Life Lessons from Baseball packs the adrenaline of blasting a game winnning home run with the thrill of pitching a perfect game. Each powerful story and profile of one of today's top players or hall of fame heroes will encourage you to walk with a deeper sense of appreciation of God's grace and mercy in everyday life.
Using America's favorite pastime as an analogy, this collection of essays teaches children how to apply the lessons learned in baseball to everyday situations. This guide, filled with invaluable advice, enables adolescents to grow into adults while providing perspective on the sport and the complexities of life. The essays are derived from common themes in baseball but relate to dilemmas experienced off the field. The chapter "Some Days You're the Bat, Some Days You're the Ball" is an allusion to good days versus bad and reminds children that some rules have reasons, although they will probably question them. The sage guidance offers ways to control your emotions by channeling them into better efforts and tips to summon courage whether you are standing at the bat, undergoing surgery, or delivering a speech. The importance of paying attention to detail and respect for authority, along with advice on how to deal with adversity, is included in this indispensable compilation. Andy Norwood underscores the significance of teamwork, self-sacrifice, and the humility experienced after a loss. Each lesson is preceded by a quote from such celebrities as Jay Leno, Maya Angelou, and Albert Einstein. The work incorporates anecdotes from Major League Baseball and significant moments in the sport's history, making this book an enjoyable read for adults and their children.
"Philip Theibert, motivational speaker and third-generation baseball coach, has crystalized a lifetime of baseball experience and love for the game into 99 essays in 9 areas of focus that will inspire you to be the best you can be. The pieces are supplemented by more than 40 inspiring quotations from well-known baseball personalities and others. Great for both kids and adults to instill values and establish a positive and productive mindset. Let the keys to winning baseball help guide your pursuit of a winning life--personally and professionally, with your family, in relationships, and more. You may even learn a thing or two about baseball along the way."--Cover.
The president of New York University offers a love letter to America’s most beloved sport and a tribute to its underlying spirituality. For more than a decade, John Sexton has taught a wildly popular New York University course about two seemingly very different things: religion and baseball. Yet Sexton argues that one is actually a pathway to the other. Baseball as a Road to God is about touching that something that lies beyond logical understanding. Sexton illuminates the surprisingly large number of mutual concepts shared between baseball and religion: faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, and even sacredness among many others. Structured like a game and filled with riveting accounts of baseball’s most historic moments, Baseball as Road to God will enthrall baseball fans whatever their religious beliefs may be. In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Sexton elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to enlightenment.
Unlike other books on Jackie Robinson, this book not only profiles his amazing life, but also offers valuable lessons drawn from his experiences that can directly apply to practical, everyday improvements and personal success.
A successful college baseball coach recounts his transition from a fear-based life to a rewarding career of passionate motivation, outlining the lessons he has learned about opportunity, courage, and failure.
What do Baseball and Life have in common? What lessons can be learned from America's Pastime that are applicable to Life? In "What I Know about Baseball Is What I Know about Life," lifelong coach Pete Doumit shares his thought-provoking insights into these questions, drawing on his experiences as a coach and teacher of the game of Baseball and the 'game' of Life. 'As both a player and student under the tutelage of Coach Doumit, I have benefited greatly...Now in my fifth year as a professional baseball player, I owe much of my success to this teaching.' -Jason Cooper, Stanford University, Cleveland Indians Organization 'Coach Doumit has compiled an important collection of his experiences both on the field and in life...a must read for any coach or teacher.' -Quintz Whitaker, Moses Lake HS Baseball Coach/Teacher 'Having had a son on teams coached by Pete Doumit and in his classroom, we have witnessed first hand the lessons learned by 'Coach, ' taught by example and explanation.' -Steve and Elizabeth Matern, Parents
Baseball, first dubbed the “national pastime” in print in 1856, is the country’s most tradition-bound sport. Despite remaining popular and profitable into the twenty-first century, the game is losing young fans, among African Americans and women as well as white men. Furthermore, baseball’s greatest charm—a clockless suspension of time—is also its greatest liability in a culture of digital distraction. These paradoxes are explored by the historian and passionate baseball fan Susan Jacoby in a book that is both a love letter to the game and a tough-minded analysis of the current challenges to its special position—in reality and myth—in American culture. The concise but wide-ranging analysis moves from the Civil War—when many soldiers played ball in northern and southern prisoner-of-war camps—to interviews with top baseball officials and young men who prefer playing online “fantasy baseball” to attending real games. Revisiting her youthful days of watching televised baseball in her grandfather’s bar, the author links her love of the game with the informal education she received in everything from baseball’s history of racial segregation to pitch location. Jacoby argues forcefully that the major challenge to baseball today is a shortened attention span at odds with a long game in which great hitters fail two out of three times. Without sanitizing this basic problem, Why Baseball Matters remind us that the game has retained its grip on our hearts precisely because it has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to reinvent itself in times of immense social change.
How to Play Baseball: The Parent's Role in Their Child's Journey is like a toolbox full of valuable information for parents, coaches or anyone who is in a position of responsibility for young athletes. The lessons, anecdotes and techniques that are a part of every chapter are drawn from the extensive experience of the author, Chuck Schumacher. It is a balanced mixture of martial arts philosophy and the heart and soul of our national pastime. Baseball is something all Americans have grown up with but few understand the intricacies' that go with playing the game, especially at a high level. This book points out the need for parents and coaches to play their role in a responsible way, respecting the difficulty of the game and the truth of proper training: that developing skill takes time, especially for young, inexperienced players. Practical advice and techniques are offered throughout the book and the reader can go to the chapter that may address a particular need; chapters such as Effort, Staying positive or Master the Basics before Attempting the Advanced. In these chapters and others, they will garner a wealth of useful and practical information that will help them play their role in a way that is helpful to kids. Examples of incorrect behavior and thinking by adults that actually hinder a child's progress instead of helping, are presented throughout the book. Consequences to kids are discussed and solutions are offered. Examples of adults correctly playing their role and the rewards that come with this positive behavior are also pointed out. The life lessons that are available through baseball and other sports are relative to every chapter. In the chapter Attitude, adults are encouraged to be the ones who help kids understand how their actions, good, bad, or indifferent, will directly affect not only their playing time on the team, but eventually other areas of their life. In another chapter entitled Patience, we learn that patience is the ability to be at peace with a situation as it develops. Not living in the past, not living in the future, but living in the present moment. There is a separate chapter for volunteer coaches with advice on coaching kids, including wearing the right hat: the youth coaching hat, not the major league baseball hat.