In 108 STITCHES, Ron Darling offers his own take on the "six degrees of separation" game and knits together a collection of wild, wise and wistful stories reflecting the full arc of a life in and around our national pastime. Darling has played with or reported on just about everybody who has put on a uniform since 1983, and they in turn have played with or reported on just about everybody who put on a uniform in a previous generation. Through relationships with baseball legends on and off the field, like Yale coach Smoky Joe Wood, Willie Mays, Bart Giamatti, Tom Seaver and Mickey Mantle, Darling's reminiscences reach all the way back to Babe Ruth and other turn-of-the-century greats.

Every little kid who's ever taken the mound in Little League dreams of someday getting the ball for Game Seven of the World Series. Ron Darling got to live that dream --- only it didn't go exactly as planned. In GAME 7, 1986, the award-winning baseball analyst looks back at what might have been a signature moment in his career, and reflects on the ways professional athletes must sometimes shoulder a personal disappointment as their teams find a way to win.

The perfect game is one of the rarest accomplishments in sports. No hits, no walks, no men reaching base. In more than 130 years of Major League Baseball, it has only happened 20 times. On June 2, 2010, Armando Galarraga threw baseball’s 21st perfect game. Except that’s not how it entered the record books.