Madison Bumgarner


Book Description

This title introduces readers to Madison Bumgarner, providing exciting details about his life and going deep inside the key moments of his MLB career. The title also features informative "fast facts," a timeline, and a glossary. SportsZone is an imprint of Abdo Publishing Company.




Madison Bumgarner


Book Description

Profiles the life and career accomplishments of the San Francisco Giants pitcher, Madison Bumgarner.




A Band of Misfits


Book Description

With a title drought that started in New York and carried on for more than five decades after the move to the west coast, the San Francisco Giants and their fans were growing restless, waiting for a team like the 2010 roster and that one magical postseason run. The anticipation, memories, and celebrated relief of the season when it finally came together are captured in this chronicle of the World Series season of the Giants. Written in entertaining prose, the book is as much an enjoyable story to be reread through the years as it is a factual account of the events that brought the elusive title to the Giants.




The Baseball Codes


Book Description

An insider’s look at baseball’s unwritten rules, explained with examples from the game’s most fascinating characters and wildest historical moments. Everyone knows that baseball is a game of intricate regulations, but it turns out to be even more complicated than we realize. All aspects of baseball—hitting, pitching, and baserunning—are affected by the Code, a set of unwritten rules that governs the Major League game. Some of these rules are openly discussed (don’t steal a base with a big lead late in the game), while others are known only to a minority of players (don’t cross between the catcher and the pitcher on the way to the batter’s box). In The Baseball Codes, old-timers and all-time greats share their insights into the game’s most hallowed—and least known—traditions. For the learned and the casual baseball fan alike, the result is illuminating and thoroughly entertaining. At the heart of this book are incredible and often hilarious stories involving national heroes (like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays) and notorious headhunters (like Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale) in a century-long series of confrontations over respect, honor, and the soul of the game. With The Baseball Codes, we see for the first time the game as it’s actually played, through the eyes of the players on the field. With rollicking stories from the past and new perspectives on baseball’s informal rulebook, The Baseball Codes is a must for every fan.




What Made Maddy Run


Book Description

The heartbreaking story of college athlete Madison Holleran, whose life and death by suicide reveal the struggle of young people suffering from mental illness today in this #1 New York Times Sports and Fitness bestseller. If you scrolled through the Instagram feed of 19-year-old Maddy Holleran, you would see a perfect life: a freshman at an Ivy League school, recruited for the track team, who was also beautiful, popular, and fiercely intelligent. This was a girl who succeeded at everything she tried, and who was only getting started. But when Maddy began her long-awaited college career, her parents noticed something changed. Previously indefatigable Maddy became withdrawn, and her thoughts centered on how she could change her life. In spite of thousands of hours of practice and study, she contemplated transferring from the school that had once been her dream. When Maddy's dad, Jim, dropped her off for the first day of spring semester, she held him a second longer than usual. That would be the last time Jim would see his daughter. What Made Maddy Run began as a piece that Kate Fagan, a columnist for espnW, wrote about Maddy's life. What started as a profile of a successful young athlete whose life ended in suicide became so much larger when Fagan started to hear from other college athletes also struggling with mental illness. This is the story of Maddy Holleran's life, and her struggle with depression, which also reveals the mounting pressures young people -- and college athletes in particular -- face to be perfect, especially in an age of relentless connectivity and social media saturation.




K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From The New York Times baseball columnist, an enchanting, enthralling history of the national pastime as told through the craft of pitching, based on years of archival research and interviews with more than three hundred people from Hall of Famers to the stars of today. The baseball is an amazing plaything. We can grip it and hold it so many different ways, and even the slightest calibration can turn an ordinary pitch into a weapon to thwart the greatest hitters in the world. Each pitch has its own history, evolving through the decades as the masters pass it down to the next generation. From the earliest days of the game, when Candy Cummings dreamed up the curveball while flinging clamshells on a Brooklyn beach, pitchers have never stopped innovating. In K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, Tyler Kepner traces the colorful stories and fascinating folklore behind the ten major pitches. Each chapter highlights a different pitch, from the blazing fastball to the fluttering knuckleball to the slippery spitball. Infusing every page with infectious passion for the game, Kepner brings readers inside the minds of combatants sixty feet, six inches apart. Filled with priceless insights from many of the best pitchers in baseball history--from Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan to Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Clayton Kershaw--K will be the definitive book on pitching and join such works as The Glory of Their Times and Moneyball as a classic of the genre.




Cover Me Boys, I'm Going in


Book Description

A memoir from a sportscaster whose career's spanned 30 years, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the world of sport.




Late Innings


Book Description

The acclaimed New Yorker sportswriter examines the inner working of professional baseball, in these essays from the spring of 1977 to the summer of 1981. Late Innings takes fans far beyond the stadium view of the field and into the substrata of baseball as it is experienced by the people who make it happen. Celebrated as one of the game’s finest chroniclers, Roger Angell shares his commentary on the money, fame, power, traditions, and social aspects of baseball during the late seventies and early eighties. Covering monumental events such as Reggie Jackson’s three World Series home runs and the bitter ordeal of the 1981 players’ strike, Angell offers a timeless perspective on the world of baseball to be enjoyed by fans of all ages.




Baseball America Prospect Handbook 2008


Book Description

The Prospect Handbook is the resource for information regarding the leading minor leaguers throughout baseball, and is a valuable tool for fans, fantasy leaguers, and anyone who wants to know more about the player development process.




Pitching in a Pinch


Book Description

An inside baseball memoir from the game’s first superstar, with a foreword by Chad Harbach Christy Mathewson was one of the most dominant pitchers ever to play baseball. Posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of the “Five Immortals,” he was an unstoppable force on the mound, winning at least twenty-two games for twelve straight seasons and pitching three complete-game shutouts in the 1905 World Series. Pitching in a Pinch, his witty and digestible book of baseball insights, stories, and wisdom, was first published over a hundred years ago and presents readers with Mathewson’s plainspoken perspective on the diamond of yore—on the players, the chances they took, the jinxes they believed in, and, most of all, their love of the game. Baseball fans will love to read first-hand accounts of the infamous Merkle’s Boner incident, Giants manager John McGraw, and the unstoppable Johnny Evers and to learn how much—and just how little—has really changed in a hundred years. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.