A Damn Near Perfect Game

A Damn Near Perfect Game
Author: Joe Kelly
Publisher: Diversion Books
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2023-02-28
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1635769663

Baseball’s most outspoken fireballer brings the high heat—calling out the hacks, cheats, and ridiculous rules that have tarnished the game—and pitches a-plus stuff on how to make baseball pure, fun, and damn near perfect. Baseball has an image problem. The chorus of nonbelievers gets louder every year, and the Major Leagues have made an art of tuning them out. Enter Joe Kelly: a walking, talking, fast-ball-throwing embodiment of why baseball matters. He and his All-Star team of athletes and celebrities have some things to say about what’s gone wrong with our once great game and how to fix it. A Damn Near Perfect Game is the loudest insider’s exposé of the laws and culture of Major League Baseball since Jim Bouton’s classic Ball Four. From Kelly’s perspective as a two-time World Series champion and baseball’s most memeable player according to ESPN, he takes readers on a house-cleaning tour of the clubhouse, the field of play, the bullpen, the front office, the commissioner’s office, and a ballplayer’s restricted life off the field. Kelly has something to say about baseball’s rule changes (pitch clocks, limiting defensive shifts, the designated hitter); hacks (overused analytics, sign-stealing); stale promotion to new fans; and encouraging players’ emotions (let them fight, bat-flip, and talk sh*t!). Plus, he details how he aired his complaints in an illuminating meeting with commissioner Rob Manfred. And to show what happens when baseball has some piss and vinegar, Kelly gives the inside scoop on his legendary exploits—starting a bench-clearing brawl with the Yankees’ Tyler Austin, his famous “pouty face” scene when calling out the notorious sign-stealing Houston Astros, and wearing a mariachi jacket to visit the White House with his World Series champion LA Dodgers.

Moonshine Vol. 1: Damn Near Perfect

Moonshine Vol. 1: Damn Near Perfect
Author: Brian Azzarello
Publisher: Image Comics
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2017-05-24
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1534304339

From writer BRIAN AZZARELLO and artist, EDUARDO RISSO--the Eisner Award-winning creative team behind the crime classic, 100 Bullets--comes a brutal new series that puts a horror twist on a classic gangster tale! Set deep in Appalachia during Prohibition, MOONSHINE tells the story of Lou Pirlo, a city-slick "torpedo" sent from New York City to negotiate a deal with the best moonshiner in West Virginia, Hiram Holt. Lou figures it a milk run, but what he doesn't figure is that Holt's just as cunning and ruthless as any NYC crime boss. Not only will Holt do anything for his illicit booze operation, he'll stop at nothing to protect a much darker, bloodier family secret. Collects issues 1-6

Catching Caden

Catching Caden
Author: Samantha Christy
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2017-12-15
Genre: Baseball stories
ISBN: 9781979928953

If all they see are her scars - they aren't looking hard enough.It was my home run ball that shattered her face.Right along with her modeling career.Now it's my mission to help her rebuild her life.And get her to love the game that she hates.The game that dictates my life both on and off the field.But when the lines of our friendship become blurred, I worry she'll just be another casualty of my three-strikes rule. The rule I have to protect my money, my future, my heart.No girl has ever broken it.I've never wanted one to.Until now.The question is ... will I let her?

Keepers of the Game

Keepers of the Game
Author: Dennis D'Agostino
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2013-02-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1597976911

The inside stories from baseball's legendary beat writers

Deep Drive

Deep Drive
Author: Mike Lowell
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2008-05-06
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1440630984

An inspiring, national bestselling memoir from a Red Sox hero and MVP of the 2007 World Series. In 2007, Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell triumphed over a lifetime of adversity when he led the world’s most zealously followed baseball team to the promised land—their second World Series title in four years. But there was much more to the story than what happened that October night. From the hardships of his childhood in Puerto Rico, to the ups and downs of his baseball career, to his battle with testicular cancer, this is the story of man who overcame every challenge pitched at him to become one of the best third basemen in baseball—and a true role model for millions. “Lowell’s story . . . [is] told in his own occasionally salty, but always sincere voice . . . quite candid.” —The Hartford Courant “Mike Lowell is such an honest man, a man who plays the game hard, and plays the game right, the whole time.”—Manny Ramirez, Red Sox outfielder

100 Greatest Console Video Games

100 Greatest Console Video Games
Author: Brett Weiss
Publisher: Schiffer + ORM
Total Pages: 778
Release: 2014-10-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1507300379

Production histories, reviews, gameplay details, and more Video games from many companies and platforms, placed in context with games today Numerous quotes about the games from industry professionals

Infinite Baseball

Infinite Baseball
Author: Alva Noë
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2019-03-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0190928190

Baseball is a strange sport: it consists of long periods in which little seems to be happening, punctuated by high-energy outbursts of rapid fire activity. Because of this, despite ever greater profits, Major League Baseball is bent on finding ways to shorten games, and to tailor baseball to today's shorter attention spans. But for the true fan, baseball is always compelling to watch -and intellectually fascinating. It's superficially slow-pace is an opportunity to participate in the distinctive thinking practice that defines the game. If baseball is boring, it's boring the way philosophy is boring: not because there isn't a lot going on, but because the challenge baseball poses is making sense of it all. In this deeply entertaining book, philosopher and baseball fan Alva Noë explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game. For example, he ponders how observers of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or blame. To put it another way, in baseball - as in the law - we decide what happened based on who is responsible for what happened. Noe also explains the curious activity of keeping score: a score card is not merely a record of the game, like a video recording; it is an account of the game. Baseball requires that true fans try to tell the story of the game, in real time, as it unfolds, and thus actively participate in its creation. Some argue that baseball is fundamentally a game about numbers. Noe's wide-ranging, thoughtful observations show that, to the contrary, baseball is not only a window on language, culture, and the nature of human action, but is intertwined with deep and fundamental human truths. The book ranges from the nature of umpiring and the role of instant replay, to the nature of the strike zone, from the rampant use of surgery to controversy surrounding performance enhancing drugs. Throughout, Noe's observations are surprising and provocative. Infinite Baseball is a book for the true baseball fan.

Title Quests: A Complete History of the National Football League’s Championship Series

Title Quests: A Complete History of the National Football League’s Championship Series
Author: Kelly Bell
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2024-05-24
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN:

Title Quests: A Complete History of the National Football League’s Championship Series is a retelling of a fascinating series of championship NFL Football contests that have seen scores ranging from 7–0 to 73–0, dark suspicions of underworld interference, a game played just inshore from a roiling Gulf of Mexico hurricane, featuring teams with names such as the Boston Redskins, Chicago Cardinals, and Cleveland Rams. These games have been played in blizzards, downpours, and deserts, interrupted by power failures, featuring brothers versus brothers, witnessing wild comebacks and collapses, with a team winning the title in its very first year in the league, and marking the birth and death of dynasties. Expect the unexpected.

Quests

Quests
Author: Kelly Bell
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2023-11-10
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1638298653

Quests is a retelling of a fascinating series of championship NFL Football contests that have seen scores ranging from 7–0 to 73–0, dark suspicions of Underworld interference, a game played just inshore from a roiling Gulf of Mexico hurricane, featured teams with such names as the Boston Redskins, Chicago Cardinals and Cleveland Rams, played in blizzards, downpours and deserts been interrupted by a power failure featured brothers versus brothers, seen wild comebacks and wild collapses, a team that won the title it’s very first year in the league, and the birth and death of dynasties. Expect the Unexpected.

My Life on the Line: How the NFL Damn Near Killed Me and Ended Up Saving My Life

My Life on the Line: How the NFL Damn Near Killed Me and Ended Up Saving My Life
Author: Ryan O'Callaghan
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1617757705

A riveting account of life as a closeted professional athlete from gay NFL player O’Callaghan, against the backdrop of depression, opioid addiction, and the threat of suicide. “[O’Callaghan’s] story is one of beautiful vulnerability, and it further shows the importance of knowing you aren’t alone.” —Oprah Daily, recommended by Gayle King Ryan O’Callaghan’s plan was always to play football and then, when his career was over, kill himself. Growing up in a politically conservative corner of California, the not-so-subtle messages he heard as a young man from his family and from TV and film routinely equated being gay with disease and death. Letting people in on the darkest secret he kept buried inside was not an option: better death with a secret than life as a gay man. As a kid , Ryan never envisioned just how far his football career would take him. He was recruited by the University of California, Berkeley, where he spent five seasons, playing alongside his friend Aaron Rodgers. Then it was on to the NFL for stints with the almost-undefeated New England Patriots and the often-defeated Kansas City Chiefs. Bubbling under the surface of Ryan’s entire NFL career was a collision course between his secret sexuality and his hidden drug use. When the league caught him smoking pot, he turned to NFL-sanctioned prescription painkillers that quickly sent his life into a tailspin. As injuries mounted and his daily intake of opioids reached a near-lethal level, he wrote his suicide note to his parents and plotted his death. Yet someone had been watching. A member of the Chiefs organization stepped in, recognizing the signs of drug addiction. Ryan reluctantly sought psychological help, and it was there that he revealed his lifelong secret for the very first time. Nearing the twilight of his career, Ryan faced the ultimate decision: end it all, or find out if his family and football friends could ever accept a gay man in their lives.