When we think of baseball, we think of sunny days and leisurely outings at the ballpark--rarely do thoughts of death come to mind. Yet during the game's history, hundreds of players, coaches and spectators have died while playing or watching the National Pastime. In its second edition, this ground-breaking study provides the known details for 150 years of game-related deaths, identifies contributing factors and discusses resulting changes to game rules, protective equipment, crowd control and stadium structures and grounds. Topics covered include pitched and batted-ball fatalities, weather and field condition accidents, structural failures, fatalities from violent or risky behavior and deaths from natural causes.

Explosive psychological novel for fans of Michael Chabon, Mark Haddon, and George Saunders. Marilyn Monroe died just after midnight on August 5th, 1962; former Little League champion Kimitake "Clyde" Koba was born on the same day, at the same time. As Clyde struggles to escape the ghost of his brother and his alcoholic father and stumbles through his first love, he finds strength in the belief that he is the reincarnation of Monroe. Born on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, teen prodigy Raphael Dweck has been told his whole life that he has a special purpose in God's plan. The only problem is, he can't shake off his doubts, his urges, or the trail of trouble and ruin that follow in his wake. A decade later, Raphael and 'Marilyn' find each other wandering the plastic-bright streets of Hollywood and set out to make a documentary about the transmigration of souls. But when the roleplaying goes too far, they find themselves past the point of no return in their quest to prove who and what they are to their families, God, the world, and themselves. Israel and Japan collide in the City of Angels in this explosive psychological novel about faith, idol worship, and the search for identity by the author of Jerusalem Ablaze, Stories of Love and Other Obsessions. Praise for The Death of Baseball: "Orlando Ortega-Medina's engrossing new novel, The Death of Baseball, is an epic tale of loneliness and the desire of belonging" -Lambda Literary "A tight, Gothic tale of rejection, personal struggle, and acceptance..." -Foreword Reviews "Ortega-Medina's graphic prose is vivid...[his] deft construction of this complex plot reflects his experience in creating short stories..." -Kirkus Reviews "...[B]eautiful, in-depth characters and compelling storytelling" -Helen Lederer (The Times Literary Supplement) "Ortega-Medina brings a convincing passionate story of lives and dependencies, switching style and focus throughout to keep a sense of pace and engagement till the last page" -GScene Magazine "...[N]ecessary, heartfelt, thought-provoking and sublimely perfect... Oh yes. I did say perfect" -Raven Crime Reviews "[A]n intense and thought-provoking work...very much recommended" -TripFiction "[T]his author could write a story about paint drying and it'd be one of the most engrossing and compelling things you'd ever read" -The Worm Hole "The prose is beautifully wrought. It's easy to immerse yourself into this world, and into the characters...I sobbed at the end" -Reviews by Jaye

It was the golden age of baseball, and all over the country teams gathered on town fields in front of throngs of fans to compete for local glory. In Rawlins, Wyoming, residents lined up for tickets to see slugger Joseph Seng and the rest of the Wyoming Penitentiary Death Row All Stars as they took on all comers in baseball games with considerably more at stake. Teams came from Reno, Nevada; Klamath Falls, Oregon; Bodie, California; and throughout the west to take on the murderers who made up the line-up. This is a fun and wildly dramatic and suspenseful look at the game of baseball and at the thrilling events that unfolded at a prison in the wide-open Wyoming frontier in pursuit of wins on the diamond.

Despite whizzing fastballs and screaming line drives, baseball today is not especially dangerous. But over the game's history, hundreds of players, coaches, and spectators have died at the ballpark. This ground-breaking study covers nearly 150 years of game-related fatalities. Providing the known details for each death, the authors also identify contributing factors and discuss changes to playing rules, protective equipment, crowd control, stadium structure, and the grounds themselves. Chapter topics include pitched- and batted-ball fatalities, weather and field condition accidents, structural failures, violence or risky behavior fatalities, and deaths from natural causes.

The 50th Anniversary edition of “the book that changed baseball” (NPR), chosen by Time magazine as one of the “100 Greatest Non-Fiction” books. When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold, and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries. Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four. Fans liked discovering that athletes were real people—often wildly funny people. David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Vietnam, wrote a piece in Harper’s that said of Bouton: “He has written . . . a book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book.” Today Ball Four has taken on another role—as a time capsule of life in the sixties. “It is not just a diary of Bouton’s 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros,” says sportswriter Jim Caple. “It’s a vibrant, funny, telling history of an era that seems even further away than four decades. To call it simply a ‘tell all book’ is like describing The Grapes of Wrath as a book about harvesting peaches in California.” Includes a new foreword by Jim Bouton's wife, Paula Kurman “An irreverent, best-selling book that angered baseball’s hierarchy and changed the way journalists and fans viewed the sports world.” —The Washington Post

Lyman Bostock Jr. had baseball in his blood. The son of a former Negro League standout, Bostock began his professional career with the Minnesota Twins in 1975. Two years later, he became one of the first players in major league baseball to cash in on the new era of free agency, signing with the California Angels for more than $2 million—one of the richest contracts in sports history at that time. But Bostock’s true potential would never be known. On September 23, 1978, Bostock was shot and killed in Gary, Indiana. He was just 27 years old. In Lyman Bostock: The Inspiring Life and Tragic Death of a Ballplayer, K. Adam Powell tells the story of Bostock’s humble beginnings in Birmingham, Alabama, his coming-of-age in Los Angeles, his involvement in the Black Power movement, his brief yet impactful baseball career, and his senseless murder in 1978. Those who knew Bostock and played alongside him believed he was good enough to win multiple batting titles, and perhaps even make the Hall of Fame some day. More than just a ballplayer, Bostock was known as a stand-out citizen who never forgot where he came from, investing hours of his time giving back to his community, visiting with local youth, and hosting baseball clinics. Lyman Bostock captures a remarkable era in professional baseball, an era when ballplayers such as Bostock still engaged closely with their fans even as power shifted from management and owners to the players. Through careful research, exclusive interviews, and rarely-seen photographs, Bostock’s life and the times in which he lived are conveyed in intimate detail. For baseball fans of all ages, Lyman Bostock’s biography is a poignant and inspiring story of an upcoming star whose life was cut much too short.

For Joseph Seng and the other death row inmates in the line-up for the Wyoming State Penitentiary All Stars, baseball was literally a game of life or death. Based on primary source documents, some unearthed at the old prison itself, Playing for Time recreates the compelling story of this team of hardened criminals who excelled at a civilized game to become amateur sports heroes, and of the key player who led them to many victories. It is soon to be a major Hollywood motion picture.