Baseball books don't get any better than this...Earl Weaver has at last been given his due. --George F. Will

Vivid...Most sports books are pop flies to the infield. Miller's is a screaming triple into the left field corner. --Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The first major biography of legendary Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver--who has been described as the Copernicus of baseball and the grandfather of the modern game--The Last Manager is a wild, thrilling, and hilarious ride with baseball's most underappreciated genius, and one of its greatest characters.

Long before the Moneyball Era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History's feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968 to 1982.

When Weaver was hired by the Orioles, managers were still seen as coaches and inspirational leaders, more teachers of the game than strategists. Weaver invented new ways of building baseball teams, prioritizing on-base average, elite defense, and strike throwing. Weaver was the first manager to use a modern radar gun, and he pioneered the use of analytical data. By moving six-foot four-inch Cal Ripken Jr. to shortstop, Weaver paved the way for a generation of plus-sized superstar shortstops, such as Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. He foreshadowed almost everything that Bill James, Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, and hundreds of other big-brain baseball types would later present as innovations.

Beyond being a great baseball mind, Weaver was a rare baseball character. Major League Baseball is show business, and Weaver understood how much of his job was entertainment. Weaver's legendary outbursts offered players cathartic relief from their own frustration, signaled his concern for the team, and fired up fans. In his frequent arguments with umpires, he hammed it up for the crowds, faked heart attacks, ripped bases out of the ground, and pretended to toss umpires out of the game. Weaver also fought with his players, especially Jim Palmer, but that creative tension contributed to stunning success and a hilarious clubhouse. During his tenure as major-league manager, the Orioles won the American League pennant in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1979, each time winning more than 100 games.

The Last Manager uncovers the story of Weaver's St. Louis childhood with a mobster uncle, his years of minor-league heartbreak, and his unlikely road to becoming a big-league manager, while tracing the evolution of the game from the old-time baseball of cross-country trains and desk contracts to the modern era of free agency, video analysis, and powerful player agents. Weaver's career is a critical juncture in baseball history. He was the only manager to hold a job during the five years leading up to and the five years after free agency upended the sport in 1976.

Weaver was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. No manager belongs there more, wrote Tom Boswell. Weaver encapsulates the fire, the humor, the brains, the childishness, the wisdom and the goofy fun of baseball. The Last Manager tells the story of one man--belligerent, genius, infamous--who left his mark on the game for generations.

NEW YORK TIMES bestseller

Winner of the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year

National Sports Media Association Sports Book of the Year

An NPR Book of the Day

#1 New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game: a countdown of 50 of the most memorable moments in baseball's history, to make you fall in love with the sport all over again.

Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It's Willie Mays's catch, Babe Ruth's called shot, and Kirk Gibson's limping home run; the slickest steals; the biggest bombs; and the most triumphant no-hitters. But these are also moments raw with the humanity of the game, the unheralded heroes, the mesmerizing mistakes drenched in pine tar, and every story, from the immortal to the obscure, is told from a unique perspective. Whether of a real fan who witnessed it, or the pitcher who gave up the home run, the umpire, the coach, the opposing player--these are fresh takes on moments so powerful they almost feel like myth.

Posnanski's previous book, The Baseball 100, portrayed the heroes and pioneers of the sport, and now, with his trademark wit, encyclopedic knowledge, and acute observations, he gets at the real heart of the game. From nineteenth-century pitchers' duels to breaking the sport's color line in the '40s, all the way to the greatest trick play of the last decade and the slide home that became a meme, Posnanski's illuminating take allows us to rediscover the sport we love--and thought we knew.

Why We Love Baseball is an epic that ends too soon, a one-of-a-kind love letter to the sport that has us thrilled, torn, inspired, and always wanting more.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK - Sports Illustrated #1 Book of 2024 - A hugely entertaining history of baseball and New York City, bursting with larger-than-life figures and fascinating stories from the game's beginnings to the end of World War II.

You're going to beg for extra innings. Without missing a scandal or a sensation, with an eye on how assimilation transforms the picture, Kevin Baker has written a buoyant, double coming-of-age story. --Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Baseball is the New York game because New York is where the diamond was first laid out, where the bunt and the curveball were invented, and where the home run was hit. It's where the game's first stars were born, and where everyone came to play or watch the game. With nuance and depth, historian Kevin Baker brings this all vividly back to life: the still-controversial, indelible moments--Did the Babe call his shot? Was Merkle out? Did they fix the 1919 World Series? Here are all the legendary players, managers, and owners, in all their vivid, complicated humanity, on and off the field.

In Baker's hands the city and the game emerge from the murk of nineteenth-century American life--driven by visionaries and fixers, heroes and gangsters. He details how New York and its favorite sport came to mirror one another, expanding, bumbling through catastrophe and corruption, and rising out of these trials stronger than ever.

From the first innings played in vacant lots and tavern yards in the 1820s; to the canny innovations that created the very first sports league; to the superb Hispanic and Black players who invented their own version of the game when white baseball sought to exclude them. And all amidst New York's own, incredible evolution from a raw, riotous town to a new world city. The New York Game is a riveting, rollicking, brilliant ode to America's beloved pastime and to its indomitable city of origin.

Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone--but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games?

In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only the single most influential baseball book ever (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what may be the best book ever written on business (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places--the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players--but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted.

In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

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.

NEW YORK TIMES bestseller

Winner of the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year

National Sports Media Association Sports Book of the Year

An NPR Book of the Day

#1 New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game: a countdown of 50 of the most memorable moments in baseball's history, to make you fall in love with the sport all over again.

Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It's Willie Mays's catch, Babe Ruth's called shot, and Kirk Gibson's limping home run; the slickest steals; the biggest bombs; and the most triumphant no-hitters. But these are also moments raw with the humanity of the game, the unheralded heroes, the mesmerizing mistakes drenched in pine tar, and every story, from the immortal to the obscure, is told from a unique perspective. Whether of a real fan who witnessed it, or the pitcher who gave up the home run, the umpire, the coach, the opposing player--these are fresh takes on moments so powerful they almost feel like myth.

Posnanski's previous book, The Baseball 100, portrayed the heroes and pioneers of the sport, and now, with his trademark wit, encyclopedic knowledge, and acute observations, he gets at the real heart of the game. From nineteenth-century pitchers' duels to breaking the sport's color line in the '40s, all the way to the greatest trick play of the last decade and the slide home that became a meme, Posnanski's illuminating take allows us to rediscover the sport we love--and thought we knew.

Why We Love Baseball is an epic that ends too soon, a one-of-a-kind love letter to the sport that has us thrilled, torn, inspired, and always wanting more.

Baseball has long been synonymous with Kansas. Go back to the late 1800s and the birth of Walter Johnson and George Sweatt, Humboldt kids who played baseball at the highest level but in different leagues due to racism. Learn about the sixteen-year-old signed by the Kansas City Athletics, who left the University of Kansas campus to play his first game at Municipal Stadium the next day. Read about pioneers in the game named Joyce, Katie and Alex, determined and talented women who are part of our national pastime. Author Michael Travis shares his love for the game, rounding the bases from its beginnings in Wichita with League 42 to the Major Leagues.

Calling all Yankees fans

The Ultimate New York Yankees Trivia Book is a staple for anyone who loves baseball, sports trivia, and the Bronx Bombers. You will be tested on your knowledge of mind-blowing facts from the early days when Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig owned New York, as well as the current era of Bronx baseball led by the likes of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.

Within these pages, you will find answers to over 350 trivia questions as well as hundreds of interesting facts, including:

• How many times was Billy Martin hired and fired as Yankees manager? (More times than you'd think.)
• In Derek Jeter's junior high yearbook, students were asked to write what they planned to be doing in 10 years. Jeter answered, Playing shortstop for the New York Yankees.
• In a high school football game, former Yankee Johnny Damon suffered his first sports concussion at the hands of which NFL star?
• Back in 1998, former Yankee Alex Rodriguez was asked by a reporter who his dream date would be with. His answer? Jennifer Lopez. And 22 years later, J-Lo and A-Rod are currently engaged to be married.
• Who threw the Yankees' very first no-hitter in 1917?

Whether you're a lifelong Yanks fan or are simply looking to hit one out of the park on MLB Trivia Night at your local bar, The Ultimate New York Yankees Trivia Book is a grand slam.

The Savannah Bananas have peeled back the game of baseball and made it fun again.

This is their story.

For his entire childhood, Jesse Cole dreamed of pitching in the Majors. Now, he has a life in baseball that he could have only imagined: he met the love of his life in the industry; they shaped Savannah, Georgia's professional team into the league champion Savannah Bananas; and now the Bananas have restyled baseball itself into something all their own: Banana Ball.

Fast, fun, and outrageously entertaining, Banana Ball brings fans right into the game. The Bananas throw out a first banana rather than a ball. Their first-base coach dances to Thriller or Britney between innings. Players run into the crowd to hand out roses. And the rules themselves are bananas: if a fan catches a foul ball it's an out; and players might go to bat on stilts or wearing a banana costume. And their fans absolutely love it.

But the reason this team is on the forefront of a movement is less about the play on the field and more about the atmosphere that the team culture creates. For the first time in this book, Jesse reveals the ideas and experiences that allowed him to reimagine America's oldest sport by creating a phenomenon that is helping fans fall in love with the game all over again.

This is a story that's bigger than baseball and bigger than the yellow tuxedo Jesse wears as the ringmaster of every game. And to understand the movement, you have to understand the story at its core. In Jesse's telling, it takes heart, innovation, and joy (and a bit of tropical fruit) to make something wholly original out of one of America's great traditions. His story is part Moneyball, part Field of Dreams, part The Greatest Showman. It is a personal story, a creativity story, and the story of a business scrapping for every success. And it has several distinct love stories--love stories like Jesse and his father, Jesse and his wife, the team and the sport of baseball, the team and the fans.

This is Jesse calling his dad from the outfield after each Bananas game, and putting unending creativity into a team with the ultimate goal of bringing the Bananas to the professional ballparks he himself never got to play in. This is his story of baseball, love, leadership, and going just a bit bananas for all.

Cleveland sports fans: If you can't laugh about it, what else are you gonna do?

Cleveland teams have set records for futility in baseball, football, and basketball. But even beyond that, Cleveland fans have witnessed more than their share of weird, wild, random, and odd occurrences, from front office ineptitude to absurd losses to bizarre injuries and more, like ...

• The Cavs player who accidentally scored a layup in the wrong basket (and another who shot at his own basket on purpose) ...
• The testy Tribe manager who got into a fight during an exhibition game with the Triple-A farm team ...
• The Browns owner who took advice from a random stranger on the street and blew a first-round draft pick on Johnny Football ...
• The rookie pitcher shot in the leg while riding on the team bus wearing a cheerleader outfit and go-go boots ...
• The team owner once called the dumbest man in pro sports ...
• One Browns star whose season-ending injury came while popping a wheelie and another whose eye was nearly put out by a referee's flag ...
• The Indians player who was traded for himself ...
• A victory owed to a timely swarm of insects ...
• The Cavaliers' first draft, planned using bubble-gum cards ...
• When Tribe mascot Slider fell off the outfield wall into live action during a playoff game ...

Phew! And we're just getting started. (We haven't even mentioned 10-Cent Beer Night yet.) If you're a Cleveland sports fan, you'll enjoy this offbeat collection.

Baseball's October showcase has provided some high drama over the years. Willie Mays's spectacular catch in 1954, Bill Mazeroski's walk-off homer in 1960, and Kirk Gibson's pinch-hit blast in 1988 are just a few of the memorable moments that have dominated highlight reels. The outcome of the Series has not always been terribly surprising-especially during the late-1940s/early-1950s when the Yankees captured five consecutive championships, breaking their previous record of four straight titles from 1936 to 1939. But in spite of its predictability at times, the Fall Classic has taken many unexpected turns. The 1906 Cubs lost to the weak-hitting White Sox after establishing a new regular season record for wins. The 1955 Dodgers avenged seven prior October failures with an improbable victory over the seemingly invincible Yankees. And in 1969, the Mets finally shed their image as loveable losers, dethroning the powerful Orioles. In more than a century of World Series play, a number of similar scenarios have emerged. Twenty-two of those stories are told in Shoctober. The book also includes an appendix of game statistics as well as a section on World Series trivia.

Finalist for the 2024 Casey Award and selected as a 'Best Baseball Book of 2024' by Sports Collector's Digest

For twenty Major League seasons, the name Dwight Evans was synonymous with sterling defense and a potent bat. A Red Sox legend, he played in 2,505 games in Boston - second only to Carl Yastrzemski - and hit 379 home runs for the club, trailing only Yastrzemski and Ted Williams. Nobody hit more home runs in the American League and no player had more extra base hits in all of baseball than the man affectionately known as Dewey did during the decade of the 1980s, but it was his rifle-like right arm - and eight Gold Glove Awards - that established him as the best right fielder of his era.

In Dewey, Evans and baseball historian Erik Sherman take Red Sox fans back to a glorious time in baseball, filled with unforgettable World Series appearances in 1975 and 1986, legendary teammates including fellow outfield mainstays Jim Rice and Fred Lynn, and some of the most memorable games in MLB history.

Yet for all his greatness on the baseball field, the immense challenges that Evans and his family dealt with off it were even more impressive, a journey that Evans poignantly explores in detail like never before. A man who would become known for his class, dignity, and strength, Evans would use those attributes along with his wife Susan to help nurture and comfort two sons, Timothy and Justin, as they battled neurofibromatosis (NF) - commonly known as elephant man's disease - a condition that causes tumors to form in the brain, spinal cord, and nerves.

Part charming memoir of an underrated star from bygone era of baseball and part exploration of a man whose inner strength sustained him through the trials and tribulations surrounding the diagnosis, treatment, and deaths of two sons who were tragically afflicted with NF, Dewey is the long-awaited full story of Dewey from the man himself.

In 1943, while the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals were winning pennants and meeting in that year's World Series, one of the nation's strongest baseball teams practiced on a skinned-out college field in the heart of North Carolina. Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, and Johnny Sain were among a cadre of fighter-pilot cadets who wore the Cloudbuster Nine baseball jersey at an elite Navy training school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In this spirited Field of Dreams-like father-daughter account, author Anne R. Keene opens with a story about her father, Jim Raugh, who suited up as the team batboy and mascot. He got to know his baseball heroes personally, watching players hit the road on cramped, tin-can buses, dazzling factory workers, kids, and service members at dozens of games, including a war-bond exhibition against Babe Ruth's team at Yankee Stadium.

Jimmy followed his baseball dreams as a college All-American, but was crushed later in life by a failed major-league bid with the Detroit Tigers. He would have carried this story to his grave had Anne not discovered his scrapbook from a Navy school that shaped America's greatest heroes including George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford, John Glenn, Paul Bear Bryant, and John Wooden.

With the help of rare images and insights from World War II baseball veterans such as Dr. Bobby Brown and Eddie Robinson, the story of this remarkable team is brought to life for the first time in The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II.

A moving elegy . . . [to] the best team the majors ever saw . . . the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. -- New York Times

The classic narrative of growing up within shouting distance of Ebbets Field, covering the Jackie Robinson Dodgers, and what's happened to everybody since.

This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for The Herald Tribune. This is a book about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory days were behind them. In short, it is a book about America, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and disaster, and told with warmth, humor, wit, candor, and love.

An authoritative exploration of how Black Americans have shaped baseball from its emergence after the Civil War to the Negro Leagues and Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier, up to today's game--by award-winning author Gerald Early in collaboration with the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

No sport has been more associated with America's sense of itself, with its identity, than baseball. No sport has been so inextricably bound with America's traditions--with its notions of democracy and fair play--than baseball. And no professional sport in America has been as dramatically connected to social change as Major League Baseball when it became racially integrated the moment Jackie Robinson took the field with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.

Play Harder comes at a time when the history of Black baseball has become especially relevant--following MLB's recent recognition of the Negro Leagues as major leagues and the effort to incorporate statistics from the Negro Leagues into those for all players. Before Robinson, as Play Harder shows, Black athletes played baseball as far back as the 1800s even before the establishment of the Negro Leagues. But once founded in 1920, the Negro Leagues gave Black Americans an inroad to baseball that would be enduring and profound. The leagues were an instrument of community building during a time when discrimination separated Black people from all white enterprises, including baseball, and they paved the way for racial integration that Black players hoped would come.

Play Harder showcases the Black stars of the game--those from baseball's early years such as Moses Fleetwood Walker and Rube Foster; Negro Leagues stars like Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell; Jackie Robinson and those who crossed the color line after him, like Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, followed by Frank Robinson and Curt Flood; and the stars who ushered in today's game, such as Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield, Barry Bonds, and Ken Griffey, Jr. Playing out against the cultural and political events of 150 years, the story bears witness to the richness of this country's diversity while remaining clear-eyed about the racial injustice endured by Black Americans. In the end, Play Harder celebrates the triumph of some of baseball's greatest players and their remarkable contributions to the game we know and love today.

Officially licensed by the National Baseball Hall of Fame, this revised and updated volume gathers the biographies, statistics, and photos of over 175 members of the most exclusive club in the sport.

A beautiful book every baseball fan should own, The National Baseball Hall of Fame Collection includes all inductees, stats, and awards through the 2023 Hall of Fame elections. Additional new content also includes: the origin story of the Hall of Fame, a visual tour of Cooperstown, plus insights and photos celebrating the Hall's famous induction weekend.

Separated into chapters by position, The National Baseball Hall of Fame Collection highlights the best and the most memorable players, events, championships, moments, and more. Meet the greats of the game from before you were born and relive the memories that you shared with your diamond heroes of recent years. You will find:

• Profiles of more than 175 legendary Hall of Famers
• Photo explorations into rare memorabilia, including replica tickets, scouting reports, scorecards, and contracts
• Notable awards, records, stats, and a complete list of over 300 Hall of Fame members
• Full-color photos and informative sidebars throughout

Become an expert on your favorite teams and players as you take a glorious trip into the storied history of America's pastime. Maybe you won't become a member of the Hall of Fame, but after you read The National Baseball Hall of Fame Collection, you'll feel like part of the club!

To be a part of Red Sox Nation is to be a hopeful romantic who neither betrays loyalty nor surrenders hope in the direst of circumstances. From Bangor to Back Bay, New Englanders endure in baseball matters. And life. The team's history has intersected with the history of Boston and well beyond it, through the Curse of the Bambino, the military service of Ted Williams during World War II, and the Boston Marathon bombing. The Fenway Effect chronicles these stories and others that have built the incredible saga of the Boston Red Sox.

How did Cheers depict the passion of Boston's sports fans? Why is Narragansett beer so important to New England? What's the architectural impact of The Teammates--the statue of Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky, Ted Williams, and Dom DiMaggio outside Fenway Park? What did the Boston press really think about Red Sox owner Harry Frazee selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees? What was the origin of Fenway Park's predecessor--Huntington Avenue Grounds?

Even Yankees fans will tip their caps to the rich impact of the Red Sox on music, movies, branding, broadcasting, and more. Plus, there's a chapter focusing on the oral history of Red Sox fans, some of whom share here anecdotes that are funny, insightful, and heartwarming.

For over 60 years, the color barrier excluded Black ballplayers from the major leagues, forcing them to form their own teams and leagues. After Jackie Robinson broke down that barrier, Black players faced another: the barrier to the Hall of Fame. At the time of the founding of the Hall of Fame, segregation was firmly entrenched in baseball, and it was defended by the same power brokers who kept the Hall successful with their support. The fight for the recognition that Black players had earned on the field lasted nearly as long as the color barrier itself. This book presents the full history of that fight: the exclusion of Black players for so many years, the many efforts to fix that, and the fights for Hall of Fame recognition of the Negro Leagues that are still ongoing.

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BESTSELLER

The legendary Willie Mays shares the inspirations and influences responsible for guiding him on and off the field in this reflective and inspirational memoir.

Even if, like me, you thought you had pretty much read and heard all there was to read and hear about Willie Mays, this warmhearted book will inform and reward you. And besides, what true baseball fan can ever get enough of Willie Mays? Say Hey! Read on and enjoy. --From the Foreword by Bob Costas

It's because of giants like Willie that someone like me could even think about running for President. --President Barack Obama

Widely regarded as the greatest all-around player in baseball history because of his unparalleled hitting, defense and baserunning, the beloved Willie Mays offers people of all ages his lifetime of experience meeting challenges with positivity, integrity and triumph in 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid.

Presented in 24 chapters to correspond with his universally recognized uniform number, Willie's memoir provides more than the story of his role in America's pastime. This is the story of a man who values family and community, engages in charitable causes especially involving children and follows a philosophy that encourages hope, hard work and the fulfillment of dreams.

I was very lucky when I was a child. My family took care of me and made sure I was in early at night. I didn't get in trouble. My father made sure that I didn't do the wrong thing. I've always had a special place in my heart for children and their well-being, and John Shea and I got the idea that we should do something for the kids and the fathers and the mothers, and that's why this book is being published. We want to reach out to all generations and backgrounds. Hopefully, these stories and lessons will inspire people in a positive way. --Willie Mays

Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only the single most influential baseball book ever (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what may be the best book ever written on business (Weekly Standard).

I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story. The story concerned a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But the idea for the book came well before I had good reason to write it--before I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really, with an innocent question: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?

With these words Michael Lewis launches us into the funniest, smartest, and most contrarian book since, well, since Liar's Poker. Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the front offices of major league teams, and the dugouts, perhaps even in the minds of the players themselves. Lewis mines all these possibilities--his intimate and original portraits of big league ballplayers are alone worth the price of admission--but the real jackpot is a cache of numbers--numbers!--collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers and physics professors.

What these geek numbers show--no, prove--is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information has been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics.

Billy paid attention to those numbers --with the second lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to--and this book records his astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. Moneyball is a roller coaster ride: before the 2002 season opens, Oakland must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players, is written off by just about everyone, and then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins.

In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win... how can we not cheer for David?