Kategoria BISAC: Sports & Recreation >> Baseball - General

Going as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, to the early days of Cuban baseball, Wendel traces the spread of American baseball fever in the Caribbean and Mexico; discusses lesser-known historical standouts, including Adolfo Luque and Martin Dihigo; and describes the days when only light-skinned Latinos wereallowed to participate in Major League competition as well as the linguistic barrier many Latinos faced when playing on teams with "English only" rules.

Featuring interviews with Latino superstars past and present; a foreword by Bob Costas; the first-ever-published Latino...

Nobody knows baseball like Kevin Kennedy

Kevin Kennedy was a catcher and a Montreal, coach in the minors, a farm director for the Expos and a bench coach for Felipe Alou before moving on to manage the Texas Rangers and the Boston Red Sox. Now one of the sport's most respected analysts and commentators, he offers a fresh look at baseball from the viewpoint of a "lifer," capturing the intricacies of the professional game with a sharp analytical eye and unabashed candor, including:

• The lengths to which teams and players will go to gain the competitive edge -- from doctored...

Praise for Pure Baseball:

"We have never seen the game scrutinised with such care and detail. Hernandez provides commentary on two ball games in the 1993 season: a Philles-Braves match-up and an extra innings battle between the Tigers and the Yankees. He] examines the overall strategies of the game and offers good analyses of fielding...

Youth baseball players learn the secrets of hitting smart and batting big

Batting is more than just making contact; it is about the swing, the stance, the follow-through. Majorleague hitting coordinator Jack Maloof--who has fixed the mechanics of such explosive hitters as Tony Gwynn, Roberto Alomar, and Cliff Floyd--shares the same techniques he used with these big leaguers to help players in senior youth leagues and up hone their individual hitting form and make the most of every atbat.

Hit Like a Big Leaguer is a compendium of how-to hitting, including...

Leo Mazzone is pro baseball's premier pitching coach. In his years with the Atlanta Braves, he has trained several Cy Young Award winners and helped lead his team to the World Series.

In Pitch like a Pro, Mazzone and coauthor Jim Rosenthal offer step-by-step instructions for players and coaches in Little League through high school. They teach all of the pitching basics and give athletes advice on how they can use the right training techniques to grow stronger and stay healthier. Contents include:

Mazzone's between-starts throwing program
How to grip different...

What goes on in a baseball player's mind is critical to the outcome of the game. Since most major leaguers are in peak physical condition, the difference between success and failure on the field often depends on a player's mental approach.

Looking at everything from a player's confidence to his leadership skills, instincts, and hunches, Smart Baseball uses entertaining anecdotes to get inside the mind of baseball's greats and show fans what goes through a player's head when he steps onto the field.

Smart Baseball presents the knowledge and accumulated experience...

Baseball is increasingly popular throughout the world, as evidenced by the many talented players (such as Ichiro Suzuki, Miguel Cabrera, Albert Pujols, and Hideki Matsui) coming to the Major Leagues from around the globe. The influx of such players is testament to the many high-quality professional and amateur leagues that thrive throughout the world. In this reference book--the first of its kind-- narrative chapters trace the history of baseball in Australia, Canada, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and throughout the rest of the world. Bjarkman profiles...

Barry Bonds has emerged, statistically, as the most feared hitter since Babe Ruth. Bonds, winner of a record six MVP awards, holds the single-season record for home-runs, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, and walks, and is the only player ever to have hit 500 home-runs and stolen 500 bases. His statistical performance is beyond reproach, but his public image remains controversial, and recent allegations of steroid use have cast a shadow over his unprecedented accomplishments. This timely book strips away the hype and takes an objective look and Bonds' life and career.

It has been...

Immortalized in song and story, Joe DiMaggio is one of baseball's most accomplished players--and also one of its most enigmatic stars. DiMaggio's life is often seen as embodying the American Dream. The son of Sicilian immigrants, he rose from an unexceptional childhood in San Francisco to stardom on the national pastime's greatest stage--Yankee Stadium. As a player, DiMaggio fought off injuries and earned a reputation for unyielding excellence, exemplified by his Major-League-record 56-game hitting streak. DiMaggio's celebrity and sense of style and grace transcended the game, and his...

Thomas Boswell, longtime "Washington Post syndicated sports columnist, has been called "an astute observer of the human condition disguised as a first-rate sportswriter." Boswell will be featured as a major on-screen spokesman in Ken Burns's PBS series on baseball, which airs in fail '94 and will attract millions of viewers. His three previous baseball collections have won wide praise across the country and sold close to two hundred thousand...

*Winner of the 2007 Robert Peterson Book Award of the Negro Leagues Committee of the Society for American Baseball*

When to Stop the Cheering? documents the close and often conflicted relationship between the black press and black baseball beginning with the first Negro professional league of substance, the Negro National League, which started in 1920, and finishing with the dissolution of the Negro American League in 1957. When to Stop the Cheering?...

""Dayn Perry's really got something here. Part history, part handbook, Winners is an essential read for anyone trying to understand how great teams get that way.""
--Joe Sheehan, BaseballProspetus.com

""We look at baseball from so many angles today that we too often forget the point is not to look at the game from an interesting view for its own sake, but to learn how it works, in...