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Preeminent baseball analyst Bill James and ESPN.com baseball columnist Rob Neyer compile information on pitches and their origins, nearly two thousand pitchers, and more in this comprehensive guide. Pitchers, the pitches they throw, and how they throw them—they’re the stuff of constant scrutiny, but there's never been anything like a comprehensive source for such information…until now. Bill James and Rob Neyer spent over a decade compiling the centerpiece of this book, the Pitcher Census, which lists specific information for nearly two thousand pitchers, ranging throughout the history of professional baseball. Their guide also includes a dictionary describing virtually every known pitc...
Highlights the stories, athletes, and memorable moments that have defined the Philadelphia Phillies since the franchise's founding in 1883.
Hall of Famer Robin Roberts was baseball's most dominant pitcher from 1950 to 1955. He was the ace of the Whiz Kids rotation that led the Phillies to the NL pennant in 1950. In 1966 Roberts introduced Marvin Miller to the players' union, a major chapter in baseball history.
Every generation or so, a team comes along whose march toward victory is so improbable that you can't help but root them along. The 1950 Philadelphia Phillies was that kind of team; young and spirited, the Whiz Kids played a raw, emotional brand of baseball, nipping the Brooklyn Dodgers on the final day of the season to bring the National League's perennial doormat its first title in 35 years. Hall-of-Fame member Robin Roberts, the team's ace starter, peppers his recollections with snippets of oral history from his teammates to produce a book as lively as the team itself.--
The dramatic history of this legendary team.
Though Willie Mays' World Series catch of Vic Wertz's long drive in 1954 immediately comes to mind, there are many catches that have been called "the greatest." This work documents baseball's best catches by outfielders from 1887 through 1964 (the year of Duke Snider's retirement, the demolition of the Polo Grounds, and, arguably, Willie Mays' last great grab). After introductory chapters on factors that influenced the catches and their legacies--from ballpark quirks, changes to the baseball and the evolution of baseball gloves, to sportswriters and photography--the book describes famous catches by decade from such players as Mays, Willie Keeler, Joe DiMaggio, Duke Snider, Roberto Clement, Curt Flood and many others. Extensive research yields a wealth of information for each catch, including commentary by period sportswriters, players, and, often, the man who snagged the ball.
Movin' On Up takes a fun ride through the then-and-now of a great city and its ball club. The city and its team have cooked up a partnership as strong and as strange as scrapple and toast over the past 121 years. Since 1883, the Phillies have been on the move-at times slowly, many times glacially, and sometimes quickly. Movin' On Up layers the present on the past by revisiting the places the Fightin' Phils once called their new home. But Movin' On Up is really about people, past, and present-not only players, but others who help and helped Philly move on up to the fabulous sports town we know today. The journey rolls along humorous and poignant episodes, old and new, that have splashed Philly and its fan with the signature color that both fascinates and infuriates outsiders. As this new millennium dashes toward the midpoint of its first decade, Philly's Phillies have a new park, a new team, and a new attitude. Well, maybe the attitude isn't all that new, as you'll read-and ne
By 1964 the storied St. Louis Cardinals had gone seventeen years without so much as a pennant. Things began to turn around in 1953, when August A. Busch Jr. bought the team and famously asked where all the black players were. Under the leadership of men like Bing Devine and Johnny Keane, the Cardinals began signing talented players regardless of color, and slowly their star started to rise again. Drama and Pride in the Gateway City commemorates the team that Bing Devine built, the 1964 team that prevailed in one of the tightest three-way pennant races of all time and then went on to win the World Series, beating the New York Yankees in the full seven games. All the men come alive in these pages--pitchers Ray Sadecki and Bob Gibson, players Lou Brock, Curt Flood, and Bobby Shantz, manager Johnny Keane, his coaches, the Cardinals' broadcasters, and Bill White, who would one day run the entire National League--along with the dramatic events that made the 1964 Cardinals such a memorable club in a memorable year.
Lefty and Tim is the dual biography of Hall of Fame pitcher Steve "Lefty" Carlton and catcher Tim McCarver, detailing their relationship from 1965, when they played with the St. Louis Cardinals, through 1980, when they played for the Philadelphia Phillies. Along the way McCarver became Carlton's personal catcher, and together they became the best battery in baseball in the mid-to-late 1970s. At first glance Carlton and McCarver appear like an odd couple: McCarver was old school, Carlton new age. At the beginning of his career, McCarver believed that the catcher called the pitches, encouraged the pitcher when necessary, and schooled the pitcher when he deviated from the game plan. But Lefty, ...
Five seminal events occurred in New York City in the pivotal year 1964: the "British Invasion," the arrival of the Beatles in February; the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens in March; the World's Fair that ran in Queens between April and October; the "race riots" in Brooklyn and Harlem in July; and the World Series in the Bronx between the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals. Through an exploration of these landmark events--the biggest thing in pop culture since Elvis's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, a shocking crime that reportedly went ignored, the last great world's fair, a key moment in the Civil Rights Movement, and a legendary championship game that marked the end of an era--readers will have a better understanding of the social turbulence in New York City and the United States in the mid-1960s.