"The best baseball book I’ve read in years." — Sam Walker • "An exhilarating story of innovation." — Ben Reiter • "Swing Kings feels like a spiritual successor to Moneyball." — Baseball Prospectus From the Wall Street Journal’s national baseball writer, the captivating story of the home run boom, following a group of players who rose from obscurity to stardom and the rogue swing coaches who helped them usher the game into a new age. We are in a historic era for the home run. The 2019 season saw the most homers ever, obliterating a record set just two years before. It is a shift that has transformed the way the game is played, contributing to more strikeouts, longer games, and what feels like the logical conclusion of the analytics era. In Swing Kings, Wall Street Journal national baseball writer Jared Diamond reveals that the secret behind this unprecedented shift isn’t steroids or the stitching of the baseballs, it’s the most elemental explanation of all: the swing. In this lively narrative romp, he tracks a group of baseball’s biggest stars—including Aaron Judge, J.D. Martinez, and Justin Turner—who remade their swings under the tutelage of a band of renegade coaches, and remade the game in the process. These coaches, many of them baseball washouts who have reinvented themselves as swing gurus, for years were one of the game’s best-kept secrets. Among their ranks are a swimming pool contractor, the owner of a billiards hall, and an ex-hippie whose swing insights draw from surfing and the technique of Japanese samurai. Now, as Diamond artfully charts, this motley cast has moved from the baseball margins to its center of power. They are changing the way hitting is taught to players of all ages, and major league clubs are scrambling for their services, hiring them in record numbers as coaches and consultants. And Diamond himself, whose baseball career ended in high school, enlists the tutelage of each swing coach he profiles, with an aim toward starring in the annual Boston-New York media game at Yankee Stadium. Swing Kings is both a rollicking history of baseball’s recent past and a deeply reported, character-driven account of a battle between opponents as old as time: old and new, change and stasis, the establishment and those who break from it. Jared Diamond has written a masterful chronicle of America’s pastime at the crossroads.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a summary and analysis of the book and not the original book. If you'd like to purchase the original book, please paste this link in your browser: https://amzn.to/2NQl0qQ Just as exciting as winning the World Series, Astroball: The New Way to Win It All by Ben Reiter intrigues you as you learn about the behind the scenes process of analytics that drives so many of the decisions made in Major League Baseball clubhouses today. What does this ZIP Reads Summary Include? Synopsis of the original bookDetailed chapter-by-chapter summariesA guide to the analysts, coaches, and owners involvedThe science behind the Astro's successAn in-depth editorial reviewPersonal stories from the Astro's road to the World SeriesBackground on the author About the Original Book: For people interested in the statistical side of baseball, for baseball fans or anyone who is interested in the application of analytics for improving performance, Astroball: The New Way to Win It All by Ben Reiter provides facts, human interest bits and projections about America’s favorite sport. With plenty of background on the people making the changes to the way baseball is being developed in the 21st century to the players who are embracing these new processes, Astroball: The New Way to Win It All is easy to read while it provides a three-dimensional look at a complex operation. After extensive research and analysis of his own, Ben Reiter offers readers a clear look at the evolution of the traditional game of baseball with all the pros and cons of allowing computers to make decisions. What you read may very well surprise you as the amount of complex data that can be broken down and analyzed today is uncovered. In spite of all that information, though, there is still one important factor that can never be taken for granted: it is people who play the game. DISCLAIMER: This book is intended as a companion to, not a replacement for, Astroball.ZIP Reads is wholly responsible for this content and is not associated with the original author in any way. Please follow this link: https://amzn.to/2NQl0qQ to purchase a copy of the original book. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Description:Astroball: The New Way to Win it All (2018) by Ben Reiter tells the dramatic story of how the Houston Astros transformed from being the worst team in professional baseball to the best. Reiter first made the bold prediction that the Astros would win a World Series in a Sports Illustrated cover story in June 2014... Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more.

Named captain of his AstroBall team, Mir must first learn to play the game-and the tournament is coming up soon! Ages 6 to 8.