Dear Baseball Gods: A Memoir

Dear Baseball Gods: A Memoir

Author: Dan Blewett

Publisher: Dan Blewett

Published: 2019-04-08

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1727813936

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Dear Baseball Gods, Why didn't you look out for him? Didn't he deserve better? He hustled, competed, and played the game the right way. What happened wasn't fair. A Second Comeback Dan sat by a tree, staring at the ground trying to decide what he would do next. The doctor had just explained that everything he worked for was now ruined. A second Tommy John surgery? Does anyone come back from that? Is my career over? Is this it? A Winding Road to the Top As a walk-on in college, Dan had to earn everything. He pitched on three hours sleep, lived in the clubhouse, played for a team that collapsed mid-season, and endured more arm pain than any kid should. A Way to Move On When finally forced to hang up his cleats, Dan looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the man peering back. If no longer a ballplayer...what would he do? What had been the point of it all? Who was he? The Deeper Side of Life as an Athlete In this philosophical memoir, written as a series of letters, you'll learn that the pinstripes don't wash off so easily.


Clean Your Cleats

Clean Your Cleats

Author: Dan Blewett

Publisher: Dan Blewett

Published: 2022-02-15

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13:

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What Does it Take to Have a Great Baseball Career? You daydream about one day seeing your face on a baseball card. You live for pressure and the green grass beneath your cleats. But as your career progresses, the game gets harder. You slump and struggle. You get injured and overlooked. Your confidence plummets. Can you keep improving? Are your big dreams still within reach? A Handbook for the Dedicated Player Clean Your Cleats is filled with stories and advice learned the hard way, over a long career on the diamond. Develop better routines and improve your consistency. Handle the ups and downs with confidence and resolve. Strengthen relationships with teammates, parents and coaches. Learn mindset strategies to become the best version of you. Dan Blewett, in this practical guide, helps players understand all the little things in baseball that make a huge difference over a long career. Why clean your cleats? Because every detail matters.


Dear Senthuran

Dear Senthuran

Author: Akwaeke Emezi

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-06-07

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0593329201

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FEATURED ON THE COVER OF TIME MAGAZINE AS A 2021 NEXT GENERATION LEADER “A once-in-a-generation voice.” – Vulture “One of our greatest living writers.” – Shondaland A full-throated and provocative memoir in letters from the New York Times bestselling author, “a dazzling literary talent whose works cut to the quick of the spiritual self” (Esquire) In three critically acclaimed novels, Akwaeke Emezi has introduced readers to a landscape marked by familial tensions, Igbo belief systems, and a boundless search for what it means to be free. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, the bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji reveals the harrowing yet resolute truths of their own life. Through candid, intimate correspondence with friends, lovers, and family, Emezi traces the unfolding of a self and the unforgettable journey of a creative spirit stepping into power in the human world. Their story weaves through transformative decisions about their gender and body, their precipitous path to success as a writer, and the turmoil of relationships on an emotional, romantic, and spiritual plane, culminating in a book that is as tender as it is brutal. Electrifying and inspiring, animated by the same voracious intelligence that distinguishes Emezi's fiction, Dear Senthuran is a revelatory account of storytelling, self, and survival.


Inside Power

Inside Power

Author: Gary Sheffield

Publisher: Three Rivers Press

Published: 2008-04

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0307352234

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This above-average sports memoir is peppered with engaging on-the-field anecdotes, forays inside the competitive mind of a world-class athlete, and thoughtfully presented glimpses of the harsh, often uncaring world of big-time sports.


It Never Ends

It Never Ends

Author: Tom Scharpling

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2021-07-06

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1647000327

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From cult comedy icon and beloved radio host Tom Scharpling, an inspiring, funny, and thoughtful memoir It Never Ends is Tom Scharpling’s harrowing memoir of his coming of age, a story he has never told before. It’s the heartbreaking account of his attempt at suicide, two stays in a mental hospital, and the memory-wiping electroshock therapy that saved his life. After his rehabilitation, Scharpling committed himself to reinvention through the world of comedy. In this book he will lift the curtain on the turmoil that still follows him, despite all of his accolades and achievements. In the vein of candid memoirs from comedians like Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me and Norm Macdonald's Based on a True Story, It Never Ends is a revealing book by a beloved comedy icon.


Cardboard Gods

Cardboard Gods

Author: Josh Wilker

Publisher: Seven Footer Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9781934734162

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Wilker marks the stages of his life through the baseball cards he collected as a child. He captures the experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what it means to be a fan of the game.


The Brothers K

The Brothers K

Author: David James Duncan

Publisher: Dial Press

Published: 2010-07-28

Total Pages: 654

ISBN-13: 030775524X

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Once in a great while a writer comes along who can truly capture the drama and passion of the life of a family. David James Duncan, author of the novel The River Why and the collection River Teeth, is just such a writer. And in The Brothers K he tells a story both striking and in its originality and poignant in its universality. This touching, uplifting novel spans decades of loyalty, anger, regret, and love in the lives of the Chance family. A father whose dreams of glory on a baseball field are shattered by a mill accident. A mother who clings obsessively to religion as a ward against the darkest hour of her past. Four brothers who come of age during the seismic upheavals of the sixties and who each choose their own way to deal with what the world has become. By turns uproariously funny and deeply moving, and beautifully written throughout, The Brothers K is one of the finest chronicles of our lives in many years. Praise for The Brothers K “The pages of The Brothers K sparkle.”—The New York Times Book Review “Duncan is a wonderfully engaging writer.”—Los Angeles Times “This ambitious book succeeds on almost every level and every page.”—USA Today “Duncan’s prose is a blend of lyrical rhapsody, sassy hyperbole and all-American vernacular.”—San Francisco Chronicle “The Brothers K affords the . . . deep pleasures of novels that exhaustively create, and alter, complex worlds. . . . One always senses an enthusiastic and abundantly talented and versatile writer at work.”—The Washington Post Book World “Duncan . . . tells the larger story of an entire popular culture struggling to redefine itself—something he does with the comic excitement and depth of feeling one expects from Tom Robbins.”—Chicago Tribune


Accidental Gods

Accidental Gods

Author: Anna Della Subin

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2021-12-07

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 1250296889

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NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE, THE IRISH TIMES AND THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT A provocative history of men who were worshipped as gods that illuminates the connection between power and religion and the role of divinity in a secular age Ever since 1492, when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the New World and was hailed as a heavenly being, the accidental god has haunted the modern age. From Haile Selassie, acclaimed as the Living God in Jamaica, to Britain’s Prince Philip, who became the unlikely center of a new religion on a South Pacific island, men made divine—always men—have appeared on every continent. And because these deifications always emerge at moments of turbulence—civil wars, imperial conquest, revolutions—they have much to teach us. In a revelatory history spanning five centuries, a cast of surprising deities helps to shed light on the thorny questions of how our modern concept of “religion” was invented; why religion and politics are perpetually entangled in our supposedly secular age; and how the power to call someone divine has been used and abused by both oppressors and the oppressed. From nationalist uprisings in India to Nigerien spirit possession cults, Anna Della Subin explores how deification has been a means of defiance for colonized peoples. Conversely, we see how Columbus, Cortés, and other white explorers amplified stories of their godhood to justify their dominion over native peoples, setting into motion the currents of racism and exclusion that have plagued the New World ever since they touched its shores. At once deeply learned and delightfully antic, Accidental Gods offers an unusual keyhole through which to observe the creation of our modern world. It is that rare thing: a lyrical, entertaining work of ideas, one that marks the debut of a remarkable literary career.


The Seasons of Buffalo Baseball 1857-2020

The Seasons of Buffalo Baseball 1857-2020

Author: James Overfield

Publisher:

Published: 2020-10-29

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780578757049

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The Seasons of Buffalo Baseball 1857-2020 is a collaborative efforts that draws from the 1985 book, The Seasons of Buffalo Baseball by Joseph M. Overfield. His son, Jim, updated and revised his dad's book into a richly illustrated, 400-page 8x10-inch book that updates the history of professional baseball in Buffalo through the 2020 season, which was cancelled for the Triple A Bisons because of the COVID-19 but includes a summary of the Toronto Blue Jays' home away from home in Buffalo during the summer because of the pandemic. That marked the return of major league baseball to Buffalo since the city had a franchise in the Federal League in 1905. Part One of the book is a year-by-year summary of each season from 1857 through 2020, complete with the team's manager, league, record, leading hitter, home run hitter and pitcher. Part Two is a collection of stories from Joe and Jim Overfield, Brian M. Frank and Michael J. Billoni, Assistant Editors of the book, along with Paul Langendorfer, Budd Bailey, Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News, Sal Maiorana of Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle and former WGRZ-TV sportscaster Jonah Javad, a sportscaster at WFAA-TV in Dallas, Texas. There are also cartoons illustrated by Mike "Ricig" Ricigliano and more than 200 black and white and color photos. The book honors the memory of Joe Overfield, the former historian of the Buffalo Bisons and a member of the Greater Buffalo and Buffalo Baseball Halls of Fame. It is also a tribute to the resilience of the City of Buffalo and that game that has been part of the city's fabric for more than 160 years. Among those who have written testimonials are John Thorn, official historian of Major League Baseball; Chris Berman, ESPN Sports Broadcaster; Bob Costas, multiple Emmy award-winning sports broadcaster; Ken Rosenthal, baseball writer for The Athletic and Fox Sports and Pete Weber, the Voice of the Nashville Preditors of the NHL and the former Voice of the Bisons and Greg Brown, the Voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the former Bisons broadcaster.