"In the summer of 1973 Joe Castle was the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone had ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas, dazzled Cubs fans as he hit home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shattered all rookie records. Calico Joe quickly became the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren...

Introduces the Boston Red Sox baseball team, including its history, notable players, and championship statistics.

"The Boston Red Sox are one of the most iconic baseball teams, representing not just a city or a state, but an entire region--it's the only professional baseball team in New England. Baseball greats such as Cy Young and Babe Ruth wore the uniform early in their careers and many other players, including Ted Williams, Wade Boggs, Carl Yastrzemski, Pedro Martinez, and Johnny Damon have played with New England's beloved ball club. Sports historian Robert...

Drawing on interviews with friends and family, as well as teammates and opponents, "New York Times"-bestselling author Leavy delivers the definitive account of one of the biggest talents and most tragic figures ever to play baseball--Mickey Mantle.

"Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle was old school and stubborn. But after twenty straight losing seasons and his job on the line, he was ready to try anything. So when he met with GM Neal Huntington in October 2012, they decided to discard everything they knew about the game and instead take on drastic "big data" strategies. Going well beyond the number-crunching of Moneyball, which used statistics found on the back of baseball cards to identify...

Francona explores his tenure in Boston, examining how the beleaguered Red Sox reached incredible highs and equally incredible lows under his management, including several championship victories.

This is New York Times bestselling author and Emmy-nominated broadcaster Ron Darling's 108 baseball anecdotes that connect Americas game to the men who played it. In 108 Stitches , Ron Darling offers his own take on the "six degrees of separation" game and knits together a collection of wild, wise, and wistful stories reflecting the full arc of a life in and around our national pastime. Darling has played with or reported on just about everybody who...

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,...

Even though his mother feels baseball ruined her marriage to his father, she allows fourteen-year-old Brian to become a bat boy for the Detroit Tigers, who have just drafted his favorite player back onto the team.

The rivalry between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox involves not just the teams, but the cities, owners, ballparks, fans, and the media. Its roots reach back to before even Babe Ruth and Harry Frazee, yet it is as contemporary as the next Red Sox—Yankees game. This book tells the story of the rivalry from the first game these epic teams played against each other in 1901 through the 2013 season in what former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani...