Baseball: Then to WOW! shows readers how baseball has evolved from the early days of the 1920s to the game it is today. Using MLB action photographs, illustrations, stories, and trivia, the book is a journey through time both for baseball fans and those new to the game. Kids will learn how basic equipment has changed from fingerless gloves to specially tailored leather-bound mitts and how the evolution of game strategy has transformed the sport, players, and equipment. Players throughout history are stacked up against each other in every position so fans can dream up the perfect fantasy team with Babe Ruth playing alongside Hank Aaron and Reggie Jackson. A fun-filled section of the book explores everything fan culture-from the perfect ballpark frank to the importance of baseball cards and video games in popularizing the sport.
Hockey: Then to WOW! shows readers how the cool sport has evolved from the early days of its 19th century origins to the game as it is today. Using NHL action photographs, illustrations, stories, and trivia, the book is a journey through time both for hockey fans and those new to the game. Kids will learn how basic equipment has changed from a ball to a puck and how the evolution of game strategy has transformed the sport, players, and equipment. Players throughout history are stacked up against each other in every position so fans can dream up the perfect fantasy team with Wayne Gretzky playing alongside Patrick Roy and Stan Mikita. A fun-filled section of the book explores everything fan culture-from the best ice rinks, to the iconic hockey sweater and the hockey haircut along with key aspects of the toughest sport around.
"Author Ken Mochizuki reads his award-winning book. There is some soft background music, and a few gentle sound effects, but the power of the words need little embellishment...This treasure of a book is well-treated in this format." - School Library Journal
Baseball and ghost stories are as American as apple pie. Haunted Baseball combines both with this fun and freaky collection of otherworldly yarns. Collected from baseball players, stadium personnel, umpires, front-office folks, and fans, the tales told here explore the spooky connection between baseball and the paranormal, including Babe Ruth sightings at a former brothel, the Curse of the Billy Goat that still haunts the Chicago Cubs, of hidden passageways within the depths of Dodger Stadium, and of the spirits of legendary stars that inspire modern-day players at Yankee Stadium. We hear why Johnny Damon believes in ghosts, and how the memories of a 9/11 hero inspired Ken Griffey Jr. to hit a home run against the Phillies—a team against which he’d never even gotten a hit! There’s the story of how Sam Rice settled a decades-old baseball controversy with a message from beyond the grave, and how the late Roberto Clemente had premonitions of his own death in a plane crash. With a wealth of anecdotes that have never before been told before, the authors present an entertaining and eerie look at our national pastime.
An irreverent black comedy about sex, drugs, murder… and children's baseball. Dwayne Devero is just like you and me, except he simply doesn’t give a s**t any more. He’s had enough. He’s done with people living life wrong. You’ll do it right, or he’ll bury you under the bases at the ballpark where he coaches. It’s just that simple. Tired of poor decisions being made all around him, from the politics of player positions on his son's little league baseball team to the philandering of his wife in his own bedroom, Dwayne decides that breaking is better than bending. What follows is a wild ride full of carnage and revenge, led by a man who will stop at absolutely nothing to bring honor back to his family, his community… and children's baseball. Baseball Dads is a pitch black comedy in which one man takes on the duty of bludgeoning honor back into a sometimes dishonorable world.
In 1996, a brassy young team of fansproduced a guide to baseball statistics.Printed on a photocopier, its distribution,which was in the low hundreds, was limited tofriends, family, and die-hard stat heads. Sixteenyears later, the Baseball Prospectus annualregularly hits best-seller lists and has becomean indispensable guide for the serious fan. In Extra Innings, the team at Baseball Prospectusintegrates statistics, interviews, and analysis todeliver twenty arguments about today's game.In the tradition of their seminal book, BaseballBetween the Numbers, they take on everything fromsteroids to the amateur draft. They probe theimpact of managers on the game. They explainthe critical art of building a bullpen. In an erawhen statistics matter more than ever, Extra Inningsis an essential volume for every baseball fan.
A #1 New York Times Bestseller! Based on their #1 kids podcast, Wow in the World, hosts Mindy Thomas and Guy Raz take readers on a hilarious, fact-filled, and highly illustrated journey through the human body—covering everything from our toes to our tongues to our brains and our lungs! WHY in the world do I have a belly button? And WHAT in the world does it do? WHEN in the world will my nose stop growing? And HOW in the world does my pee keep flowing? The human body is a fascinating piece of machinery. It's full of mystery, and wonder, and WOW. And it turns out, every single human on the planet has one! Join Mindy Thomas and Guy Raz, hosts of the mega-popular Wow in the World podcast, as they take you on a fact-filled adventure from your toes and your tongues to your brain and your lungs. Featuring hilarious illustrations and filled with facts, jokes, photos, quizzes, and Wow-To experiments, The How and Wow of the Human Body has everything you need to better understand your own walking, talking, barfing, breathing, pooping body of WOW!
Baseball is a game of hits and misses, homers and strikeouts, wins and losses. Check out the very best and worst that baseball has to offer with Baseball's Best and Worst.
From an unexpected playoff run to a title winning walk-off home run, few things are more exciting in pro baseball than seeing an underdog come back to win it all. Baseball history is filled with incredible stories of teams that defied the odds to win a championship and players who overcome personal struggles to return to the game they love. Filled with dramatic stories and action-packed images, readers will find themselves cheering on their favorite underdog teams and players to victory.
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.
