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Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back

Josh Hamilton

Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back Josh Hamilton Amazon Price: $16.31
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

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."

Champions: A Look Back at the Phillies Triumphant 2008 Season

By the Staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News

Champions: A Look Back at the Phillies Triumphant 2008 Season By the Staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News Amazon Price: $16.47
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.

Bill James Handbook 2009 (Bill James Handbook)

Bill James

Bill James Handbook 2009 (Bill James Handbook) Bill James Amazon Price: $16.29
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

One of the best off-season books for a baseball fan to pick up 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

So assuming you haven't been hiding under a rock for the past 30 years or so, and you have even the slightest interest in statistical analysis and/or fantasy baseball, you know who Bill James is. Hopefully you've picked prior versions of this book so it isn't a completely new topic to you.

But If it is your first encounter with Mr. James' work - don't do yourself the disservice of just picking TBJH2009 up and flipping through it. The majority of pages contain statistics and you'll probably just dismiss it as being an encyclopedia of players' performance. Not that this isn't entirely true...but the real key is to understand why the book contains all this data.

James has been at work for 30 years trying to figure out the correlation of numbers to winning. He knew that it wasn't all about the "traditional" statistics - batting average, win-loss record, and ERA to name a few...he sensed that there was something more out there that could be used as a gauge of a player's ability to contribute to his team's ability to win ballgames.

It's James' thinking about the relation of statistics to winning that is what deliver the punch of the book. Even though it only occupies a dozen or so pages, his analysis and introduction to certain statistical categories give the numbers context and meaning, and turn them into things that should be thought about as opposed to just looked at.

The first thing that really captured my attention - and this is on page 321, mind you - is his article on bullpens, specifically his assigning of positions to the pitchers who comprise a bullpen. It's not fair to compare a utility reliever to a closer - yet the current mainstream thinking does just that. Each pitcher in the bullpen comes into the game in different situations, and James argues that we need to look at their performance on an individual basis while in the context of their role. The Bill James Handbook 2009 provides the tools and instructions for doing just that, and the result is a smarter and more educated fan.

In the same vain of understanding what affects success, James and the crew at Baseaball Info Solutions have provided a tremendous amount of data on managers - how many lineups they use, how quick they are to pull their starting pitchers, and one of my favorites - how successful they are when they call for an intentional walk. Managers tend to be either overlooked or somewhat unfairly criticized, and James reminds the reader that he is there "trying to pollute the discussion of managers with actual facts."

To James, it's one thing to suppose something, it's quite another to actually have numbers and facts that can be used to support tendencies.

What James and his collaborators ultimately are trying to do with The Bill James Handbook 2009 - besides sell books, of course - is to challenge your way of thinking and to take the shackles off your brain and allow you to look at statistics and numbers in a whole new light and not only learn what they think, but possibly discover your own correlations.

For instance - James suggests the possibility of MLB teams "employ(ing) platoon players like Las Vegas employs comedy acts." He takes two players at the same position who have such polar opposite lefty/righty splits that combining them would be a dream come true - and he subsequently renames the tandem to elicit a decent chuckle from the reader.

The book concludes with two sections that ultimately challenge the reader the most - league leaders and 2009 projections. The former encourages you to look at the top 10 leaders in an array of statistical categories and see which tend to have the most influence on winning; while the latter gives you a glimpse into the future through the eyes of James and his team. You can't argue with the leaders, yet you can debate the projections until everyone is blue in the face - that is a big part of the appeal.

Not to be left out are the Fielding Bible 2008 awards and a realtively new project that Mr. James has shared with his readers - his Young Talent Inventory, where he attempts to rate the best young players in baseball as well as which team has the best young players in their system. Depending on how your team came out, it could either be a bright spot for the future, or signs of conern if you believe in developing talent and bringing up the future from within your organization.

The Bill James Handbook 2009 is another heavy hitter, particularly when it comes to off-season reading both to recap the 2008 season and look ahead to the 2009 campaign. I'm glad to have my copy ready to go, knowing that it's assuming it's rightful position on my desk's reference shelf.

Editorial Review:

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

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Michael Lewis

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Michael Lewis Amazon Price: $11.16
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 382 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans.

Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe

Sports Illustrated: The College Football Book

Editors of Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated: The College Football Book Editors of Sports Illustrated Amazon Price: $18.03
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Continuing its series of spectacular coffee-table books for the holiday season, Sports Illustrated presents The College Football Book, the ultimate gift for America's most passionate fans.

SI launched this series in 2005 with The Football Book, devoted to the professional game. A New York Times best-seller that year, the book has taken root as a perennial, selling more than 200,000 copies to date. Now the editors of Sports Illustrated return to the gridiron, this time to serve the most avid football fans of all.

With the best words and pictures SI has to offer, The College Football Book, brings to life the game's unparalleled excitement and pageantry, its legendary players, historic teams and epic rivalries.

In 288 pages of the greatest photography and writing available anywhere, The College Football Book spans the sport's history, from its infancy in the 1800s right up to the postseason showdowns of 2008. The book is packed with stunning pictures, award-winning stories, original stats, decade-by-decade all-star teams and iconic artifacts photographed exclusively for this book at the College Football Hall of Fame--the same exciting mix of elements that makes each book in the SI series a must-have for sports fan.

Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective

Al Santasiere

Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective Al Santasiere Amazon Price: $31.50
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Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.

Baseball Prospectus 2009: The Essential Guide to the 2009 Baseball Season (Baseball Prospectus)

Baseball Prospectus 2009: The Essential Guide to the 2009 Baseball Season (Baseball Prospectus) Amazon Price: $14.93
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By: Plume

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Editorial Review:

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.

Mind Gym : An Athlete's Guide to Inner Excellence

Gary Mack, David Casstevens

Mind Gym : An Athlete's Guide to Inner Excellence Gary Mack, David Casstevens Amazon Price: $11.53
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Best one for athletes! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I have read several books on the mental game in sports and this is by far the best. I work with collegiate and professional athletes and recommend this so often that Gary Mack should send me a commission!!!

not what i expected 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

a solid read, but i was expecting a book that got more into the intricacies of sports psychology, but this book seems to focus more on your thinking off the court then on it.

Well-written and entertaining 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you want to read an inspiring book on the power of the mind in sports, then this book is for you. It is not too packed with information, but it underlines many of the important points in mental coaching. Great stories and examples make it an uplifting read. The only thing missing was a step-by-step instruction guide to mind management - practice makes perfect.

Editorial Review:

Drawing on his work with some of the top teams in professional sports, noted sport psychology consultant Gary Mack shares with you the same techniques and exercises he uses to help elite athletes build mental "muscle." These 40 accessible lessons and inspirational anecdotes will help you gain the "head edge" over the competition.

Yankee Stadium: A Tribute: 85 Years of Memories: 1923-2008

Les Krantz

Yankee Stadium: A Tribute: 85 Years of Memories: 1923-2008 Les Krantz Amazon Price: $19.77
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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A nostalgic and reverent look at The House That Ruth Built -- the most famous and historic baseball stadium in professional sports

Relive 85 years of memories in Yankee Stadium with a DVD highlighting the Golden Age of Yankee stadium, exclusively produced for Yankee Stadium: A Tribute and narrated by legendary Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson.

Since its opening in 1923, Yankee Stadium has been the scene of 26 championship titles and some of the greatest achievements in baseball history, including Babe Ruth's 60th home run during the 1927 season, the race fro the home run title between teammates Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, Jim Abbott's 1993 no-hitter, and Aaron Boone's 2006 game-winning run against the Red Sox to clinch the American League Championship Series. Yankee Stadium: A Tribute is a celebration of this great landmark and its history, a beautiful piece of nostalgia for the missions of fans who have visited baseball's most celebrated ballpark.

The House That Ruth Built was the stage for scores of other athletic events, including football and boxing. It has played host to some of the world's most important cultural events, including the first papal mass in North America in 1965 and the first memorial service for the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Yankee Stadium: A Tribute -- written with the cooperation of key Yankee players from the past and present -- celebrates this great monument and the unforgettable events of its 85-year history.

Remembering Yankee Stadium: An Oral and Narrative History of "The House That Ruth Built"

Harvey Frommer

Remembering Yankee Stadium: An Oral and Narrative History of Amazon Price: $29.70
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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Diamonds aren’t forever. After the 2008 season, the seemingly immortal “House That Ruth Built” will shut its gates forever—to be replaced by a brand-new stadium just a homer’s length away. As if anything could ever replace Yankee Stadium in the hearts and memories of New York Yankees’ fans.

Memories are what this book is about. From the moment it opened on April 18, 1923, Yankee Stadium was a phenomenon: It was more than double the size of any ballpark at the time. And what was happening on the field was just as phenomenal. In the third inning of that opening-day game, Babe Ruth hit the home run he deemed the most satisfying of his career. That fall, the stadium hosted the first of the many World Series games that would be played there over the ensuing 85 years.

And that, of course, was just the beginning. Remembering Yankee Stadium brilliantly and beautifully documents the stadium’s entire career through a decade-by-decade account, a priceless collection of historical photographs, and, most movingly, the vivid, first-person reminiscences of the people to whom this “citadel of sport” has meant so much: entertainers and politicians, broadcasters and sportswriters, players and fans. No Yankees fan—no baseball fan—will be able to resist this incredible book.

"Spectacular new book about Yankee Stadium by Harvey Frommer, Remembering Yankee Stadium."--FOX SPORTS.COM

"In this, the last year of Yankee Stadium's storied existence, Frommer's Remembering Yankee Stadium becomes an essential keepsake for wise fans who know that newer isn't always better." TIME OUT NEW YORK

"Sportswriter Harvey Frommer's Remembering Yankee Stadium is an exhaustive account of The Cathedral of Baseball and a moving tribute from nearly a hundred voices, former players and pinstripe devotees alike."- - GELF MAGAZINE

"RYS beats any Yankee Book out there hands down. Who better to write and compile a tribute to an icon such as Yankee Stadium than renowned baseball/Yankee author Harvey Frommer who makes great use of every Yankee and baseball player he either wrote about or met over his illustrious career. My Yankee Cap is tipped to Harvey Frommer who has outdone himself once again."-BEHINDTHEBOMBERS.COM

"A stunning collection of oral history and narrative and great photos." NEW YORK ONE

"A gorgeous new over-sized book Remembering Yankee Stadium: An Oral and
Narrative History of "The House that Ruth Built
"--BRONX BANTER "One to show. Absolute classic. Best of all the books on the subject-the Bible of Yankee Stadium books."--WCBS-Radio

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