This is an excellent question and answer book about baseball and its history.

In celebration of the 100th issue of Who’s Who in Baseball—one of the game’s most venerable publications—comes a century's worth of the annual's iconic covers, insightful breakdowns of the players featured on those covers, and informative accounts of the baseball history tied to each year’s issue. 100 Years of Who’s Who in Baseball is a colorful, must-have book of baseball nostalgia for fans of the American Pastime. The start of the baseball season brings with it a host of annual traditions and reminders, and one of the most beloved—the annual Who’s Who in Baseball—arrives on newsstands across the country every Spring Training. The 2015 season marks 100 years of Who’s Who delivering year-by-year stats to generations of baseball fans to quickly and easily track a player’s performance from the minors to the majors. And while Who’s Who is trusted as an authoritative source of baseball statistics and has been used by generations of club executives, broadcasters, journalists, and fans—it’s the publication’s cover subject that each year generates as much hot-stove speculation and buzz as off-season rumors of trades, firings, and pitching rotations. In partnership with Who’s Who in Baseball, this celebratory book features each of the annual's 100 iconic covers in full color along with an account of why the player rated the cover and what was going on in baseball at the time. From baseball’s deadball era to the dawn of “replay review,” this collection offers a gorgeously illustrated history of the game.

The greatest players in baseball history are honored in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Fans and sports journalists often lament about players who might have joined the immortal ranks, if only fate--circumstances, injury or even death--hadn't intervened. Presenting a "who's who of what-ifs," this book focuses on 40 well known non-inductees, such as Tony Conigliaro, Denny McLain and Jose Fernandez, along with many others all but lost to history, such as Ross Barnes, Charlie Ferguson and Hal Trosky. Also included are more than 100 "honorable mentions" covering all of pro baseball history, from the 1860s to the 2010s.

Who were the best ballplayers of all time? It's an endless question, but here's something much more fun: Who was the worst of all time? Who was the lousiest pitcher? The biggest goat? The most despicable owner? The most over-paid bum? Finally, Filip Bondy answers these questions, wielding his own brand of formidable research, advanced sabermetrics and considerable wit to provide this indispensable guide to the less glorious side of our national pastime. Each chapter is filled with rich and colorful stories about the players unfortunate enough to be chosen in each category--like "Too Fat to Bat" or "Anyone Seen My Mitt." So welcome to the Hall of Shame. It's awesome.

In the late 1850s organized baseball was a club-based fraternal sport thriving in the cultures of respectable artisans, clerks and shopkeepers, and middle-class sportsmen. Two decades later it had become an entertainment business run by owners and managers, depending on gate receipts and the increasingly disciplined labor of skilled player-employees. Playing for Keeps is an insightful, in-depth account of the game that became America's premier spectator sport for nearly a century. Reconstructing the culture and experience of early baseball through a careful reading of the sporting press, baseball guides, and the correspondence of the player-manager Harry Wright, Warren Goldstein discovers the origins of many modern controversies during the game's earliest decades. The 20th Anniversary Edition of Goldstein's classic includes information about the changes that have occurred in the history of the sport since the 1980s and an account of his experience as a scholarly consultant during the production of Ken Burns's Baseball.

Just in time for baseball season! Babe Ruth came from a poor Baltimore family and, as a kid, he was a handful. It was at a reform school that Babe discovered his talent for baseball, and by the age of nineteen, he was on his way to becoming a sports legend. Babe was often out of shape and even more often out on the town, but he had a big heart and an even bigger swing! Kids will learn all about the Home Run King in this rags-to- riches sports biography. With black-and-white illustrations throughout, a true sports legend is brought to life.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Winner of the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year “An instant sports classic.” —New York Post * “Stellar.” —The Wall Street Journal * “A true masterwork…880 pages of sheer baseball bliss.” —BookPage (starred review) * “This is a remarkable achievement.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A magnum opus from acclaimed baseball writer Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100 is an audacious, singular, and masterly book that took a lifetime to write. The entire story of baseball rings through a countdown of the 100 greatest players in history, with a foreword by George Will. Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,? The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski. In the book’s introduction, Pulitzer Prize–winning commentator George F. Will marvels, “Posnanski must already have lived more than two hundred years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?” Baseball’s legends come alive in these pages, which are not merely rankings but vibrant profiles of the game’s all-time greats. Posnanski dives into the biographies of iconic Hall of Famers, unfairly forgotten All-Stars, talents of today, and more. He doesn’t rely just on records and statistics—he lovingly retraces players’ origins, illuminates their characters, and places their accomplishments in the context of baseball’s past and present. Just how good a pitcher is Clayton Kershaw in the 21st-century game compared to Greg Maddux dueling with the juiced hitters of the nineties? How do the career and influence of Hank Aaron compare to Babe Ruth’s? Which player in the top ten most deserves to be resurrected from history? No compendium of baseball’s legendary geniuses could be complete without the players of the segregated Negro Leagues, men whose extraordinary careers were largely overlooked by sportswriters at the time and unjustly lost to history. Posnanski writes about the efforts of former Negro Leaguers to restore sidelined Black athletes to their due honor and draws upon the deep troves of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and extensive interviews with the likes of Buck O’Neil to illuminate the accomplishments of players such as pitchers Satchel Paige and Smokey Joe Williams; outfielders Oscar Charleston, Monte Irvin, and Cool Papa Bell; first baseman Buck Leonard; shortstop Pop Lloyd; catcher Josh Gibson; and many, many more. The Baseball 100 treats readers to the whole rich pageant of baseball history in a single volume. Engrossing, surprising, and heartfelt, it is a magisterial tribute to the game of baseball and the stars who have played it.