Inspired by the author's career as a sportswriter for the Washington Post, Squeeze Play tells the story of female reporter A. B. Berkowitz, who is assigned to cover the men of the Washington Senators -- the worst team in major league baseball. Life in the locker room shows her not just the players'…um…assets but also their all-too-human frailties. Love for the game and love for the newspaper business are the stars in this hilarious and heartbreaking novel that "will have you singing a rousing chorus of 'Take Me Out to the Locker Room'"(People).

No immortal in the history of baseball retired so young, so well, or so completely as Sandy Koufax. After compiling a remarkable record from 1962 to 1966 that saw him lead the National League in ERA all five years, win three Cy Young awards, and pitch four no-hitters including a perfect game, Koufax essentially disappeared. Save for his induction into the Hall of Fame and occasional appearances at the Dodgers training camp, Koufax has remained unavailable, unassailable, and unsullied, in the process becoming much more than just the best pitcher of his generation. He is the Jewish boy from Brooklyn, who refused to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series on Yom Kippur, defining himself as a man who placed faith over fame. This act made him the standard to which Jewish parents still hold their children. Except for his autobiography (published in 1966), Koufax has resolutely avoided talking about himself. But through sheer doggedness that even Koufax came to marvel at, Jane Leavy was able to gain his trust to the point where they talked regularly over the three years Leavy reported her book. With Koufax′s blessing, Leavy interviewed nearly every one of his former teammates, opponents, and friends, and emerged with a portrait of the artist that is as thorough and stylish as was his command on the pitching mound.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

A Time Magazine Top Ten Book of the Year

Jane Leavy, the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, returns with a biography of an American original: number 7, Mickey Mantle. Meticulously reported and elegantly written, The Last Boy is a baseball tapestry that weaves together episodes from the author's weekend with the Mick in Atlantic City, where she interviewed her hero in 1983 after he was banned from baseball, with reminiscences from friends and family. It is the story of a boy from Commerce, Oklahoma, who would lead the Yankees to seven world championships, be voted the American League's Most Valuable Player three times, win the Triple Crown in 1956, and duel teammate Roger Maris for Babe Ruth's home run crown in the summer of 1961--a boy who would never grow up. The Last Boy is an uncommon biography, with literary overtones--not only a portrait of an icon but also an investigation of memory itself.

Jane Leavy, the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, returns with a biography of an American original--number 7, Mickey Mantle. Drawing on more than five hundred interviews with friends and family, teammates, and opponents, she delivers the definitive account of Mantle's life, mining the mythology of The Mick for the true story of a luminous and illustrious talent with an achingly damaged soul.

Meticulously reported and elegantly written, The Last Boy is a baseball tapestry that weaves together episodes from the author's weekend with The Mick in Atlantic City, where she interviewed her hero in 1983, after he was banned from baseball, with reminiscences from friends and family of the boy from Commerce, Oklahoma, who would lead the Yankees to seven world championships, be voted the American League's Most Valuable Player three times, win the Triple Crown in 1956, and duel teammate Roger Maris for Babe Ruth's home run crown in the summer of 1961--the same boy who would never grow up.

As she did so memorably in her biography of Sandy Koufax, Jane Leavy transcends the hyperbole of hero worship to reveal the man behind the coast-to-coast smile, who grappled with a wrenching childhood, crippling injuries, and a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. In The Last Boy she chronicles her search to find out more about the person he was and, given what she discovers, to explain his mystifying hold on a generation of baseball fans, who were seduced by that lopsided, gap-toothed grin. It is an uncommon biography, with literary overtones: not only a portrait of an icon, but an investigation of memory itself. How long was the Tape Measure Home Run? Did Mantle swing the same way right-handed and left-handed? What really happened to his knee in the 1951 World Series? What happened to the red-haired, freckle-faced boy known back home as Mickey Charles?

"I believe in memory, not memorabilia," Leavy writes in her preface. But in The Last Boy, she discovers that what we remember of our heroes--and even what they remember of themselves--is only where the story begins.

This insightful volume is a result of the authors' extensive professional experience both in direct counseling positions and as faculty members of the prestigious Northfield and Fountain Valley Centers for training teachers as counselors. Although emanating from a private school experience, the book is universally applicable in school settings. The principles and recommendations are highly sensitive to the contemporary educational environment and the needs of today's students. "Choice"

The Northfield-Fountain Valley Counseling Institutes, founded by faculty from the Harvard University Health Services, have developed a highly successful, widely respected, and proven program for training teachers as counselors. The Institutes are committed to helping teachers develop, improve, and broaden counseling skills--a process that expands their role as teachers and enhances their work wth students. The Institutes' creative and evocative program is, with modifications appropriate to the setting, applicable in all secondary schools.

This insightful volume, written by faculty members themselves, brings together principles and concepts taught at the Institutes. The book is founded on principles that, when applied, expand the teacher's understanding of the counseling relationship as it properly relates to education. "Counseling StudentS" conveys a distinguished faculty's years of experience and a commitment to and enthusiasm for the views counseling as on on-going process in which the teacher, with professional objectivity and controlled empathy, interacts with students to help them understand concerns and emotions that may impede personal development or threaten academic progress. "Counseling StudentS" is a particularly valuable resource for teachers, guidance professionals, and administrators and will be an indispensable guide for strengthening counseling and in-service training programs for teachers.