The Baseball Stadium Insideris the essential companion to your ballpark experience. Inside, you'll discover the features, facts, and figures that make each stadium unique. From the saltwater tank filled with live cow-nosed rays at Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay to the Ferris wheel and carousel at Comerica Park in Detroit, exciting details await you with every turn of the page. This comprehensive ballpark guide will appeal not only to fanatics of America's pastime, but novice baseball admirers as well. Have you ever been to a game and wondered about the retired numbers adorning the outfield wall? Wonder no more—The Baseball Stadium Insider explains what each of these great ballplayers did to become baseball legends. Finally, all of the incredible games that have etched themselves into baseball history over the decades are represented. Who could ever forget Game 6 of the 1975 World Series when Boston's Carlton Fisk hit his famous extra-inning home run off Fenway's left field foul pole? Or when the Cleveland Indians, down 14–2 in the seventh inning, staged one of the greatest comebacks in baseball history to defeat the Seattle Mariners? So go ahead, take yourself out to the ballgame and get to know the cathedrals of baseball.

The incredible inside story of power, money, and baseball's last twenty years. In the fall of 1992, America's National Pastime is in crisis and already on the path to the unthinkable: cancelling a World Series for the first time in history. The owners are at war with each other, their decades-long battle with the players has turned America against both sides, and the players' growing addiction to steroids will threaten the game's very foundation. It is a tipping point for baseball, a crucial moment in the game's history that catalyzes a struggle for power by three strong-willed men: Commissioner Bud Selig, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and union leader Don Fehr. It's their uneasy alliance at the end of decades of struggle that pulls the game back from the brink and turns it into a money-making powerhouse that enriches them all. This is the real story of baseball, played out against a tableau of stunning athletic feats, high-stakes public battles, and backroom political deals -- with a supporting cast that includes Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, Joe Torre and Derek Jeter, George Bush and George Mitchell, and many more. Drawing from hundreds of extensive, exclusive interviews throughout baseball, The Game is a stunning achievement: a rigorously reported book and the must-read, fly-on-the-wall, definitive account of how an enormous struggle for power turns disaster into baseball's Golden Age.

Featuring more than 200 full-color photographs, Inside the Baseball Hall of Fame brings to vivid life the greatest treasures of baseball’s shrine, most of them rarely if ever displayed to visitors. For any baseball fan, a trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, is the thrill of a lifetime—no matter how many times you visit. But whether you go only once in your lifetime or make the pilgrimage annually, you’ll never be able to see every treasure in the museum’s collections. With Inside the Baseball Hall of Fame, readers can go behind the scenes to see seldom- or never-displayed items from among the 40,000 treasures in Cooperstown, in addition to some of the most important and popular items on exhibit at the museum—all gorgeously photographed in color. Captions written by Hall of Fame experts explain each object’s significance and relate unique stories associated with it. Here are just a few highlights from the nearly 200 objects in this beautiful book: -An 1887 ball-strike indicator from the only season when it took five balls to walk and four strikes to strike out -Pitcher Harvey Haddix’s glove from the 1959 game when he pitched 12 perfect innings—and lost 1–0 in the 13th -Shoeless Joe Jackson’s shoes -The Wonderboy bat and trombone case that Robert Redford used in The Natural -Rube Waddell’s glove from his 4–2, 20-inning victory over Cy Young on July 4, 1905 -A promissory note from the sale of Babe Ruth by Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee to New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert -The bat Joe Carter used to hit his 1993 World Series–ending home run -The oldest known photograph of two baseball teams, the New York Knickerbockers and the Brooklyn Excelsiors, taken on a ball field in 1859 Whether you’re a dedicated student of the game’s history or a newcomer to our National Pastime, Inside the Baseball Hall of Fame will fascinate you. You’ll find a surprising photograph or a story you didn’t know, complete with new insight into America’s game and culture. Take the trip of a lifetime inside baseball’s national museum and discover the game’s fabulous history—or reawaken beloved memories.

"Low and Inside" covers baseball's follies and freaks from the sports origins in the mists of the 19th century until about 1915. "A fascinating and hilarious collection. It is something that should be sandwiched between Marcel Proust and "forever Amber" on every bookshelf!"

In this groundbreaking book, Keith Law, baseball writer for The Athletic and author of the acclaimed Smart Baseball, offers an era-spanning dissection of some of the best and worst decisions in modern baseball, explaining what motivated them, what can be learned from them, and how their legacy has shaped the game. For years, Daniel Kahneman’s iconic work of behavioral science Thinking Fast and Slow has been required reading in front offices across Major League Baseball. In this smart, incisive, and eye-opening book, Keith Law applies Kahneman’s ideas about decision making to the game itself. Baseball is a sport of decisions. Some are so small and routine they become the building blocks of the game itself—what pitch to throw or when to swing away. Others are so huge they dictate the future of franchises—when to make a strategic trade for a chance to win now, or when to offer a millions and a multi-year contract for a twenty-eight-year-old star. These decisions have long shaped the behavior of players, managers, and entire franchises. But as those choices have become more complex and data-driven, knowing what’s behind them has become key to understanding the sport. This fascinating, revelatory work explores as never before the essential question: What were they thinking? Combining behavioral science and interviews with executives, managers, and players, Keith Law analyzes baseball’s biggest decision making successes and failures, looking at how gambles and calculated risks of all sizes and scales have shaped the sport, and how the game’s ongoing data revolution is rewriting decades of accepted decision making. In the process, he explores questions that have long been debated, from whether throwing harder really increases a player’s risk of serious injury to whether teams actually “overvalue” trade prospects. Bringing his analytical and combative style to some of baseball’s longest running debates, Law deepens our knowledge of the sport in this entertaining work that is both fun and deeply informative.

A Vintage Shorts Selection • Almost three decades ago, iconic and incomparable American essayist Joan Didion’s now-classic report from the Dukakis campaign trail exposed, in no uncertain terms, the complete sham that is the modern American presidential run. Writing with bite and some humor too, Didion betrays “the process”—the way in which power is exchanged and the status quo is maintained. All insiders—politicians, journalists, spin doctors—participate in a political narrative that is “designed as it is to maintain the illusion of consensus by obscuring rather than addressing actual issues.” The optics of presidential campaigns have grown ever more farcical and remote from the needs and issues most relevant to Americans’ lives, and Didion’s elegant, shrewd, and prescient commentary has never been more urgent than it is right now. An ebook short.

Willie Wilson played baseball with the mentality of a football player- a grimace on his face.Totally unprepared for the spotlight of being in the major leagues, Wilson experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows,sometimes unable to tell them apart.He helped lead the Kansas City Royals to their first World Series in only his second season the Major Leagues.His 1983 arrest on a cocaine charge could have been the defining moment of his life and sent him spiraling downward. Instead, he responded by helping the Royals to the World Series Championship in 1985, playing a key role in the Series by batting.367 and scoring two runs and three RBIs in the Royals' win over the St. Louis Cardinals.On his way to winning the 1982 batting title, Wilson was the first switch hitter since Mickey Mantle, and his 13 inside-the-park home runs are the most of any modern day player in history.Willie Wilson tells the story of growing up a son of the South, displaced to New Nersey at age 7 when he met his mother for the first time.He was a shy child seeking acceptance in athletics where he was a three-sport star at Summit (N.J.) High School. Drafted by the Royals in the first round of the 1974 amateur draft, Wilson turned down a football scholarship offer from Maryland to sign with the Royals.He quickly made his way through KC's minor league system, making his first appearance with the Major League team just two years later.But Wilson's story transcends Baseball. His life was rocked by the unexpected results of stardom and its demands and pitfalls. He tells a coutiionary tale of how a shy young man who never even dated untill the 11th grade can survive a post- career bankruptcy and turn his life around to help others with his inspirational tale.He now leads the Willie Wilson Baseball Foundation, hoping to share his experiences with inner-city youth so they can avoid the same missteps he made along the way.