Sports & Recreation : Baseball

While other teams were looking to the Dominican Republic for new talent, Houston Astros' scout Andrés Reiner saw an untapped niche in Venezuela. Venezuelan Bust, Baseball Boom recounts how, over the next fifteen years, Reiner signed nearly one hundred players, nineteen of whom reached the majors. The stories of these players—among them Bobby Abreu, Johán Santana, Melvin Mora, Carlos Guillén, and Freddy García—are interwoven with Reiner’s own, together creating a fascinating portrait of a curious character in the annals of sports and a richly textured picture of the opening of Venezuela as baseball’s new frontier. Countless interviews broaden and deepen the story’s insights into how the scouting system works, how Reiner worked within it, and how his efforts have affected the sport of baseball in Venezuela and the significance of Venezuela in the world of Major League Baseball. more...

Price: $19.95

Aims to document 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 the Negro American League in 1957. more...

Price: $75.00

Chicken soup for the baseball lover's soul -- the inimitable Vince Staten takes you out to the ol' ballgame and answers all the baseball questions your dad hoped you wouldn't ask. more...

Price: $11.99

"You never know what's going to save you" -- for John Albert and his friends, after years of hard punk rock living, the savior was baseball. This group of former musicians, failed screenwriters, and wanna-be actors gave up their jockstraps fairly early in life in favor of music, drugs, whores, and all-around lawlessness. That was great for awhile, but many of these individuals found themselves stumbling into their 30s -- broken down, smack-addled, and financially destroyed. Taking some aimless stab at bringing order back into their lives, they started an amateur baseball team and joined a hardball league full of gang members, off-duty cops, and former jocks turned investment bankers. In this memoir of recovery (and relapse), John Albert chronicles his team, the Griffith Park Pirates, from the woeful early days to their emergence as one of the leagues most competitive forces. more...

Price: $17.99

A former Yankees great remembers his years in pinstripes and talks candidly about his courageous battle with brain cancer. As he stepped to the plate at Yankee Stadium on Opening Day in 1966, Bobby Murcer carried with him the hopes and expectations of Yankees fans looking for the next Mickey Mantle. Like Mantle, Murcer was a phenom from Oklahoma. Like Mantle, he came up to the majors as a shortstop, but was later converted to a centerfielder. And like Mantle, his first at-bat in Yankee Stadium was at the tender age of 19. Bobby wasn't the Mick, but he became one of the most beloved Yankees of all time. Yankee for Life is the story of Murcer's stellar career as both a player and as an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster. With self-effacing humor and down-home charm, he shares fascinating, illuminating, and never-before-told anecdotes about former teammates and bosses, including Mantle, Phil Rizzuto, Lou Piniella—and George Steinbrenner. But no relationship was more significant and poignant than his friendship with Yankees captain Thurman Munson, who died in a plane crash in 1979. On the morning of Munson's funeral, Murcer delivered the eulogy for his friend in Ohio; he ended the day by driving in all five runs in an extra-inning 5-4 victory at Yankee Stadium to honor his captain's memory. Following his career, Murcer became a revered figure in the Yankees broadcast booth. From the best seat in the House That Ruth Built, he has watched the latest generation of Yankee superstars—Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Mariano Rivera—grow up. No one is more qualified—or brave enough—to choose his own personal Pinstripe All-Star Team of the last 40 years. Murcer is no stranger to courage. On Christmas Eve 2006, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Five days later, after surgery to remove it, he learned that the cancer was terminal. In an uplifting, honest, and even humorous exploration of his battle with illness, Murcer explains how the more...

Price: $19.95