Sports Softball

In The Old Ball Game, Frank Deford, NPR sports commentator and Sports Illustrated journalist retells the story of an unusual friendship between two towering figures in baseball history.

A poignant, inspirational story about football, family, and love from Bill Cowher, the Super Bowl–winning, Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers coach, and cohost of CBS’s The NFL Today. Long before the Lombardi Trophy, the Golden Hall of Fame jacket, and successful TV career, legendary head...

Step up to the plate and separate fact from fiction in baseball’s origins! Did Abner Doubleday really create America’s favorite pastime, or does this story strike out? Listen to learn all you can about baseball’s beginnings!

A boy with a golden arm but no money for lessons. A mother who wants to give her son his dream before she dies. A broken down World Series pitcher who cannot go on after the death of his wife. These are the elements of The Pitcher. A story of a man at the end of his dream and a boy whose dream is to make his high school baseball team. In the tradition of The Natural and The Field of Dreams, this is a mythic story about how a man and a boy meet in the crossroads of their life and find a way to go on.

Think big league baseball begins with the opening pitch? Think again! In this Sports Illustrated Kids book, go behind the scenes of a typical game day in professional baseball—from prepping the diamond and welcoming fans to hawking hot dogs and broadcasting from the booth.

This Sports Illustrated Kids title combines fast-paced action, famous plays, and SEL skills to show what sets your favorite athletes and teams apart—on and off the baseball diamond.

Due to his achievements as a player and manager, as well as his sterling character, Gil Hodges deserves to be in the Hall of Fame more than any other player. A towering figure during the Golden Era of the 1950s, Hodges was the Brooklyn Dodgers’ powerful first baseman who, alongside Jackie Robinson, helped drive his team to six pennants and a thrilling World Series victory in 1955. Fans never booed the beloved home run hitter from Indiana who married a Brooklyn girl and settled in their borough, and they famously prayed for him when he slumped.

They knock out grand slams. They strike out batters. Who are the brightest stars in the game of baseball?

Given unprecedented access to La Russa and his team, best-selling journalist Bissinger captures baseball's strategic and emotional essence. We watch from the dugout as La Russa's Cardinals take on their archrivals, the Chicago Cubs, in a thrilling three-game series.

Popular novelist Dan Jenkins is well known in the golf world for his column in Golf Digest. A modern classic among 20th-century sports novels, Dead Solid Perfect is Jenkins' hilarious send-up of professional golfers and the often ludicrous reality of life on the tour.

In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team's Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. By quantifying the game's intangibles, they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay an American League pennant. This is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.

A brief introduction to the game of baseball as intended to be played by children.

Provides a brief introduction to the game of softball as intended to be played by children.

When journalist Terence Moore was 12 years old, he treasured his poster of Henry Aaron. Years later, Aaron would sign it for him. Later still, Moore would be named an honorary pallbearer at the home run king's funeral. Friends and family knew Aaron as quick-witted, hilarious, and fiercely opinionated beyond what was shown in public. With the encouragement of Aaron's family, Moore now shares this intimate perspective on the baseball legend, the culmination of decades of friendship and correspondence.

Weaving elements of memoir, philosophical reflection, sports writing, and humour, Fail Better is an intellectual love letter to baseball by one of North America's most engaging philosophers. Kingwell illustrates complex concepts like theoretically infinite game-space, "time out of time", and the rules of civility with accessible examples drawn from the game, its history, and his own halting efforts to hit 'em where they ain't.

Most people who resist logical thought in baseball preach "tradition" and "respecting the game". But many of baseball's traditions go back to the 19th century, when the pitcher's job was to provide the batter with a ball he could hit and fielders played without gloves. Instead of fearing change, Brian Kenny wants fans to think critically, reject outmoded groupthink, and embrace the changes that have come with the "sabermetric era".

This is the true story of how organized baseball started, how gambling shaped the game from its earliest days, and how it became our national pastime and our national mirror. Baseball in the Garden of Eden draws on original research to tell how the game evolved from other bat-and-ball games and gradually supplanted them, how the New York game came to dominate other variants, and how gambling and secret professionalism promoted and plagued the game.

When Sports Illustrated was launched in 1954, baseball was, indisputable, the national pastime, its stars America's epic heroes, its rivalries the era's mythology. As baseballs fortunes rose and fell over the next 50 years - and then rose again to new heights, drawing more than 65 million fans to ballparks in 2004 - the game never failed to produce great drama and inspired storytelling.

Learn the inspiring story of the Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds' legendary outfielder Ken Griffey Jr.! One of the many riveting listens in the Baseball Biography books series by Clayton Geoffreys. In Ken Griffey Jr.: The Inspiring Story of One of Baseball's Greatest Outfielders, you will learn the story of one of baseball's greatest outfielders, Ken Griffey Jr.

As a boy, Kenichi “Zeni” Zenimura dreams of playing professional baseball, but everyone tells him he is too small. Yet he grows up to be a successful player, playing with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig! When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, Zeni and his family are sent to one of ten internment camps where more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry are imprisoned without trials. Zeni brings the game of baseball to the camp, along with a sense of hope. This true story, set in a Japanese internment camp, introduces children to a little-discussed part of American history.