Outdoor Play

Get ready to swing for the fences with PLAY BALL! - a must-listen for young athletes ready to level up their baseball experience. This invaluable guide by renowned baseball coach, Johnny Powers, is crafted to arm your 8-12-year-olds with the vital mental strategies essential for mastering the game of baseball. Are your young players ready to transition from simply playing the game to truly understanding and conquering it? 'PLAY BALL' brings professional-level sport psychology techniques to the fore, presenting them in a language that young minds can easily grasp and apply.

Would you like to encourage more outdoor time for your kids? Unsure how to get the kids away from the screens? Want some easy tips for outdoor activities? 50 Things to Know to Get Kids Outdoors by Stephanie Durrant offers an approach to creating fun, healthy outdoor activities that will get kids active.

Are you tired of gripping too tight, overthinking every swing, and watching bad shots unravel your entire round? The harder you try, the worse it gets. But what if the secret to great golf isn’t more effort—it’s less? In Effortless Golf, you’ll discover a revolutionary approach to mastering the game by letting go. Inspired by Zen Buddhism, Stoic philosophy, Taoist wisdom, and modern flow psychology, this book reveals how the greatest golfers—Ben Hogan, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and others—find their best golf through relaxation, not control.

The NBA has returned to prominence on the backs of phenoms like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Garnett. The media promotes them, the shoe companies pay them, and America applauds. But how exactly do such players reach the pros? What do they give up to get there? And what happens to those who fall short?

In State of Play, 12-year Major League veteran, Emmy Award-winning MLB Network analyst, and best-selling author Bill Ripken breaks down these modern statistical methods to explain which ones make sense in the game's historical context, bringing them together with proven old-school strategies. He simplifies those sabermetric terms hastily added to the baseball lexicon without being fully realized, taking new-school confusion out of old-school baseball's tried-and-true common sense.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of children play “Cal Ripken Baseball” in the largest division of Babe Ruth League, Inc. Play Baseball the Ripken Way is the ultimate guide to playing the game, by one of the sport’s living legends.

In these essays, written between 1954 and 1990, bestselling author Roger Kahn touches on locker-room controversies and politics, while inviting readers to share in the passion, grace, energy, and intense concentration involved in playing sports. Kahn pays warm tribute to his special heroes, Jackie Robinson, Roger Maris and Carl Furillo, along with those he particularly admired in the press box, John Lardner and Red Smith. Kahn also esteems football lineman Merlin Olsen, hockey goalie Glenn Hall, cager Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, outfielder Mickey Mantle, boxing promoter Don King, and Pete Rose.

As a columnist for Time magazine, among many other publications, Tom Callahan witnessed an extraordinary number of defining moments in American sport across four decades. He takes us from Roberto Clemente clinching his 3,000th, and final, regular-season hit in Pittsburgh; to ringside for the Muhammad Ali - George Foreman fight in Zaire; and to Arthur Ashe announcing, at a news conference, that he'd tested positive for HIV.

Play It Forward features twenty‑five inspirational stories of badass women from all corners of the sports universe, curated by TOGETHXR, a sports media company founded by legends Sue Bird, Alex Morgan, Simone Manuel, and Chloe Kim. From profiles of professional athletes and Olympians at the top of their game to everyday women putting in the work without a crowd, these are true tales of fierce competitors, dedicated teammates, and passionate advocates who are all too accustomed to hearing the word “no.”

Will "Mad Dog" Madigan is making his second trip to the Winter Games, and he couldn't be happier. Hockey is his life and playing for the US team is a privilege. Then he meets US figure skater Amber Sloane. She's beautiful, ambitious, and driven-everything Will desires in a woman. He would love to show Amber how hot life off the ice can be. Amber has skated her entire life, sacrificing everything in the hopes of one day winning gold. Now she's competing for the third and final time. She intends to win, and nothing's going to get in her way - until she meets Will.

In 2014, the conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine began - and top football club Shakhtar Donetsk has since been in exile. This book tells their story; inevitably a story of the conflict and the recent Russian invasion but also a testament to the power of the game and the will of the players. It is ultimately a footballing story, exploring the experience and meaning of being a Shakhtar player through the lens of a country in the shadow of a huge aggressive neighbour.

Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted American sports fans. As a historian of religion, the more he listened, Balmer couldn't help but wonder how the fervor he heard related to religious practice. From baseball to basketball and football to ice hockey, Balmer explores the origins and histories of big-time sports from the late nineteenth century to the present, with entertaining anecdotes and fresh insights into their ties to religious life.

We are living in highly evolved times. However, all the progress we enjoy come at a high cost, especially when it comes to our children’s ability to engage with the world around them. According to the Child Mind Institute, the average American child “spends about 4 to 7 minutes a day playing outside and over 7 hours a day in front of a screen”. That, in itself, is a significant cause for alarm. Playing outdoors isn’t just a great past-time, it’s also necessary for kids’ overall happiness, focus, and mental health.

Did you know that state universities in Virginia turned away more than 20,00 women in the early 1960s, but not a single man was denied admission? In the 1970s, the University of Georgia men's golf team got all the golf balls they needed, while the women's team was allowed only one per round. Here listeners are treated to the origins of the historic Title IX legislation that, among other things, mandated that equal funds must be available to boys' and girls' activities and interests.

What does it mean to be ready to play? Coaches and athletes understand the importance of being ready to play. However, many competitors find it difficult to define mental readiness and a challenge to be ready to play each and every time they perform. Ready to Play: Mental Training for Student-Athletes is written to help athletes better understand what it means to be ready to play and how to create and maintain a positive mindset for performance.

In this concise book, Dr. Carroll has addressed the primary challenges that athletes face—on and off the field. The tools necessary to be your best and improve your performance are here. Go ahead and dive in, practice your new skills, use the tools and be your best!

This state-of-the-art golf audiobook provides a focused, step-by-step golf-instruction program that will help you understand the golf game and improve your golfing ability.

From mastering the break shot to understanding tournament formats, Precision Play equips you with the knowledge and tools necessary to rise above the competition.

In The Game Changers: Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid, you will get the whole story on how a quarterback and coach pairing for the ages was able to change the fortunes of one of the most beleaguered franchises in all of sports. Loaded with statistics, game recaps, and behind-the-scenes looks, The Game Changers is the book for anyone who wants to know about the hottest team in America.

Documenting multiple challenges at every turn - as a target for racism from society at large and sexism both inside and outside of the Negro League - this is the unique story of the first woman to play professional baseball on a men's team, breaking barriers in sports while believing, "There's got to be a first in everything. Maybe it will be me." The text explains that as players began to leave the Negro League for major league teams, Toni Stone seized her only opportunity to play professional ball and replaced Henry Aaron on the Negro League's top team.