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The Utility of Boredom: Baseball Essays
Par Andrew Forbes. 2016
Spitball literary essays on the off-kilter joys, sorrows and wonder of North America’s national pastime. A collection of essays for…
ardent seamheads and casual baseball fans alike, The Utility of Boredom is a book about finding respite and comfort in the order, traditions, and rituals of baseball. It’s a sport that shows us what a human being might be capable of, with extreme dedication—whether we’re eating hot dogs in the stands, waiting out a rain delay in our living rooms, or practising the lost art of catching a stray radio signal from an out-of-market broadcast. From learning about America through ball-diamond visits to the most famous triple play that never happened on Canadian soil, Forbes invites us to witness the adult conversing with the O-Pee-Chee baseball cards of his youth. Tender, insightful, and with the slow heartbreak familiar to anyone who’s cheered on a losing team, The Utility of Boredom tells us a thing or two about the sport, and how a seemingly trivial game might help us make sense of our messy lives.Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself, 1903-1953
Par G. Edward White. 1996
At a time when many baseball fans wish for the game to return to a purer past, G. Edward White…
shows how seemingly irrational business decisions, inspired in part by the self-interest of the owners but also by their nostalgia for the game, transformed baseball into the national pastime. Not simply a professional sport, baseball has been treated as a focus of childhood rituals and an emblem of American individuality and fair play throughout much of the twentieth century. It started out, however, as a marginal urban sport associated with drinking and gambling. White describes its progression to an almost mythic status as an idyllic game, popular among people of all ages and classes. He then recounts the owner's efforts, often supported by the legal system, to preserve this image. Baseball grew up in the midst of urban industrialization during the Progressive Era, and the emerging steel and concrete baseball parks encapsulated feelings of neighborliness and associations with the rural leisure of bygone times. According to White, these nostalgic themes, together with personal financial concerns, guided owners toward practices that in retrospect appear unfair to players and detrimental to the progress of the game. Reserve clauses, blacklisting, and limiting franchise territories, for example, were meant to keep a consistent roster of players on a team, build fan loyalty, and maintain the game's local flavor. These practices also violated anti-trust laws and significantly restricted the economic power of the players. Owners vigorously fought against innovations, ranging from the night games and radio broadcasts to the inclusion of African-American players. Nonetheless, the image of baseball as a spirited civic endeavor persisted, even in the face of outright corruption, as witnessed in the courts' leniency toward the participants in the Black Sox scandal of 1919. White's story of baseball is intertwined with changes in technology and business in America and with changing attitudes toward race and ethnicity. The time is fast approaching, he concludes, when we must consider whether baseball is still regarded as the national pastime and whether protecting its image is worth the effort.Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War
Par George B. Kirsch. 2003
During the Civil War, Americans from homefront to battlefront played baseball as never before. While soldiers slaughtered each other over…
the country's fate, players and fans struggled over the form of the national pastime. George Kirsch gives us a color commentary of the growth and transformation of baseball during the Civil War. He shows that the game was a vital part of the lives of many a soldier and civilian--and that baseball's popularity had everything to do with surging American nationalism. By 1860, baseball was poised to emerge as the American sport. Clubs in northeastern and a few southern cities played various forms of the game. Newspapers published statistics, and governing bodies set rules. But the Civil War years proved crucial in securing the game's place in the American heart. Soldiers with bats in their rucksacks spread baseball to training camps, war prisons, and even front lines. As nationalist fervor heightened, baseball became patriotic. Fans honored it with the title of national pastime. War metaphors were commonplace in sports reporting, and charity games were scheduled. Decades later, Union general Abner Doubleday would be credited (wrongly) with baseball's invention. The Civil War period also saw key developments in the sport itself, including the spread of the New York-style of play, the advent of revised pitching rules, and the growth of commercialism. Kirsch recounts vivid stories of great players and describes soldiers playing ball to relieve boredom. He introduces entrepreneurs who preached the gospel of baseball, boosted female attendance, and found new ways to make money. We witness bitterly contested championships that enthralled whole cities. We watch African Americans embracing baseball despite official exclusion. And we see legends spring from the pens of early sportswriters. Rich with anecdotes and surprising facts, this narrative of baseball's coming-of-age reveals the remarkable extent to which America's national pastime is bound up with the country's defining event.The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns
Par Peter Golenbock. 2000
No metropolis in America has more pure baseball spirit than St. Louis, Missouri. It's a love affair that began in…
1874, when a band of local boosters raised $20,000 to start a professional ball club, and the honeymoon still isn't over. Now Peter Golenbock, the bestselling author and master of baseball oral history, has written another remarkable saga enriched by extensive and incomparable remembrances from the scores of players, managers, and executives who lived it.These pages capture the voices of Branch Rickey on George Sisler. Rogers Hornsby and his creation of the farm system. Hornsby on Grover Cleveland Alexander -- and Alexander on Hornsby. Dizzy Dean on -- who else? -- Dizzy Dean. And so many others including "The Man" himself, Stan Musial; Eldon Auker, Ellis Clary, Denny Galehouse, and Don Gutteridge on the 1940s Browns; Brooks Lawrence, the second man to cross the Cardinals' color line; Jim Bronsnan, the first man to break the players' "code of silence"; Tommy Herr, Darrell Porter, and Joe McGrane on Whitey Herzog's Cardinals; and Cardinal owner Bill DeWitt, Jr., on the team today.God Has a Name
Par John Mark Comer. 2017
God Has a Name is a simple yet profound guide to understanding God in a new light--focusing on what God…
says about himself. This one shift has the potential to radically alter how you relate to God, not as a doctrine, but as a relational being who responds to you in an elastic, back-and-forth way. In God Has a Name, John Mark Comer takes you line by line through Exodus 34:6-8--Yahweh's self-revelation on Mount Sinai, one of the most quoted passages in the Bible. Along the way, Comer addresses some of the most profound questions he came across as he studied these noted lines in Exodus, including:Why do we feel this gap between us and God?Could it be that a lot of what we think about God is wrong? Not all wrong, but wrong enough to mess up how we relate to him?What if our "God" is really a projection of our own identity, ideas, and desires?What if the real God is different, but far better than we could ever imagine?No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, the act of learning who God is just might surprise you--and change everything.National Bestseller The inside story of how A League of Their Own—one of the most beloved baseball movies of all…
time—developed from an unheralded piece of American history into a perennial cinematic favorite. Featuring exclusive interviews and behind the scenes memories from the original cast and creators, .No Crying in Baseball is a rollicking, revelatory deep dive into a one‑of‑a‑kind film. Before A League of Their Own, few American girls could imagine themselves playing professional ball (and doing it better than the boys). But Penny Marshall's genre outlier became an instant classic and significant aha moment for countless young women who saw that throwing like a girl was far from an insult. Part fly‑on‑the‑wall narrative, part immersive pop nostalgia, No Crying in Baseball is for readers who love stories about subverting gender roles as well as fans of the film who remain passionate thirty years after its release. With key anecdotes from the cast, crew, and diehard fanatics, Carlson presents the definitive, first‑ever history of the making of the treasured film that inspired generations of Dottie Hinsons to dream bigger and aim for the sky.The Baseball Mysteries: Challenging Puzzles for Logical Detectives (AK Peters/CRC Recreational Mathematics Series)
Par Jerry Butters, Jim Henle. 2023
The Baseball Mysteries: Challenging Puzzles for Logical Detectives is a book of baseball puzzles, logical baseball puzzles. To jump in,…
all you need is logic and a casual fan’s knowledge of the game. The puzzles are solved by reasoning from the rules of the game and a few facts.The logic in the puzzles is like legal reasoning. A solution must argue from evidence (the facts) and law (the rules). Unlike legal arguments, however, a solution must reach an unassailable conclusion.There are many puzzle books. But there’s nothing remotely like this book. The puzzles here, while rigorously deductive, are firmly attached to actual events, to struggles that are reported in the papers every day.The puzzles offer a unique and scintillating connection between abstract logic and gritty reality.Actually, this book offers the reader an unlimited number of puzzles. Once you’ve solved a few of the challenges here, every boxscore you see in the papers or online is a new puzzle! It can be anywhere from simple, to complex, to impossible. For anyone who enjoys logical puzzles For anyone interested in legal reasoning For anyone who loves the game of baseballOpening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season
Par Jonathan Eig. 2007
This bestselling account of the most important season in baseball history, 1947, tells the dramatic story of how Jackie Robinson…
broke the color barrier and changed baseball forever.April 15, 1947, marked the most important opening day in baseball history. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the diamond that afternoon at Ebbets Field, he became the first black man to break into major-league baseball in the twentieth century. World War II had just ended. Democracy had triumphed. Now Americans were beginning to press for justice on the home front—and Robinson had a chance to lead the way. In Opening Day, Jonathan Eig tells the true story behind the national pastime’s most sacred myth. He offers new insights into events of sixty years ago and punctures some familiar legends. Was it true that the St. Louis Cardinals plotted to boycott their first home game against the Brooklyn Dodgers? Was Pee Wee Reese really Robinson’s closest ally on the team? Was Dixie Walker his greatest foe? How did Robinson handle the extraordinary stress of being the only black man in baseball and still manage to perform so well on the field? Opening Day is also the story of a team of underdogs that came together against tremendous odds to capture the pennant. Facing the powerful New York Yankees, Robinson and the Dodgers battled to the seventh game in one of the most thrilling World Series competitions of all time. Drawing on interviews with surviving players, sportswriters, and eyewitnesses, as well as newly discovered material from archives around the country, Jonathan Eig presents a fresh portrait of a ferocious competitor who embodied integration’s promise and helped launch the modern civil-rights era. Full of new details and thrilling action, Opening Day brings to life baseball’s ultimate story.Former Major League Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent brings together a stellar roster of ballplayers from the 1950s and 1960s in…
this wonderful new history of the game.Whitey Ford, Duke Snider, Carl Erskine, Bill Rigney, and Ralph Branca tell stories about baseball in New York when the Yankees dominated and seemed to play either the Dodgers or the Giants in every World Series. By the end of the fifties, the two National League teams had relocated to California, as baseball expanded across the country.Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts, Braves mainstay Lew Burdette, home-run king Harmon Killebrew, Cubs slugger Billy Williams, and Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson and Frank Robinson share great stories about milestone events, from Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier on the field to Frank Robinson doing the same in the dugout. They remember the teammates and opponents they admired, including Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Warren Spahn, Don Newcombe, and Ernie Banks.For anyone who grew up watching baseball in the 1950s and 1960s, or for anyone who wonders what it was like in the days when ballplayers negotiated their own contracts and worked real jobs in the off-season, this is a book to cherish.It's easy to get lost in all the feels. Our emotions drive so much of what we do, say, and…
think, even if we don&’t realize it. Our response to our feelings—denying they exist, letting them lead our actions unchecked, distracting ourselves to avoid feeling them—can greatly impact our lives and those around us. Emotions are essential for everyday life, but how we navigate them in the storms of life will make or break us. In I Cry in Corners, pastor Chari Orozco takes the readers through the life of Jesus, examining the powerful emotional tests he faced and how he responded, from his terror in the Garden of Gethsemane to his righteous anger in the temple to his disappointment when those he loved best betrayed him. In each chapter, Chari gives readers both practical and spiritual wisdom to help them respond to emotions like Jesus did. How do we steward our emotions when those closest people fail us? We turn around and wash the feet of the ones we love. How do we face temptation? We refuse to get hangry, resist the devil, and remember that our value lies not in what we have but how we love. How do we steward our emotions with maturity when the hurt we&’ve suffered comes from those who claim to know and love Jesus? We do what Jesus did: choose our words wisely, keep our eyes on the joy set before us, and, if necessary, flip over some tables. Our feelings are a gift from God, and through the life and struggles of Jesus, we find a blueprint for honoring your feelings without getting lost in them. Written with a wry, straight-talking, irreverent but always faithful tone, Chari effortlessly weaves together stories of the New Testament with her own insightful, humorous, and refreshingly candid anecdotes. The resulting book is an affirmation of feeling all the feels while encouraging readers to use their emotions as a catalyst for deep spiritual growth.The Everyday Visionary: Focus Your Thoughts, Change Your Life
Par Jesse Duplantis. 2008
One of the world's most humorous and dynamic ministers inspires readers to realize their potential and fulfill their dreams using…
the power of "determined" thoughts. Life is about dreaming, doing, and enjoying yourself in the process. Sometimes it might seem as if your dreams are just too wildly improbable, or there are too many obstacles standing in your way, or you've missed your window of opportunity. But if those dreams are divinely inspired, hope is far from lost. You just need to know how to visualize the path to your dream to make it a reality. Born a poor Cajun boy in south Louisiana, Jesse Duplantis was a rock musician in his early years and, after a life-changing experience with God, became one of the most candid, and popular, ministers of the Gospel today. For thirty years Jesse Duplantis has demonstrated what life can be when you focus on finding your personal path and nurturing a closer relationship with God and Jesus Christ. Jesse believes God can help anyone to succeed--no matter who you are or where you come from. Weaving visionary-style thinking with powerful life principles and stories from his own life, Jesse shares what destiny really is, how to find yours, and how to avoid letting others kill your joy. You'll also learn about the "Greatest Weaknesses" and "Destiny Killers" that have prevented people from achieving their goals. Other key topics Jesse explores include: The amazing power of human imagination: God gave it to you for a reason! The strategic power of "determined" thoughts: Learn to use them and see results. What to do if you feel it's too late for your dream: God-given dreams have no expiration dates. Why you can't have what you speak against: Use the magnetic power of words to draw in what you know is yours. How to overcome discouragement: It's okay to shut the door on negativity. The big picture: You are important to God, and your dreams and visionary-style thinking may affect future generations. As Jesse says, "Somebody is going to succeed...why not you?" You can experience real joy, ful-fillment, and success by following God's path to your dreams!Swing Kings: The Inside Story of Baseball's Home Run Revolution
Par Jared Diamond. 2013
"The best baseball book I’ve read in years." — Sam Walker • "An exhilarating story of innovation." — Ben Reiter • "Swing Kings feels like a spiritual…
successor to Moneyball." — Baseball ProspectusFrom the Wall Street Journal’s national baseball writer, the captivating story of the home run boom, following a group of players who rose from obscurity to stardom and the rogue swing coaches who helped them usher the game into a new age.We are in a historic era for the home run. The 2019 season saw the most homers ever, obliterating a record set just two years before. It is a shift that has transformed the way the game is played, contributing to more strikeouts, longer games, and what feels like the logical conclusion of the analytics era. In Swing Kings, Wall Street Journal national baseball writer Jared Diamond reveals that the secret behind this unprecedented shift isn’t steroids or the stitching of the baseballs, it’s the most elemental explanation of all: the swing. In this lively narrative romp, he tracks a group of baseball’s biggest stars—including Aaron Judge, J.D. Martinez, and Justin Turner—who remade their swings under the tutelage of a band of renegade coaches, and remade the game in the process. These coaches, many of them baseball washouts who have reinvented themselves as swing gurus, for years were one of the game’s best-kept secrets. Among their ranks are a swimming pool contractor, the owner of a billiards hall, and an ex-hippie whose swing insights draw from surfing and the technique of Japanese samurai. Now, as Diamond artfully charts, this motley cast has moved from the baseball margins to its center of power. They are changing the way hitting is taught to players of all ages, and major league clubs are scrambling for their services, hiring them in record numbers as coaches and consultants. And Diamond himself, whose baseball career ended in high school, enlists the tutelage of each swing coach he profiles, with an aim toward starring in the annual Boston-New York media game at Yankee Stadium.Swing Kings is both a rollicking history of baseball’s recent past and a deeply reported, character-driven account of a battle between opponents as old as time: old and new, change and stasis, the establishment and those who break from it. Jared Diamond has written a masterful chronicle of America’s pastime at the crossroads.One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season
Par Tony La Russa, Rick Hummel. 2012
One Last Strike by legendary baseball manager Tony La Russa is a thrilling sports comeback story. La Russa, the winner…
of four Manager of the Year awards—who led his teams to six Pennant wins and three World Series crowns—chronicles one of the most exciting end-of-season runs in baseball history, revealing with fascinating behind-the-scenes details how, under his expert management, the St. Louis Cardinals emerged victorious in the 2011 World Series despite countless injuries, mishaps, and roadblocks along the way. Talking candidly about the remarkable season—and his All-Star players like Albert Pujols and David Freese—the recently retired La Russa celebrates his fifty years in baseball, his team’s amazing recovery from 10 ½ games back, and one final, unforgettable championship in a book that no true baseball fan will want to miss.“This is a weird, wonderful, and essential book about both America and its pastime. It’s about a place as vast…
as New York City and as intimate as the human heart. Fred Exley meets Richard Ben Cramer—a funny, wild, heartfelt, and keenly observed portrait of yearning itself.”—Wright Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of The Cost of These Dreams“Mr. Gordon’s ability to explain the Sisyphean plight of all Mets fans is truly remarkable. Bravo!”—Ron Darling, New York Times bestselling author of Game 7, 1986The Mets lose when they should win. They win when they should lose. And when it comes to being the worst, no team in sports has ever done it better than the Mets. In So Many Ways to Lose, author and lifelong Mets fan Devin Gordon sifts through the detritus of Queens for a baseball history like no other. Remember the time the Mets lost an All-Star after Yoenis Céspedes got charged by a wild boar? Or the time they blew a six-run ninth-inning lead at the peak of a pennant race? Or the time they fired their manager before he ever managed a game? Sure you do. It was only two years ago, and it was all in the same season. The Mets have an unrivaled gift for getting it backward, doing the impossible, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and then snatching defeat right back again. And yet, just ask any Mets fan: Amazing and/or miraculous postseason runs are as much a part of our team's identity as losing 120 games in 1962. The DNA of seasons like 1969, the original Miracle Mets, and the 1973 “Ya Gotta Believe” Mets, who went from last place to Game 7 of the World Series in two months, and the powerhouse 1986 Mets, has encoded in us this hapless instinct that a reversal of fortune is always possible. It’s happened before. It’s kind of our thing. And now we've got Steve Cohen's hedge-fund billions to play with! What could go wrong?In this hilarious history of the Mets and love letter to the art of disaster, Devin Gordon presents baseball the way it really is, not in the wistful sepia tones we've come to expect from other sportswriters. Along the way, he explains the difference between being bad and being gifted at losing, and why this distinction holds the key to understanding the true amazin’ magic of the New York Mets.The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports
Par Jeff Passan. 2016
Yahoo’s lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports—the pitching arm—and how its vulnerability…
to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors.Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers—five times more than the salary of every NFL quarterback combined. Pitchers are the game’s lifeblood. Their import is exceeded only by their fragility. One tiny band of tissue in the elbow, the ulnar collateral ligament, is snapping at unprecedented rates, leaving current big league players vulnerable and the coming generation of baseball-playing children dreading the three scariest words in the sport: Tommy John surgery.Jeff Passan traveled the world for three years to explore in-depth the past, present, and future of the arm, and how its evolution left baseball struggling to wrangle its Tommy John surgery epidemic. He examined what compelled the Chicago Cubs to spend $155 million on one arm. He snagged a rare interview with Sandy Koufax, whose career was cut short by injury at thirty, and visited Japan to understand how another baseball-mad country treats its prized arms. And he followed two major league pitchers, Daniel Hudson and Todd Coffey, throughout their returns from Tommy John surgery. He exposes how the baseball establishment long ignored the rise in arm injuries and reveals how misplaced incentives across the sport stifle potential changes.Injuries to the UCL start as early as Little League. Without a drastic cultural shift, baseball will continue to lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually to damaged pitchers, and another generation of children will suffer the same problems that vex current players. Informative and hard-hitting, The Arm is essential reading for everyone who loves the game, wants to keep their children healthy, or relishes a look into how a large, complex institution can fail so spectacularly.A collection of the most inspiring and hope-filled words the Bible has to offer.In addition to being the founding document…
of Christianity, the Bible has long been known to contain some of the most beautiful words ever commited to the page. Much like Shakespeare, it is hard to overstate the influence this books (or, more acurately 'these books') has had purely from a literary standpoint, let alone its religious significance for millions across the globe.Countless individuals across the centuries have turned to its pages for hope in times of adversity, to look for consolation in times of grief, for hope in seemingly hopeless situations, for wisdom in uncertain times. It could be argued that these words of strength and encouragement are needed now, more than ever, as the world witnesses war once again and the threat of climate change looms, ever-present. The Little Book of Bible Verses is the perfect companion for those who find comfort in the words of scripture and wish to be encouraged by the message it brings - in good times, as well as bad."The Lord is my strength and my defence; he has become my salvation." Psalm 118:14"God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." Hebrews 13:5Getting Past Guilt: Embracing God's Forgiveness
Par Joe Beam. 2003
Forgiveness: The word itself fills our hearts with peace and hope; yet, countless Christians are plagued by haunting feelings of…
inadequacy and guilt. While their heads tell them they are forgiven, their hearts cry out that they are guilty. This updated version of the previously published Forgiven Forever gets right to the heart of the questions that steal the joy God intends for our lives: Where does guilt come from? Why can't I stop feeling guilty? Why can't I believe God will forgive me?The 10-Second Rule: Following Jesus Made Simple
Par Clare De Graaf. 2013
&“This book is catalytic! If you long for something brief, simple, motivational, biblically sound and easy to understand—to move you…
from good intentions to transformational living, read this book. I loved it and highly recommend it.&” —Chip Ingram, President and Teaching Pastor, Living on the Edge; Author of The Genius of GenerosityLearn how to answer God&’s call to action with this &“wonderful, inspirational book that reinforces how one simple gesture, one small act of kindness, can make an enormous difference&” (Laura Schroff, New York Times bestselling author of An Invisible Thread).FINDING YOUR WAY BACK TO FAITHDo you sometimes feel as if your faith has gone flat? Does your spiritual life feel listless and boring? Perhaps you&’ve unconsciously drifted toward what Clare De Graaf calls beige Christianity. You go to church, attend a Bible study, and even volunteer, but there&’s no spark anymore—no joy in your spiritual walk. You may not understand what is happening to your faith, but you do know that you long for something more.If you want to break out of this spiritual gerbil cage and begin living the adventure Jesus intends for you, the place to begin again is living by The 10-Second Rule: Just do the next thing you&’re reasonably certain Jesus wants you to do (and do it within the next ten seconds before you change your mind!).The Rule is like a spiritual defibrillator! Just a few chapters in, you&’ll begin to experience the excitement of making yourself available to God 24-7, and impacting the lives of everyone around you, even total strangers. All over the world, Christians just like you are returning to the simple faith of Jesus and living by the 10-Second Rule. In living by the Rule, you&’ll rediscover the revolutionary power of simple obedience as Jesus taught it, the early church lived it, and before religious Christianity tamed it. Finally, a rule you&’ll love keeping!