Some Books about Baseball - Happy Baseball Reading!

At last! After 28 years of unfulfilled dreams, Phillie Fans now have a winning team with the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies thrilling victory over the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series. Let the celebration begin! Celebration is exactly what this hardbound, full-color book a beautifully designed keepsake is about: the entire wining season of the Philadelphia Phillies leading up to and including the World Series victory is chronicled by the veteran columnists and sportswriters of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. Champions provides the entire exciting story of a special team and a season that will be remembered by joyous Fightin Phils fans for years to come. Chronicled in all its exciting details by the staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, this one-of-a kind story in Phillies history will be cherished as a keepsake now and into the future. Included in Champions is all the background detail that fans seek but seldom receive, as well as a full recounting of the playoff games along with its most colorful moments, behind the scenes episodes, and most memorable players. Featuring an outstanding set of action photos from the 2008 baseball season, this remarkable account is destined to be a baseball classic. Relive each explosive throw and hit with the Phillies taking out the Brewers in four games and the Dodgers in five. Learn about this remarkable team of leaders with a singular focus to become World Champions. Long-suffering fans who have followed the Phillies with love and passion over these many years will be elated with this book of triumph. Sport lovers everywhere will want to join in the celebration of Philly s long-awaited victory..
Price: $17.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Josh Hamilton was the first player chosen in the first round of the 1999 baseball draft. He was destined to be one of those rare "high-character " superstars But in 2001, working his way from the minors to the majors, all of the plans for Josh went off the rails in a moment of weakness What followed was a 4-year nightmare of drugs and alcohol, estrangement from friends and family, and his eventual suspension from baseball.

BEYOND BELIEF details the events that led up to the derailment. Josh explains how a young man destined for fame and wealth could allow his life to be taken over by drugs and alcohol. But it is also the memoir of a spiritual journey that breaks through pain and heartbreak and leads to the rebirth of his major-league career.

Josh Hamilton makes no excuses and places no blame on anyone other than himself. He takes responsibility for his poor decisions and believes his story can help millions who battle the same demons. "I have been given a platform to tell my story" he says. "I pray every night I am a good messenger.".
Price: $13.31 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"One of the best baseball—and management—books out....Deserves a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame."—Forbes

Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only "the single most influential baseball book ever" (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what "may be the best book ever written on business" (Weekly Standard).

I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story. The story concerned a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But the idea for the book came well before I had good reason to write it—before I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really, with an innocent question: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?

With these words Michael Lewis launches us into the funniest, smartest, and most contrarian book since, well, since Liar's Poker. Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the front offices of major league teams, and the dugouts, perhaps even in the minds of the players themselves. Lewis mines all these possibilities—his intimate and original portraits of big league ballplayers are alone worth the price of admission—but the real jackpot is a cache of numbers—numbers!—collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers and physics professors.

What these geek numbers show—no, prove—is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information has been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics.

Billy paid attention to those numbers —with the second lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to—and this book records his astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. Moneyball is a roller coaster ride: before the 2002 season opens, Oakland must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players, is written off by just about everyone, and then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins.

In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win...how can we not cheer for David?.
Price: $6.41 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In a world without wood, we might not be here at all. Without wood, we wouldn't have had the fire, heat, and shelter that allowed us to expand into the colder regions of the planet. If civilization somehow did develop, our daily lives still would be vastly different: there would be no violins, baseball bats, chopsticks, or wine corks. The book you are now holding wouldn't exist.

At the same time, many of us are removed from the world where wood is shaped and celebrated every day. That world is inhabited by a unique assortment of eccentric craftsmen and passionate enthusiasts who have created some of the world's most beloved musical instruments, feared weapons, dazzling architecture, sacred relics, and bizarre forms of transportation. In A Splintered History of Wood, Spike Carlsen has uncovered the most outlandish characters and examples, from world-champion chainsaw carvers to blind woodworkers, the Miraculous Staircase to the Lindbergh kidnapping case, and many more, in a passionate and personal exploration of nature's greatest gift.

.
Price: $14.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The 2009 edition of the New York Times bestselling guide to major league baseball that is simply “the best book of its kind” (Rob Neyer)

Now in its fourteenth edition, the Baseball Prospectus annual is the industry leader among annual baseball guides and the rightful successor to Bill James’s legendary bestselling Baseball Abstracts. The 2009 edition contains critical essays on each of the thirty teams and player comments for some sixty players for each of those teams. Each player’s statistics are projected for the coming season using the groundbreaking PECOTA projection system, called “perhaps the game’s most accurate projection model” (Sports Illustrated). Baseball Prospectus 2009 also contains cutting-edge essays on performance analysis, the likes of which have inspired twenty-nine of the thirty major league teams to hire current and former Baseball Prospectus writers and analysts as consultants. The baseball bible for fantasy players and devoted fans, Baseball Prospectus can be relied upon to once again hit it out of the park..
Price: $14.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

It's been eighty-five years since Yankee Stadium opened. Soon the Yankees will leave the field, fans will file out and the lights will fade. But the lights will never go out on the Stadium that has proudly worn the moniker "The House That Ruth Built."

Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective recounts the story of this extraordinary American landmark. It captures the creation of a home for the New York Yankees that began in 1923 and was driven by co-owner Jacob Ruppert, who envisioned a ballpark grander than any other conceived at the time. It takes the reader from the field to the dugout, from the press box to the clubhouse, from principal owner George Steinbrenner's office to Monument Park. Every corner of the stadium is revealed.

But Yankee Stadium is more than a ballpark. The most iconic moments in history have taken place within its walls: Lou Gehrig's poignant farewell to his team and the fans who would never forget him; epic heavy-weight fights, from Louis versus Schmeling to Ali versus Norton; the 1958 National Football League championship, christened the "Greatest Game Ever Played"; exciting college football games, including the one immortalized by Knute Rockne in which he asked Notre Dame to "win one for the Gipper"; and the unrivaled record-breaking successes of the New York Yankees, from the very first home run hit at the Stadium by Babe Ruth to Alex Rodriguez' 500th.

With the unprecedented cooperation of the New York Yankees organization, photographs have been culled from every conceivable source. More than 250 photographs - many never before published - will allow you to walk in the Stadium beside Mantle and Maris, witness the only perfect game in World Series history, and see the Stadium during the stirring 2001 World Series.

Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective is more than just photographs. It is also graced with firsthand accounts of what it was like to be there as history unfolded. Some of the contributors include: George Steinbrenner, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, former Vice President Dan Quayle, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, Paul McCartney, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Don Shula, Sugar Ray Leonard, Frank Gifford, Regis Philbin, Joe Torre, Derek Jeter, Don Mattingly, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Reggie Jackson, and Cal Ripken Jr.

It has been said that the shaded outfield of Yankee Stadium houses the ghosts of long-gone Yankee greats - at least that's what the players swear they feel as the long days of summer wane into the heated race for the pennant. Or could it be the knowledge that, within those walls, they will always be measured against the titans who came before them? It is the power of the place that led Sports Illustrated to call Yankee Stadium the greatest venue of the twentieth century. And only here, within the pages of Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective, can you feel what they feel..
Price: $28.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Every year, thousands of avid baseball fans eagerly await The Bill James Handbook the best and most complete annual baseball guide available Full of exclusive stats, this book is the most comprehensive resource of every hit, pitch and catch in Major League Baseball's 2008 season.

Key features include:

• Exclusive! Fielding Bible Awards
  
• New Relief Pitching
  
• Manufactured Runs Analysis
  
• Young Talent Inventory
  
• Manager's Record
  
• Baserunning Analysis
  
• Career data for every 2008 major leaguer (and a few bonus players) with more statistical categories than any other book
  
• Pitcher Projections
  
• Hitter Projections
  
• Team Efficiency Summary
  
• Player Win Shares
  

.
Price: $12.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]