The Detroit Tigers, an umpire, a pitcher, and a mistake—one of the “classic, human, baseball stories” (Ken Burns, creator of the PBS mini-series Baseball). The perfect game is one of the rarest accomplishments in sports. In nearly four hundred thousand contests in over 130 years, it has happened only twenty times. On June 2, 2010, Armando Galarraga threw baseball’s twenty-first. Except that’s not how it entered the record books. That’s because Jim Joyce, voted the best umpire in the game in 2010 and 2011, missed the call on the final out. But rather than throwing a tantrum, Galarraga simply turned and smiled, went back to the mound, and finished the game. “Nobody’s perfect,” he said later in the locker room. “You might think everything that could have been said, replayed, and revealed about that night has already been uttered, logged, and exposed. You would, however, be as wrong as the unfortunate Mr. Joyce” (The Detroit News). In Nobody’s Perfect, Galarraga and Joyce come together to tell the personal story of a remarkable game that will live forever in baseball lore, and to trace their fascinating lives in sports. The result is “a masterpiece”, an absorbing insider’s look at two careers in baseball, a tremendous achievement, and an enduring moment of pure grace and sportsmanship (The Huffington Post).
They had two future Hall of Famers, the last pitcher to win thirty games, and a supporting cast of some of the most peculiar individuals ever to play in the majors. But more than that, the 1968 Detroit Tigers symbolize a lost era in baseball. It was a time before runaway salaries and designated hitters. Before divisional playoffs and drug suspensions. Before teams measured their well-being by the number of corporate boxes in their ballpark and the cable contract in their pocket. It was the last season of baseball’s most colorful and nostalgic period. It was surely not a more innocent time. The 1968 Tigers were a team of hell-raisers, the second coming of the Gas House Gang. They brawled on the field and partied hard afterward. They bickered with each other and ignored their manager. They won game after game with improbable rallies on their last at-bat and grabbed the World Championship by coming back from a three games to one deficit to beat the most dominant pitcher in the World Series history in the deciding seventh game. Their ultimate hero, Mickey Lolich, was a man who threw left-handed, thought “upside down,” and rode motorcycles to the ballpark. Their thirty-game winner, Denny McLain, played the organ in various night spots, placed bets over the clubhouse phone, and incidentally, overpowered the American League. Their prize pinch-hitter, Gates Brown, had done hard time in the Ohio Penitentiary. Their top slugger, Willie Horton, would have rather been boxing. Their centerfielder, Mickey Stanley, a top defensive outfielder, would unselfishly volunteer to play the biggest games of his life at shortstop, so that their great outfielder, Al Kaline, could get into the World Series lineup. The story of this team, their triumph, and what happened in their lives afterward, is one of the great dramas of baseball history. The Tigers of ’68 is the uproarious, stirring tale of this team, the last to win a pure pennant (before each league was divided into two divisions and playoffs were added) and World Series. Award-winning journalist George Cantor, who covered the Tigers that year for the Detroit Free Press, revisits the main performers on the team and then weaves their memories and stories (warts and all) into an absorbing narrative that revives all of the delicious—and infamous—moments that made the season unforgettable. Tommy Matchick’s magical ninth-inning home run, Jim Northrup’s record-setting grand slams, Jon Warden’s torrid April, Dick McAuliffe’s charge to the mound, Denny McLain’s gift to Mickey Mantle, the nearly unprecedented comeback in the World Series, and dozens more. The ’68 Tigers occupy a special place in the history of the city of Detroit. They’ve joined their predecessors of 1935 as an almost mythic unit—more than a baseball team. The belief has passed into Detroit folklore. Many people swear, as Willie Horton says, that they were “put here by God to save the city.” The Tigers of ’68 will help you understand why.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The thrilling sequel to the beloved worldwide bestseller Ready Player One, the near-future adventure that inspired the blockbuster Steven Spielberg film. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST • “The game is on again. . . . A great mix of exciting fantasy and threatening fact.”—The Wall Street Journal AN UNEXPECTED QUEST. TWO WORLDS AT STAKE. ARE YOU READY? Days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday’s vaults, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous—and addictive—than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle, and a new quest—a last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who’ll kill millions to get what he wants. Wade’s life and the future of the OASIS are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance. Lovingly nostalgic and wildly original as only Ernest Cline could conceive it, Ready Player Two takes us on another imaginative, fun, action-packed adventure through his beloved virtual universe, and jolts us thrillingly into the future once again.
"An biography of perhaps the most significant and controversial player in baseball history, Ty Cobb, drawing in part on newly discovered letters and documents"--
A New York Times Bestseller Detroit, mid-1930s: In a city abuzz over its unrivaled sports success, gun-loving baseball fan Dayton Dean became ensnared in the nefarious and deadly Black Legion. The secretive, Klan-like group was executing a wicked plan of terror, murdering enemies, flogging associates, and contemplating armed rebellion. The Legion boasted tens of thousands of members across the Midwest, among them politicians and prominent citizens—even, possibly, a beloved athlete. Terror in the City of Champions opens with the arrival of Mickey Cochrane, a fiery baseball star who roused the Great Depression’s hardest-hit city by leading the Tigers to the 1934 pennant. A year later he guided the team to its first championship. Within seven months the Lions and Red Wings follow in football and hockey—all while Joe Louis chased boxing’s heavyweight crown. Amidst such glory, the Legion’s dreadful toll grew unchecked: staged “suicides,” bodies dumped along roadsides, high-profile assassination plots. Talkative Dayton Dean’s involvement would deepen as heroic Mickey’s Cochrane’s reputation would rise. But the ballplayer had his own demons, including a close friendship with Harry Bennett, Henry Ford’s brutal union buster. Award-winning author Tom Stanton weaves a stunning tale of history, crime, and sports. Richly portraying 1930s America, Terror in the City of Champions features a pageant of colorful figures: iconic athletes, sanctimonious criminals, scheming industrial titans, a bigoted radio priest, a love-smitten celebrity couple, J. Edgar Hoover, and two future presidents, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. It is a rollicking true story set at the confluence of hard luck, hope, victory, and violence. .
The 1984 Detroit tigers roared out of the gate, winning their first nine games of the season and compiling an eye-popping 35-5 record after the campaign’s first 40 games--still the best start ever for any team in major league history. The tigers led wire-to-wire in 1984, becoming only the third team in the modern era of the majors to have done so. And Detroit’s determination and tenacity resulted in a sweep of the Kansas City Royals in the AL playoffs and a five-game triumph over the San Diego Padres in the World Series. And Tigers fans will tell you that the bottom of the eighth inning in Game Five was the first time Kirk Gibson hit an iconic home run in the Fall Classic. Detroit Tigers 1984: What a Start! What a Finish!, an effort by the society of American Baseball research’s BioProject Committee, brings together biographical profiles of every Tiger from that magical season, plus those of field management, top executives, the broadcasters--even venerable Tiger Stadium and the city itself.
The ultimate reference book for any “Phillie phanatic,” this book provides a behind-the-scenes peek into the private world of the players, managers, broadcasters, and executives, taking readers into the clubhouse and onto the field. Author Robert Gordon takes fans inside the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies' run to the World Series, when first baseman John Kruk once told a fan, “I ain't an athlete, lady, I'm a baseball player;” back to 1980, when Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, and Larry Bowa delivered the team's first World Series title; and to 2008, when a new generation experienced the ecstasy of a World Series win. Written for every fan who follows the Phillies, this unique book captures the memories and great stories from more than a century of the team's history.
John Smoltz was one of the greatest Major League pitchers of the late twentieth / early twenty-first century—one of only two in baseball history ever to achieve twenty wins and fifty saves in single seasons—and now he shares the candid, no-holds-barred story of his life, his career, and the game he loves in Starting and Closing. A Cy Young Award-winner, future Baseball Hall of Famer, and currently a broadcaster for his former team, the Atlanta Braves, Smoltz delivers a powerful memoir with the kind of fascinating insight into game that made Moneyball a runaway bestseller, plus a heartfelt and truly inspiring faith and religious conviction, similar to what illuminates each page of Tim Tebow’s smash hit memoir, Through My Eyes.
The 1968 World Series remains one of the most iconic in major league history. Featuring Bob Gibson in MVP form, Al Kaline, and Mickey Lolich, it was baseball at its best. Told with the vibrant first-hand perspective of Lolich himself and the expertise of award-winning Detroit journalist Tom Gage, this is the remarkable saga of that 1968 season which culminated in Tigers glory. Incorporating new reflections from players and personnel, Joy in Tigertown traces such achievements as Denny McClain's 31-win season as well as the remarkable slugging performances of Kaline, Norm Cash, Willie Horton, and Bill Freehan.
