Widely acclaimed as the best pitching coach in baseball, Leo Mazzone stands unique among his brethren. A recent Sports Illustrated poll of active players and coaches overwhelmingly verified his status as baseball's elite pitching guru. ESPN went even further, proclaiming Mazzone as the best all-time assistant coach in any sport. Leo Mazzone's Tales From The Mound gives the inside story of his experiences and pitching philosophies, and a front-row view of the unprecedented 14-year postseason run by the Atlanta Braves that included five trips to the World Series and one World Championship.

Freakonomics meets Moneyball in this provocative exposé of baseball’s most fiercely debated controversies and some of its oldest, most dearly held myths. Providing far more than a mere collection of numbers, economics professor and popular blogger J.C. Bradbury shines the light of his economic thinking on baseball, exposing the power of tradeoffs, competition, and incentives. Utilizing his own “sabernomic” approach, Bradbury dissects baseball topics such as: • Did steroids have nothing to do with the recent homerun records? Incredibly, Bradbury’s research reveals steroids probably had little impact. • Which players are ridiculously overvalued? Bradbury lists all players by team with their revenue value to the team listed in dollars—including a dishonor role of those players with negative values—updated in paperback to include the 2007 season. • Does it help to lobby for balls and strikes? Statistics alone aren’t enough anymore. This is a refreshing, lucid, and powerful read for fans, fantasy buffs, and players—as well as coaches at all levels—who want to know what is really happening on the field.

Andersen's goal to become the NFL's all-time leading scorer continued right on through the 2004 season (when he kicked for the Vikings), when Gary Anderson came out of retirement yet again to stay just ahead of the former Danish soccer star.

Theirs was a prolonged run of excellence like none other in sports history. From 1991 through 2005, the Atlanta Braves won fourteen consecutive division championships, a streak no team in professional sports has ever come close to approaching. Beginning with the unexpected worst-to-first miracle of 1991, the Braves commenced an era of sustained dominance that Major League Baseball never saw coming. From the wondrous run to the ’91 pennant, to Francisco Cabrera’s two-run single in the ’92 NLCS that returned the Braves to the World Series, to Atlanta’s first world championship in 1995, it’s all here. Captured within these pages are those memories, retold firsthand by the players who delivered the Braves to the pinnacle of pro sports, including David Justice, Terry Pendleton, Ron Gant, Lonnie Smith, Jeff Blauser, Greg Olson, and Tom Glavine. But also chronicled in Game of My Life Atlanta Braves are the franchise’s many dark years of mediocrity that set up such a magical run. Dating back to the Braves’ move from Milwaukee, this newly revised book will catch up with Braves legends like Hank Aaron, Phil Niekro, Bob Horner, and Dale Murphy, as well as the more recent stars.

John Smoltz was one of the greatest Major League pitchers of the late twentieth / early twenty-first century—one of only two in baseball history ever to achieve twenty wins and fifty saves in single seasons—and now he shares the candid, no-holds-barred story of his life, his career, and the game he loves in Starting and Closing. A Cy Young Award-winner, future Baseball Hall of Famer, and currently a broadcaster for his former team, the Atlanta Braves, Smoltz delivers a powerful memoir with the kind of fascinating insight into game that made Moneyball a runaway bestseller, plus a heartfelt and truly inspiring faith and religious conviction, similar to what illuminates each page of Tim Tebow’s smash hit memoir, Through My Eyes.

From 1991 through 2005, the Atlanta Braves did something no pro sports team can match, finishing in first place for fourteen consecutive seasons. During that stretch, the Braves paired powerful pitching with potent hitting that produced under pressure. Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox won with veteran teams, young teams, slugging teams, and several times with teams that emphasized speed and defense. His teams captured on hundred wins in six different seasons. In When the Braves Ruled the Diamond, now newly updated to include a discussion of the team's latest Hall of Fame inductees, former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg covers the record-breaking era that transformed Atlanta from the Bad-News Braves to America's Team. With separate chapters on Cox, fabled pitching coach Leo Mazzone, and Hall of Fame pitchers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, this book also highlights the contributions of Andres Galarraga, Andruw Jones, Chipper Jones, Brian Jordan, Javy Lopez, Terry Pendleton, and many more Braves stars. It features year-by-year summaries, Opening Day lineups, and even oddball anecdotes that explain why the fourteen-year streak may never be duplicated. It is the perfect gift for fans of baseball history as well as fans of the Atlanta Braves! Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Atlanta magazine’s editorial mission is to engage our community through provocative writing, authoritative reporting, and superlative design that illuminate the people, the issues, the trends, and the events that define our city. The magazine informs, challenges, and entertains our readers each month while helping them make intelligent choices, not only about what they do and where they go, but what they think about matters of importance to the community and the region. Atlanta magazine’s editorial mission is to engage our community through provocative writing, authoritative reporting, and superlative design that illuminate the people, the issues, the trends, and the events that define our city. The magazine informs, challenges, and entertains our readers each month while helping them make intelligent choices, not only about what they do and where they go, but what they think about matters of importance to the community and the region.