Essays Writings category: 369 books

When Jose Bautista homered and flipped his bat in the 2015 playoffs, Blue Jays frenzy reached a fever pitch not seen since Joe Carter’s 1993 World Series home run. Those two home runs still bring tears and chills to Jays fans. And each season, each game, each at bat holds triumphs, heartbreaks...

The New York Mets fan is an Amazin’ creature whose species finds its voice at last in Greg Prince’s Faith and Fear In Flushing, the definitive account of what it means to root for and live through the machinations of an endlessly fascinating if often frustrating baseball team. Prince, coauthor...

Amazing Stories From the Cubs Dugout is crammed with stories, quotes, and anecdotes about the greatest Cubs players of past and present. The story of the Cubs is part legend, part pathos; heroic and, on occasion, hilarious. Enjoy the heartbreak and joy of unforgettable afternoons at Wrigley Field. Without a doubt Amazing Stories From the Cubs Dugout is a must for any Chicago Cubs fan.

Here is the first-to-market, most comprehensive, and most fun annual reference guide to the complete lifetime stats on every player in the majors in 2015. New sections include “On the Black” analysis of how often specific pitchers hit the corners of the plate and “Times to First Base” on how...

NPR's Scott Simon's personal, heartfelt reflections on his beloved Chicago Cubs, replete with club lore, memorable anecdotes, frenetic fandom and wise and adoring intimacy that have made the world champion Cubbies baseball's most tortured—and now triumphant—franchise. Heartbreak and hope....

From the club’s inception in the late ’70s to winning the division for the first time in the ’80s, Joe Carter’s epic home run, the two World Series titles in the early ’90s, the reign of Roy Halladay, Josh Donaldson’s MVP season, and everything in between, the Blue Jays have continued...

From the humble heights of a Class-A pitcher's mound to the deflating lows of sleeping on his gun-toting grandmother's air mattress, veteran reliever Dirk Hayhurst steps out of the bullpen to deliver the best pitch of his career--a raw, unflinching and surprisingly moving account of his life in the...

"The best writer in a baseball uniform." —Tyler Kepner, The New York Times After nearly a decade in the minors, Dirk Hayhurst defied the odds to climb onto the pitcher's mound for the Toronto Blue Jays. Newly married, with a big league paycheck and a brand new house, Hayhurst was...

Culled from 50 years' worth of columns from one of the country's most popular sportswriters, It Happens Every Spring stands as a remarkable and evocative anthology that is guaranteed to delight baseball fans of all ages. Former New York Times columnist Ira Berkow captures the spirit of America's pasttime...

50 YEARS OF SPORT AS SEEN BY THE CHAMPION OF ALL SPORTS WRITERS ‘This isn’t, praise be, a formal book. It is no literary exercise in balanced sentences and the painfully selected word. This is Grant Rice talking, rambling happily along, tell again in his wonderful way the wonderful stories...

The Forever Boys is the funny, heartbreaking, authentic story of the men who played in the short-lived Senior Professional Baseball Association.Peter Golenbock spent the season with the league champion St. Petersburg Pelicans. Like the league’s other seven teams, the Pelicans were a collection...

First published in 1927, Jack Johnson’s autobiography, Jack Johnson: In the Ring and Out, remains the key source for information about his life. As he himself states in it: “I am astounded when I realize that there are few men in any period of the world’s history, who have led a more varied...

“To millions there has never a fighter like Jack Dempsey, and there never will be again.” Originally published in 1960, this is the autobiography from boxing heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey himself, as told to U.S. sports writers Bob Considine and Bill Slocum.

Few characters soar to such dizzying heights and then plunge to the depth of despair like McLain did.  But it is his ability to finally reflect on his mistakes and self-indulgences that make his story especially compelling.Winner 2015 eLit Award for Sports-Bronze Medal