Professional Sports

“50 Things to Know About Becoming a Professional Basketball Player” by author Baptiste Chazelas offers an approach to the life of a pro athlete in the deepest details. Most books on professional sport tell you the habits of only the elite of the discipline. Although there’s nothing wrong with that, you could find value in understanding the life of the people that you are most likely to relate to. The percentage of the so-called “elite” is slim to none, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any options for you out there.

“It’s not what you know, but who you know.” “Show me your friends, and I’ll show you who you are.” “Your network is your net worth.” What do these statements have in common, and what do they mean to you? They highlight a fundamental truth: our identity is shaped by the relationships we build throughout our lives. They also emphasize the power and necessity of strong connections. The importance of relationships is major weather personal or professional and in this book we take a dive in how you can learn the skills of being popular.

To be a part of Red Sox Nation is to be a hopeful romantic who neither betrays loyalty nor surrenders hope in the direst of circumstances. From Bangor to Back Bay, New Englanders endure in baseball matters. And life. The team's history has intersected with the history of Boston and well beyond it, through the Curse of the Bambino, the military service of Ted Williams during World War II, and the Boston Marathon bombing. The Fenway Effect chronicles these stories and others that have built the incredible saga of the Boston Red Sox.

In The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey, the award-winning poet - and Paris Review sports columnist - Rowan Ricardo Phillips chronicles 2017 as seen through the unique prism of its pivotal, revelatory, and historic tennis season. The annual tennis schedule is a rarity in professional sports in that it encapsulates the calendar year. And like the year, it's divided into four seasons, each marked by a final tournament: the Grand Slams.

Are you looking for a new challenge or a way to spend your free time? Do you love animals? Are you also a sport lover? Then horseback riding might be the perfect hobby for you. In this book, you will discover how to understand your horse, how to own a horse, how to prepare for a ride, different riding styles, how to ride a horse, safety measures to be aware of, and much more. The step-by-step guide in this book is so easy to follow that you will have success with it, even if you have failed at every other hobbies in your life.

"Trophy Son brings Conroy's The Great Santini and Malamud's The Natural into the present day...A terrific book." -Harlan Coben A compelling, provocative novel about a father, his son, and the cost of early excellence in our achievement-obsessed society. The third audiobook by New York Times...

At age 55, Jeffrey L. Reynolds, Ph.D., crossed the finish line at Ironman Florida, the crowning achievement of his endurance sports journey. Just weeks later, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He fought through treatment, recovered—and was hit again. This time, it was Stage 3B colorectal cancer. In Every Mile Matters, Reynolds shares how the physical training, mental fortitude, and resilience developed through triathlon racing became his greatest weapons in the fight for his life. He didn’t just apply his athletic mindset—he relied on it. Each round of radiation became a daily workout.

An exclusive look at England Rugby from a former player with a unique perspective. Nobody has spent as much time in the front line of rugby union's first two dramatic decades of professionalism - as a player, coach and administrator (blazer) - as Rob Andrew, or taken as much flak, all this in the wake of one of the most distinguished and successful of England Rugby playing careers.

The amazing and blessed life of popular ESPN reporter and correspondent for College GameDay, Marty Smith, whose mission in this thoughtful and funny memoir is to return fans to the true soul of sports in this country. You know Marty right? The guy during College GameDay hanging off the back of a...

When the Summer Olympics come to a close, beach volleyball disappears from the public eye, and what the rest of the world fails to see once again becomes reality: It is a remarkable struggle, a wondrous grind, to live the life of a professional beach volleyball player. Featuring interviews and arresting accounts of more than 100 beach volleyball players, award-winning writer and professional beach volleyball player Travis Mewhirter tells the stories, for the first time, of the modern player.

Having a fitness trainer is in high demand now. As a result, many fitness trainers can make a honest living, whether they work as a freelance trainer or work as personal fitness trainers. So, if you are a fitness trainer, have you thought about making your fitness training job into a high-earning job? As a fitness trainer, it is not hard to find people who need your services. As a legally recognized profession, you can get a certification that can boost your career. This book prepares you for the hurdles to achieving that needed certification.

Mason James is the responsible one who stayed behind to run the ranch while his brother, Rock, took off to play professional hockey. Women have used him before to get to his brother - and Mason intends never to get burned again. But after he meets quirky Tessa Kane at his brother's wedding, Mason discovers he's ready to take a chance on love. Tessa Kane is a reporter on the verge of losing a job she desperately needs - unless she's clever enough to snag a story on the famous Rockford James. But when she falls for her subject's brother, she's caught between a rock and a cowboy.

With contributions from more than three dozen professional fighters (including 11 world champions), Protect Yourself at All Times will prepare any up-and-coming boxer for the challenges he will surely encounter from the business of boxing. The Protect Yourself at All Times campaign was founded by Adrian Clark to further protect fighters outside the ring. The focus of this movement (and book) is to educate and inform the fighters on topics such as taxes, contracts, retirement, and guarding their money.

Professional distance runners Elvin Kibet and Shadrack Kipchirchir grew up in rural Kenyan villages. Though their lives began in poverty, both were driven to reach their full potential, to gain an education, and make a difference. And they would find their way to do just that through the high-pressure world of distance running.

Longtime fly fisherman Quinn Grover had contemplated the “why” of his fishing identity before, more recently, becoming focused on the “how” of it. He realized he was a dedicated fly fisherman, in large part, because public lands and public waterways in the West made it possible. In Wilderness of Hope Grover recounts his fly-fishing experiences with a strong evocation of place, connecting those experiences to the ongoing national debate over public lands.

In the early years of Adams Golf, entrepreneur Barney Adams labored in obscurity. He collected six patents for his golf products, manufacturing fine equipment but enjoying no sales. Everything changed for him and his company in 1996, though, when he invented the Tight Lies fairway wood. Working as a custom fitter, his customers repeatedly asked for a club they could play from "long iron" distance, from 180 to 220 yards to the green. Adams knew the technical secret was to lower the club's center of gravity.

A Nigerian native who emigrated to the United States at age 11, Alex Owumi's exploits on the basketball court earned him a college scholarship to Georgetown University. Undrafted by the NBA, Owumi pursued his basketball dream overseas, eventually signing with Al-Nasr of Libya, a state-run athletic club privately funded by the family of Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi.

The legendary sports journalist writes about the team that changed his life: the Morton High School Lady Potters basketball team. Dave Kindred has covered dozens of Super Bowls and written about stars like Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan. But a high-school girls basketball...

Chris Dombrowski was playing a numbers game: two passions - poetry and fly-fishing; two children, one of them in utero; and an income hovering perilously close to zero. Enter, at this particularly challenging moment, a miraculous email: can't go, it's all paid for, just book a flight to Miami. Thus began a journey that would lead to the Bahamas and to David Pinder, a legendary bonefishing guide.

The first meeting between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden, transcended the world of sports to become a major international media spectacle with tremendous social and political overtones. Sportswriter Michael Arkush draws from interviews with Ali's trainer, Angelo Dundee; his doctor, Ferdie Pacheco; and more than 100 others to examine how the fight, watched by more than 300 million viewers around the world, ushered in a new era of sports marketing. From then on, every game would be turned into an "event," powered by over-the-top hype and carefully staged pageantry.