derek Jeter, Joe Mauer, Buster Posey, Manny Ramirez, Jose Reyes, Mark Teixiera, Frank Thomas, and Tom Glavine . A must read for anyone interested in the numbers behind American baseball

All things Royals This classic look at the Kansas City Royals first three decades is a re-issue of an earlier, limited-release book. From George Brett to Bo Jackson, Kansas City Royals Facts & Trivia covers the team's beginning in 1969, the glory years in the 1970s and 80s, and everything else up to the 2000 season. The book includes many, many photos, lots of team and player facts, and enough trivia to stump even the most avid Royals' fan.

Named a top 50 baseball book of all time by the Huffington Post Named 2013 Best Book on Journalism and Mass Communication History by the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Named a top book for 2012 by Choice The campaign to desegregate baseball was one of the most important civil rights stories of the 1930s and 1940s. But most of white America knew nothing about this story because mainstream newspapers said little about the color line and still less about the efforts to end it. Even today, as far as most Americans know, the integration of baseball revolved around Branch Rickey's signing of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers' organization in 1945. This book shows how Rickey's move, critical as it may have been, came after more than a decade of work by Black and left-leaning journalists to desegregate the game. Drawing on hundreds of newspaper articles and interviews with journalists, Chris Lamb reveals how differently Black and white newspapers, and Black and white America, viewed racial equality. Between 1933 and 1945, Black newspapers and the communist Daily Worker published hundreds of articles and editorials calling for an end to baseball's color line, while white mainstream sportswriters perpetuated the color line by participating in what their Black counterparts called a "conspiracy of silence." The alternative presses' efforts to end baseball's color line, chronicled for the first time in Conspiracy of Silence, constitute one of the great untold stories of baseball-and the civil rights movement.

HUMOR AMONG THE MINORS is a collection of baseball stories and anecdotes about the colorful personalities of the game in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as told by Edward Ashenbach, who spent 21 seasons in the minor leagues as a player, manager, and team owner from 1890 to 1911. This BrayBree Vintage Edition contains the original 1911 book as well as a new index and biographical sketch of the author.

These were the heroes who owned the summers of the 1960s. Rusty Staub and Dick Farrell. Hal Woodeshick and Jimmy Wynn. Denis Menke and Larry Dierker. John Bateman and Bob Bruce. During the summers of the 1960s, the heroes of Houston wore Astros uniforms (after they outgrew their Colts uniforms). On their best days (which were, admittedly, too few), they were entertaining and inspiring. They smote hated rivals and sent their best to the All-Star game, in the decade when that mid-summer classic moved under the lights ... and into prime time. On their worst days, these Astros heroes broke our hearts, squandering late-inning leads and pre-season hopes ... but they never lost our devotion. They were the heroes of our youth. Now their stories are collected in Astros Heroes: Remembering the Houston Astros Who Helped Make the 1960s Baseball's Real Golden Age. The book profiles the best (and a few of the worst) of the Houston Astros of the 1960s. In all, there are 72 profiles of the infielders, outfielders, catchers and pitchers who played for the Houston Colt .45s and Houston Astros in the 1960s. Do you remember ... The hard-throwing right-hander who managed to win 15 games in 1964 for a team that lost 96? (page 75) The slugging third baseman who was a 9-time All-Star and won 2 National League home run crowns? (page 26) The second baseman who was a 10-time All-Star and was twice the National League's MVP? (page 30) The 6-time All-Star outfielder who led the National League in doubles in 1967? (page 56) The Astros' workhorse right-hander who lost 20 games in 1962 despite posting a 3.02 ERA? (page 84) The left-handed pitcher who was the Astros' only Gold Glove winner during the 1960s? (page 60) The burly reliever who led the National League in saves in 1964? (page 109) The hard-hitting center fielder who hit 145 home runs for the Astros in the 1960s ... and set franchise records for RBIs, walks and strikeouts? (page 59) The left-hander who went from a 20-game loser in 1962 to a 22-game winner in 1963? (page 94) The ace reliever who transformed his career when he perfected the palm ball? (page 87) Their stories are here. Enjoy the memories.

Former Yankee batboy, Bill "Hondo" Hongach, who had his first book published while still in high school at age 18, takes the reader on a journey of what goes on behind the scenes of America's National Pastime. The book opens with the author being beaten so badly by Pete Rose's right-hand man, ironically, with a Pete Rose bat, that he ends up in a coma for four days. Jack Lang, who was in charge of the Baseball Writers Assoc. and wrote dozens of baseball books himself before being put into the Hall of Fame, wrote that this was the best baseball book he ever read He simply put it ..".I could not put it down until I had finished reading the entire book." For one to see and know the "The Dark Sides of Baseball" is, in essence, to have the perspective that very few baseball fans get to experience. To become close on a personal basis with some of the greats of the game is rare and unique. "The Dark Sides of Baseball" is a glimpse that the public is not privy to or ever get to encounter. The book tells a tale of how a teenage boy chased his love of baseball, from interviewing sports greats, becoming a Yankee batboy the last two years at the original Yankee Stadium in 1972 & 1973, at the age of 18 having his first baseball book published while still a batboy and leading to the end of the Topps' Baseball Card monopoly, while still going to school. His close relationship with Mickey Mantle and Pete Rose would show him the troubled and positive sides of the game, that the public were never shown. The stories are endless as to what goes on in a clubhouse and what it is like to have these great athletes together for a baseball card show. Every baseball fan can watch a game and look up the stats. "The Dark Sides of Baseball" lets you see what goes on in the dugout, the clubhouse and off the field.

Within these pages you will discover not only the answers to 1,804 questions as to who was the first player, manager, umpire or executive to have accomplished a particular feat in the long history of Major League Baseball, but we will take you back to not just the name, but to the story behind the name, to the moment of its happening, and its result, bringing the historical event clearly into focus. So sit back, enjoy, and let us tell you about that first time in major league history.