In 1996, a brassy young team of fansproduced a guide to baseball statistics.Printed on a photocopier, its distribution,which was in the low hundreds, was limited tofriends, family, and die-hard stat heads. Sixteenyears later, the Baseball Prospectus annualregularly hits best-seller lists and has becomean indispensable guide for the serious fan. In Extra Innings, the team at Baseball Prospectusintegrates statistics, interviews, and analysis todeliver twenty arguments about today's game.In the tradition of their seminal book, BaseballBetween the Numbers, they take on everything fromsteroids to the amateur draft. They probe theimpact of managers on the game. They explainthe critical art of building a bullpen. In an erawhen statistics matter more than ever, Extra Inningsis an essential volume for every baseball fan.

Batter up! Football, basketball, and now baseball—is there anything the Barber brothers won’t try their best to do? The Barbers join the baseball team in this home-run adventure from NFL superstars and bestselling authors Tiki and Ronde Barber. Tiki and Ronde have their sights set on a big diamond—a baseball diamond! Sure, they’re experienced athletes, but they’ve never played baseball before. Do they have what it takes to make the team?

This memoir offers an intense, sometimes funny, sometimes tart, and often very moving account of the life of Doris Grumbach, author of Coming into the End Zone. Grumbach records an eventful year crowded with literary pleasures and pains, and the natural beauties and social particulars of life in coastal Maine.

After an airplane crash that claims the lives of most of his family, sixteen-year-old Tate finds unexpected solace in the stories of his great-aunt Vidalia's childhood travels with a Depression-era Negro League baseball team.

Extra Innings tackles the question of how writing about baseball has shaped our understanding and misunderstanding of the national pastime. In a series of astute reflections on baseball histories, biographies, personal reminiscences, and fiction, Richard Peterson explores the shifting balance of romance and fact in standard baseball histories, offers a lively discussion of baseball fiction, and assesses the realism of postmodern baseball writing. He discusses the influence of Jackie Robinson on the serious baseball novel and the reluctance of baseball fiction to treat race issues realistically. He also surveys baseball fleeting appearances in the literary canon and suggests a "top nine" reading list for the baseball aficionado. Slicing away the myths and distortions of baseball's bizarre history, Extra Innings.

In the year 2092, Ted Williams, the greatest baseball hitter of all time, is brought back to life through the science of cryonics. Once again playing for the Red Sox, Williams finds himself trapped in a world he hardly recognizes: the corruption of the game he loves with uber-juiced batters and robot pitchers; difficult love affairs clashing with his old desires; and a military conflict of the future in which he must harness the fighter pilot skills he used in his first life. Dr. Elizabeth Miles is the cryonicist who brings him back to life, initiating a dramatic sequence of medical achievements. She and her young son Johnnie are a constant reminder of what Williams lacked in his first trip around the bases, never devoting much time to love and family. But old habits die hard. With enemies and allies both on the field and off, Williams must make sense of it all and play on against a machine that he detests, pressure to take the "giddyup" he abhors, unrelenting media mania, and a dystopian world he cant ignore. The narrative resonates with the consequences of the major issues we face in our world today-the steroids debate in sports, global warming, corporate greed, technology run rampant, and the moral ambiguity of war. Extra Innings is alternately poignant and humorous, heartbreaking and joyous. Thought-provoking throughout, its a rollicking ride that looks at second chances and redemption, the ability to triumph over adversity, and the search for meaning in this life and the next. Flawed in his first life, Williams must decide in the second whats more important, the chance to win his first World Series, or the chance to be a better man? The Greatest Comeback of all Time is More Than Just a Game.

Boston, Tuesday, October 21, 1975. The Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds have endured an excruciating three-day rain delay. Tonight, at last, they will play Game Six of the World Series. Leading three games to two, Cincinnati hopes to win it all; Boston is desperate to stay alive. But for all the anticipation, nobody could have predicted what a classic it would turn out to be: an extra-innings thriller, created by one of the Big Red Machine's patented comebacks and the Red Sox's improbable late-inning rally; clutch hitting, heart-stopping defensive plays, and more twists and turns than a Grand Prix circuit, climaxed by one of the most famous home runs in baseball history that ended it in the twelfth. Here are all the inside stories of some of that era's biggest names in sports: Johnny Bench, Luis Tiant, Sparky Anderson, Pete Rose, Carl Yastrzemski--eight Hall of Famers in all--as well as sportscasters and network execs, cameramen, umpires, groundskeepers, politicians, and fans who gathered in Fenway that extraordinary night. Game Six is an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at what is considered by many to be the greatest baseball game ever played--remarkable also because it was about so much more than just balls and strikes. This World Series marked the end of an era; baseball's reserve clause was about to be struck down, giving way to the birth of free agency, a watershed moment that changed American sports forever. In bestselling author Mark Frost's talented hands, the historical significance of Game Six becomes every bit as engrossing as its compelling human drama.