Baseball's Comeback Players

Baseball's Comeback Players
Author: Rick Swaine
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2014-03-27
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0786476540

This book profiles forty major league ballplayers who engineered remarkable comebacks to salvage fading careers. Details of each comeback is provided along with a summary of the player's career. The comeback players range from Hall of Famers like Ted Williams and Stan Musial; to near-greats like Tommy John and Luis Tiant; to journeyman performers like George McQuinn and Tony Cuccinello. In the absence of statistical standards to evaluate or even define comebacks, the selection of the top comeback players was based on the following criteria: historical significance, uniqueness, dramatic content, degree of difficulty, and the player's overall reputation and standing.

Comeback Season

Comeback Season
Author: Cam Perron
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1982153601

In 2007, at the age of twelve, Perron bought a set of Topps baseball cards featuring several players from the Negro Leagues. He started writing letters to former Negro League players asking for their autographs and a few words about their careers. The players responded with detailed stories about their glory days on the field, and the racism they faced, including run-ins with the KKK. The letters turned into phone calls, and in these conversations many of the players revealed that they had fallen out of touch with their former teammates. Perron and a small group of fellow researchers organized the first annual Negro League Players Reunion in Birmingham, Alabama in 2010. This is the story of his mission to help many players get pension money that they were owed from Major League Baseball-- and to get a Negro League museum opened in Birmingham, stocked with memorabilia. -- adapted from jacket

Comeback Pitchers

Comeback Pitchers
Author: Lyle Spatz
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2021-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1496222024

Comeback Pitchers is the story of two pitchers, Jack Quinn and Howard Ehmke, whose intertwining careers began in the Deadball Era and continued into the 1920s and 1930s.

The 26th Man

The 26th Man
Author: Steve Fireovid
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1996-07-28
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780803268913

The average major league player currently earns more than half a million dollars a season. But, only 25 players make the big team's roster. The 26th Man details the season-long journey of Steve Fireovid of the Triple A Indianapolis Indians, as he deals with the realities and the heartbreak of playing a kid's games well into his thirties.

Baseball's Greatest Comeback

Baseball's Greatest Comeback
Author: J. Brian Ross
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014-08-07
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1442236078

In 1914 the Boston Braves experienced the greatest come-from-behind season in baseball history. A perennially woeful team, the Braves rose from the ashes of last place—fifteen games behind on July 4th—to battle in the World Series against the Philadelphia Athletics, one of the most dominant teams of all time.Baseball fans witnessed one of sport’s most spectacular comebacks, and Boston’s National League team earned a new designation: “The Miracle Braves.” Baseball’s Greatest Comeback: The Miracle Braves of 1914 follows the Boston Braves through this rollercoaster year, from their miserable start to their inspiring finish. A collection of likeable, determined, and highly unconventional ballplayers, the Braves endeared themselves to fans who rooted enthusiastically for the team. Sitting in last place midway through the season, the youthful group of castoffs and misfits, many of whom had been rejected by other major league teams, followed the lead of Walter “Rabbit” Maranville, Johnny “The Crab” Evers, and George “Big Daddy” Stallingsto turn things around. The Braves battled their way up the standings, finishing the second half of the season with a miraculous 52 and 14 record. They went on to defeat John McGraw’s powerful New York Giants for the pennant and found themselves face-to-face with the talented Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series. On the 100th anniversary of this memorable season, the 1914 Boston Braves are still remembered as one of the greatest comeback teams in baseball history. Full of timeless images and memorable characters—including a fanatically superstitious manager, a cheerfully madcap star, and an obsessively driven, yet highly sensitive captain—this book will inform and entertain baseball fans and sports historians alike.

Comeback

Comeback
Author: Dave Dravecky
Publisher: Zondervan Publishing Company
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1992-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780310528814

The story of the San Francisco Giants baseball pitcher who came back from cancer to pitch again before breaking his arm during the game.

The Baseball Codes

The Baseball Codes
Author: Jason Turbow
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2011-03-22
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 030727862X

An insider’s look at baseball’s unwritten rules, explained with examples from the game’s most fascinating characters and wildest historical moments. Everyone knows that baseball is a game of intricate regulations, but it turns out to be even more complicated than we realize. All aspects of baseball—hitting, pitching, and baserunning—are affected by the Code, a set of unwritten rules that governs the Major League game. Some of these rules are openly discussed (don’t steal a base with a big lead late in the game), while others are known only to a minority of players (don’t cross between the catcher and the pitcher on the way to the batter’s box). In The Baseball Codes, old-timers and all-time greats share their insights into the game’s most hallowed—and least known—traditions. For the learned and the casual baseball fan alike, the result is illuminating and thoroughly entertaining. At the heart of this book are incredible and often hilarious stories involving national heroes (like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays) and notorious headhunters (like Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale) in a century-long series of confrontations over respect, honor, and the soul of the game. With The Baseball Codes, we see for the first time the game as it’s actually played, through the eyes of the players on the field. With rollicking stories from the past and new perspectives on baseball’s informal rulebook, The Baseball Codes is a must for every fan.

Baseball's Natural

Baseball's Natural
Author: John Theodore
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2006-12-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780803259584

The most detailed account of the 1949 shooting of the former Philadelphia Phillies baseball star Eddie Waitkus by an obsessed nineteen-year-old female fan in a Chicago hotel.

Baseball FAQ

Baseball FAQ
Author: Tom DeMichael
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2016-01-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1617136581

(FAQ Pop Culture). Was Abner Doubleday the architect of baseball? What exactly did it mean to be a "professional" baseball player in the 1870s? What goes on in the front office? What exactly is the Eephus pitch? What are "the tools of ignorance"? Readers will find the answers to these questions and many others in the pages of this remarkable baseball reference that's essential reading for fans of the game. Part history book, part instructional guide, and part reference manual, Baseball FAQ covers all the bases from the rules of the game to the ballparks of yesterday and today, from the minors to the major league, from the stats to the food. This engaging, compulsively readable tome offers baseball fans of all ages a wealth of fun facts and anecdotes on America's favorite pastime, including sections on the All-American Girls Professional Ball League, the Negro Leagues, the basic skills of baseball, baseball in the movies, the scandals, and the Hall of Famers.