The Mesoamerican Ballgame

The Mesoamerican Ballgame
Author: Vernon L. Scarborough
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 426
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780816513604

The Precolumbian ballgame, played on a masonry court, has long intrigued scholars because of the magnificence of its archaeological remains. From its lowland Maya origins it spread throughout the Aztec empire, where the game was so popular that sixteen thousand rubber balls were imported annually into Tenochtitlan. It endured for two thousand years, spreading as far as to what is now southern Arizona. This new collection of essays brings together research from field archaeology, mythology, and Maya hieroglyphic studies to illuminate this important yet puzzling aspect of Native American culture. The authors demonstrate that the game was more than a spectator sport; serving social, political, mythological, and cosmological functions, it celebrated both fertility and the afterlife, war and peace, and became an evolving institution functioning in part to resolve conflict within and between groups. The contributors provide complete coverage of the archaeological, sociopolitical, iconographic, and ideological aspects of the game, and offer new information on the distribution of ballcourts, new interpretations of mural art, and newly perceived relations of the game with material in the Popol Vuh. With its scholarly attention to a subject that will fascinate even general readers, The Mesoamerican Ballgame is a major contribution to the study of the mental life and outlook of New World peoples.

Death at the Ballpark

Death at the Ballpark
Author: Robert M. Gorman
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0786479329

When we think of baseball, we think of sunny days and leisurely outings at the ballpark--rarely do thoughts of death come to mind. Yet during the game's history, hundreds of players, coaches and spectators have died while playing or watching the National Pastime. In its second edition, this ground-breaking study provides the known details for 150 years of game-related deaths, identifies contributing factors and discusses resulting changes to game rules, protective equipment, crowd control and stadium structures and grounds. Topics covered include pitched and batted-ball fatalities, weather and field condition accidents, structural failures, fatalities from violent or risky behavior and deaths from natural causes.

The Game of Balls: Ball Games All Over The World

The Game of Balls: Ball Games All Over The World
Author: Baby Professor
Publisher: Speedy Publishing LLC
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2015-12-20
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1682808637

If your child is a sport-loving little person, he/she would find this book of ball games highly appealing! This book effectively cultivates a love for learning because it is very visual. There isn't a lot of reading to do, so it's great for non-readers too! The best thing about picture books is they speak the universal language of images so they're easy to understand. Order a copy today!

A Whole Different Ball Game

A Whole Different Ball Game
Author: Marvin Miller
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre: Baseball
ISBN: 9781566635998

Marvin Miller became the first executive director of the newly formed Major League Baseball Players Association. He recounts his experience in dealing with club owners and his success in winning a new role for the players. He helped virtually end the system that bound an athlete to one team forever and thereby raised salaries enormously. formed

Ball Four

Ball Four
Author: Jim Bouton
Publisher: Rosetta Books
Total Pages: 716
Release: 2012-03-20
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0795323247

The 50th Anniversary edition of “the book that changed baseball” (NPR), chosen by Time magazine as one of the “100 Greatest Non-Fiction” books. When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold, and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries. Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four. Fans liked discovering that athletes were real people—often wildly funny people. David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Vietnam, wrote a piece in Harper’s that said of Bouton: “He has written . . . a book deep in the American vein, so deep in fact that it is by no means a sports book.” Today Ball Four has taken on another role—as a time capsule of life in the sixties. “It is not just a diary of Bouton’s 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros,” says sportswriter Jim Caple. “It’s a vibrant, funny, telling history of an era that seems even further away than four decades. To call it simply a ‘tell all book’ is like describing The Grapes of Wrath as a book about harvesting peaches in California.” Includes a new foreword by Jim Bouton's wife, Paula Kurman “An irreverent, best-selling book that angered baseball’s hierarchy and changed the way journalists and fans viewed the sports world.” —The Washington Post

A Game of Inches

A Game of Inches
Author: Peter Morris
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
Total Pages: 663
Release: 2006-03-23
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1566639549

A fascinating and charming encyclopedic collection of baseball firsts, describing how the innovations in the game—in rules, equipment, styles of play, strategies, etc.—occurred and developed from its origins to the present day. The book relies heavily on quotations from contemporary sources.

The Ball

The Ball
Author: John Fox
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2012-05-15
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0062101625

Anthropologist John Fox sets off on a worldwide adventure to thefarthest reaches of the globe and the deepest recesses of our ancientpast to answer a question inspired by his sports-loving son: "Why do we play ball?" From Mexican jungles to the small-town gridirons of Ohio, frommedieval villages and royal courts to modern soccer pitches andbaseball parks, The Ball explores the little-known origins ofour favorite sports across the centuries, and traces how a simpleinvention like the ball has come to stake an unrivaled claim on ourpassions, our money, and our lives. Equal parts history and travelogue,The Ball removes us from the scandals and commercialism of today'ssports world to uncover the true reasons we play ball, helping us reclaimour universal connection to the games we love.

Having a Ball

Having a Ball
Author: John Byl
Publisher: Human Kinetics
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2008
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780736072540

It makes sense: Kids, balls, bouncing, laughter, and fun all go together. And in Having a Ball: Stability Ball Games, author John Byl shows you how to get kids bouncing, laughing, moving, and having great fun--all as they improve their fitness skills. Having a Ball features -73 stability ball games, with variations, that teach balance and coordination; -a great variety of challenges, races, relays, and team games for all participants; -a game finder that helps you quickly find the right activity for your group; and -games that work for youth in fitness centers, schools, park departments--wherever it is you work with kids. The book is organized into seven chapters based on the nature of the activities and the number of players involved. There are games for partners working together to complete a challenge; for individuals, pairs, or groups to complete tasks as quickly as possible; and relays involving teams of three or four players each. There are also chase games, games for larger groups, and activities that pit two teams against each other. Each game lists an objective and notes the equipment, number of players, and setup required. Instructions take you sequentially through explaining the game to your players. The games come with variations, and you and your players are encouraged to add to those variations to make the games work best for your particular situation. Whether you're using these games in a fitness center, recreation program, or school, they'll be a hit with kids because the games are a blast--and using nontraditional equipment helps to level the playing field so everyone gets to participate equally.

Keep Your Eye On the Ball

Keep Your Eye On the Ball
Author: Robert G. Watts
Publisher: W. H. Freeman
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2000-03-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780716737179

"Keep your eye on the ball!" may be good advice--but it is impossible to do. The batter can track the ball until it is about five feet in front of the plate, but then he falls behind because the ball is moving too fast. In Keep Your Eye on the Ball, Robert G. Watts and A. Terry Bahill--engineers by vocation, baseball fans by avocation--have devised a series of experiments that put some of baseball's most cherished myths to the test. By applying physics, psychology, physiology, and other scientific principles to baseball, the authors have resolved, once and for all, some of the controversial issues that have intrigued fans for decades, including: * Do curveballs really curve? Do fastballs rise? * How do knuckleballs and spitballs work? * What exactly happens when the ball hits the bat? * Does corking the bat really help a hitter? * Are aluminum bats more dangerous than wooden bats? * Can certain physiological factors help predict success for a hitter? * Why are more home runs being hit than ever before? * Are today's players better than yesterday's? Completely revised and updated to include recent statistics, new research, and additional historical commentary, Keep Your Eye on the Ball is a highly informative and entertaining guide to the science of baseball that all fans of the game--regardless of scientific background--will enjoy.

Visual Perception

Visual Perception
Author: Vicki Bruce
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2014-08-27
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1136917071

This comprehensively updated and expanded revision of the successful second edition continues to provide detailed coverage of the ever-growing range of research topics in vision. In Part I, the treatment of visual physiology has been extensively revised with an updated account of retinal processing, a new section explaining the principles of spatial and temporal filtering which underlie discussions in later chapters, and an up-to-date account of the primate visual pathway. Part II contains four largely new chapters which cover recent psychophysical evidence and computational model of early vision: edge detection, perceptual grouping, depth perception, and motion perception. The models discussed are extensively integrated with physiological evidence. All other chapters in Parts II, III, and IV have also been thoroughly updated.