The Baseball Codes

Author: Jason Turbow
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 030727862X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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.

Baseball Hacks

Author: Joseph Adler
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1491949422
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 486

Book Description
Baseball Hacks isn't your typical baseball book--it's a book about how to watch, research, and understand baseball. It's an instruction manual for the free baseball databases. It's a cookbook for baseball research. Every part of this book is designed to teach baseball fans how to do something. In short, it's a how-to book--one that will increase your enjoyment and knowledge of the game. So much of the way baseball is played today hinges upon interpreting statistical data. Players are acquired based on their performance in statistical categories that ownership deems most important. Managers make in-game decisions based not on instincts, but on probability - how a particular batter might fare against left-handedpitching, for instance. The goal of this unique book is to show fans all the baseball-related stuff that they can do for free (or close to free). Just as open source projects have made great software freely available, collaborative projects such as Retrosheet and Baseball DataBank have made great data freely available. You can use these data sources to research your favorite players, win your fantasy league, or appreciate the game of baseball even more than you do now. Baseball Hacks shows how easy it is to get data, process it, and use it to truly understand baseball. The book lists a number of sources for current and historical baseball data, and explains how to load it into a database for analysis. It then introduces several powerful statistical tools for understanding data and forecasting results. For the uninitiated baseball fan, author Joseph Adler walks readers through the core statistical categories for hitters (batting average, on-base percentage, etc.), pitchers (earned run average, strikeout-to-walk ratio, etc.), and fielders (putouts, errors, etc.). He then extrapolates upon these numbers to examine more advanced data groups like career averages, team stats, season-by-season comparisons, and more. Whether you're a mathematician, scientist, or season-ticket holder to your favorite team, Baseball Hacks is sure to have something for you. Advance praise for Baseball Hacks: "Baseball Hacks is the best book ever written for understanding and practicing baseball analytics. A must-read for baseball professionals and enthusiasts alike." -- Ari Kaplan, database consultant to the Montreal Expos, San Diego Padres, and Baltimore Orioles "The game was born in the 19th century, but the passion for its analysis continues to grow into the 21st. In Baseball Hacks, Joe Adler not only demonstrates thatthe latest data-mining technologies have useful application to the study of baseball statistics, he also teaches the reader how to do the analysis himself, arming the dedicated baseball fan with tools to take his understanding of the game to a higher level." -- Mark E. Johnson, Ph.D., Founder, SportMetrika, Inc. and Baseball Analyst for the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals

Baseball Cheat Codes

Author: Michael Zgorzelski
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 107

Book Description
Get a mental edge on the baseball field with Baseball Cheat Codes: A Player's Best Friend. If you want to take your game to the next level, this book can help you get there. The strategies contained within this easy-to-read work will pave the way to success. This book is a great tool for players and coaches of all ages.

The Doubleday Code

Author: Jim Pieczynski
Publisher: Our Sunday Visitor (IN)
ISBN: 9781681926728
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 64

Book Description
For fans of the sport, professional baseball is like a religious experience because it offers mystery -- the visible with the invisible. Blazing speeds, graceful fielding, and blistering hitting occur amidst ever-changing strategies, signs, substitutions, and situations. One pitch builds on another, one out on another, one inning on another, and one game on another. Watching players perform with wit, skill, and courage at the highest level satisfies the yearning of our hearts and minds to witness nobility in action. That's why we can "religiously" follow the sport. It speaks to our soul. In The Doubleday Code, author Jim Pieczynski draws parallels between the sport we love -- baseball -- and the faith we embrace -- Catholicism. Each chapter also provides prompts for prayer and personal reflection and can be used as a study guide for retreats. Fans who appreciate baseball are students of the game. They understand the deeper mysteries and are rewarded immensely. So, too, are committed Catholics who understand the teachings of the Faith and seek not an earthly Hall of Fame, but a heavenly one. About the Author Jim Pieczynski is a Catholic speaker who offers presentations on the Eucharist, Mary, and the Catholic mysteries hidden in Major League Baseball. Jim and his wife, Mary, live in Fairhope, Alabama. They have five children and eleven grandchildren.

The Baseball Counting Book

Author: Barbara Barbieri McGrath
Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing
ISBN: 0881063339
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 35

Book Description
Step up to the plate with this counting book about America's favorite pastime. THE BASEBALL COUNTING BOOK is spring training for little sluggers. The count is zero to zero when the ump calls, "Play ball!" Nine innings later we've counted balls, strikes, players, fans, and more, all the way to twenty. No one strikes out with these fun rhymes. Little leaguers will find themselves counting their way through practice and pointing out all the new things they've learned about this great game when they watch the pro's on TV or at the parks. Early readers will hit a home run with this charming counting book.

The Ultimate Baseball Book

Author: Daniel Okrent
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618056682
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 462

Book Description
THE ULTIMATE BASEBALL BOOK has more than lived up to its name. Spanning the complete history of the sport from the fledgling leagues in the late 1870s to the powerhouses of the 1990s and revealing in the process what a remarkable effect baseball has had on our collective experience, this is THE book for any and all baseball fans, certain to grace coffee and bedside tables alike. Designed with that wonderful nostalgia that the sport itself so often evokes, THE ULTIMATE BASEBALL BOOK combines timeless images with a sweeping narrative history as well as essays on various idols and icons by such heavy hitters as Red Smith, Wilfrid Sheed, Roy Blount, Jr., Tom Wicker, and Geoge Will. This new edition covers baseball through the nineties, the decade when home run records fell and the sport reclaimed its hold on America, and celebrates the national game in ultimate style.

They Bled Blue

Author: Jason Turbow
Publisher: Mariner Books
ISBN: 1328715531
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
The wildly entertaining narrative of the outrageous 1981 Dodgers from the award-winning author of Dynastic, Fantastic, Bombastic and The Baseball Codes In the Halberstam tradition of capturing a season through its unforgettable figures, They Bled Blue is a sprawling, mad tale of excess and exuberance, the likes of which could only have occurred in that place, at that time. That it culminated in an unlikely World Series win--during a campaign split by the longest player strike in baseball history--is not even the most interesting thing about this team. The Dodgers were led by the garrulous Tommy Lasorda--part manager, part cheerleader--who unyieldingly proclaimed devotion to the franchise through monologues about bleeding Dodger blue and worshiping the "Big Dodger in the Sky," and whose office hosted a regular stream of Hollywood celebrities. Steve Garvey, the All-American, All-Star first baseman, had anchored the most durable infield in major league history, and, along with Davey Lopes, Bill Russell, and Ron Cey, was glaringly aware that 1981 would represent the end of their run together. The season's real story, however, was one that nobody expected at the outset: a chubby lefthander nearly straight out of Mexico, twenty years old with a wild delivery and a screwball as his flippin' out pitch. The Dodgers had been trying for decades to find a Hispanic star to activate the local Mexican population; Fernando Valenzuela was the first to succeed, and it didn't take long for Fernandomania to sweep far beyond the boundaries of Chavez Ravine. They Bled Blue is the rollicking yarn of the Los Angeles Dodgers' crazy 1981 season.

The Talent Code

Author: Daniel Coyle
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553906496
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? This groundbreaking work provides readers with tools they can use to maximize potential in themselves and others. Whether you’re coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your golf swing, this revolutionary book shows you how to grow talent by tapping into a newly discovered brain mechanism. Drawing on cutting-edge neurology and firsthand research gathered on journeys to nine of the world’s talent hotbeds—from the baseball fields of the Caribbean to a classical-music academy in upstate New York—Coyle identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything. • Deep Practice Everyone knows that practice is a key to success. What everyone doesn’t know is that specific kinds of practice can increase skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice. • Ignition We all need a little motivation to get started. But what separates truly high achievers from the rest of the pack? A higher level of commitment—call it passion—born out of our deepest unconscious desires and triggered by certain primal cues. Understanding how these signals work can help you ignite passion and catalyze skill development. • Master Coaching What are the secrets of the world’s most effective teachers, trainers, and coaches? Discover the four virtues that enable these “talent whisperers” to fuel passion, inspire deep practice, and bring out the best in their students. These three elements work together within your brain to form myelin, a microscopic neural substance that adds vast amounts of speed and accuracy to your movements and thoughts. Scientists have discovered that myelin might just be the holy grail: the foundation of all forms of greatness, from Michelangelo’s to Michael Jordan’s. The good news about myelin is that it isn’t fixed at birth; to the contrary, it grows, and like anything that grows, it can be cultivated and nourished. Combining revelatory analysis with illuminating examples of regular people who have achieved greatness, this book will not only change the way you think about talent, but equip you to reach your own highest potential.

Nolan Ryan's Pitcher's Bible

Author: Nolan Ryan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0671705814
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
Offers advice on the mechanics of pitching, and recommends a program of weight training, aerobic exercise, and sound nutrition.

Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic

Author: Jason Turbow
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0544303237
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 413

Book Description
“An exciting and engrossing book. . . . will engage fans of Charlie O. Finley and the Oakland Athletics, along with anyone captivated by baseball history.” —Library Journal, starred review The Oakland A’s of the early 1970s: Never before had an entire organization so collectively traumatized baseball’s establishment with its outlandish behavior and business decisions. The high drama that played out on the field—five straight division titles and three straight championships—was exceeded only by the drama in the clubhouse and front office. Under the visionary leadership of owner Charles O. Finley, the team assembled such luminary figures as Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, and Vida Blue, and with garish uniforms and revolutionary facial hair, knocked baseball into the modern age. Finley’s need for control—he was his own general manager and dictated everything from the ballpark organist’s playlist to the menu for the media lounge—made him ill-suited for the advent of free agency. Within two years, his dynasty was lost. A history of one of the game’s most unforgettable teams, Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic is a paean to the sport’s most turbulent, magical team, during one of major league baseball’s most turbulent, magical times. “Masterfully recounts a thrilling period in Oakland A’s history.” —Billy Beane, executive vice president of baseball operations, Oakland A’s “Not to be believed, and yet 100 percent true.” —Steve Fainaru, senior writer for ESPN and author of League of Denial “A must-read for any fan of the sport.” —Chris Ballard, Sports Illustrated senior writer and author of One Shot at Forever “Carefully researched and often hilarious.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A chance to relive a period of outlandish moments in America’s pastime.” —Publishers Weekly