Baseball's Greatest Hit


Book Description

This special-edition book/CD--authored by three baseball insiders and history experts--relates how Take Me Out to the Ball Game" has won a unique and permanent place in the cultural landscape.




Take Me Out to the Ball Game


Book Description

For anyone who has ever sung ?Take Me Out to the Ball Game? during the seventh-inning stretch and wondered why we sing it when we are already at the ball game, this entertaining book supplies the answers. And why did this song become the sport?s anthem rather than one of hundreds of other baseball songs, such as George M. Cohan?s ?Take Your Girl to the Ball Game,? written the same month? This story, told here in full for the first time, evokes the bright hope of turn-of-the-century America, the backstage drama of vaudeville, and the beguiling charm of baseball itself. Amy Whorf McGuiggan supplies the fascinating details behind the song?s beginnings in 1908, when Jack Norworth, a vaudeville headliner and Tin Pan Alley songwriter who had never even been to a game, was inspired by a subway advertisement to create the song that, though a hit in its day, did not become a time-honored tradition until broadcaster Harry Caray and team owner and marketing genius Bill Veeck Jr. reintroduced it during the 1970s. Here is America?s game and the American century seen through the prism of one impossibly catchy tune and illustrated throughout with vintage photographs, advertising images, and sheet music culled from America?s premier collections.




Take Me Out to the Ball Game


Book Description

A grandmother takes her two granddaughters to a ballgame. Includes music and text to the song "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" (words by Jack Norworth; music by Albert von Tilzer).




Take Me Out to the Yakyu


Book Description

Join one little boy and his family for two ballgames—on opposite sides of the world! You may know that baseball is the Great American Pastime, but did you know that it is also a beloved sport in Japan? Come along with one little boy and his grandfathers, one in America and one in Japan, as he learns about baseball and its rich, varying cultural traditions. This debut picture book from Aaron Meshon is a home run—don’t be surprised if the vivid illustrations and energetic text leave you shouting, “LET’S PLAY YAKYU!”




Take Us Out to the Ball Game (Sesame Street)


Book Description

Batter up with a Sesame Street version of a beloved baseball song—with stkckers, baseball trading cards, and a team poster! It's the seventh-inning stretch as Elmo and his friends watch the Sesame Street Sluggers play baseball. As Elmo takes the mic, the crowd joins in to sing a very special—and very funny—Sesame Street version of the beloved song "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." When it starts to rain, new verses are added to keep the crowd singing. Girls and boys ages 3 to 7 can read and sing along with Elmo, Grover, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, Oscar, Zoe, and Abby Cadabby as they wait for the game to begin again. This paperback storybook scores extra hits with press-out baseball trading cards, stickers, and a fold-out Sluggers team poster!




Baseball as a Road to God


Book Description

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.




Nobody's Perfect


Book Description

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).




Perfect


Book Description

Among baseball achievements, the perfect game--one in which no runners reach base--remains the greatest. Though many have come close, only 20 pitchers have achieved such perfection in more than a century of baseball. This exhaustive compendium examines the fascinating story behind every perfect game and uncovers details both great and small, illuminating the majesty of these titanic achievements. The faithfully narrated record of all 20 games--punctuated by statistics, trivia, little-known anecdotes, and personal memories from both witnesses and the pitchers themselves--gets inside the minds of the players who made baseball history. In addition to profiling some of the game's greatest pitchers, such as Cy Young, Sandy Koufax, and Randy Johnson, or others including Charley Robertson who had otherwise unremarkable careers, this updated edition features new chapters devoted to Dallas Braden, Mark Buehrle, and Roy Halladay, the three latest pitchers to throw a perfect game, and a comprehensive appendix profiles several pitchers who almost achieved perfection.




The Timeline History of Baseball


Book Description

"Take me out to the ballgame, take me out to the crowd!" Baseball is an integral part of American popular culture. In fact, baseball offers a form of social currency by which many people relate. Its stars--King Kelly, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio--have often transcended the game. Discover the amazing development of baseball in The Timeline History of Baseball.- Lavishly illustrated and colorfully designed throughout, The Timeline History of Baseball presents hundreds of fascinating details about the development of baseball in a fun, easy-to-use format.- This unique book brings together a comprehensive history of the sport along with a separate pull-out timeline that offers an at-a-glance view of baseball from 1601 to 2009.- Get some peanuts and Cracker Jacks! You're about to meet some of the greatest players and teams ever to play the game, and venture to some of baseball's hallowed grounds and legendary stadiums.- Did you know that the spit ball was outlawed in 1920, but pitchers who already threw it were permitted to continue using it until they retired? Filled with fun and fascinating facts about the game and all of its organized leagues throughout history, including the major and minor leagues, negro leagues, women's leagues, little league and leagues around the world.- This engaging compendium also includes a giant, colorfully-illustrated gate-fold timeline that offers a unique way of looking at the history of baseball. The timeline integrates world events with major moments in baseball for a unique overview of social history.




Take Me Out to the Ballpark


Book Description

Take Me Out to the Ballpark is a wonderful tour through every park in the Major League, along with dozens more stadiums from the Minor Leagues, Negro Leagues and baseball's past. Packed with hundreds of photographs and loaded with facts, stories and statistics, it's the ultimate books for diehard and casual fans alike.