Adult

This book provides profiles of 101 ballpark attractions, museum exhibits, statues, plaques, gravesites, shrines, bars, restaurants, and pop culture landmarks that reflect the game’s rich history and quirky lore.

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 of the highly regarded blog of the same name, examines how the life of the franchise mirrors the life of its fans, particularly his own. Unabashedly and unapologetically, Prince stands up for all Mets fans and, by proxy, sports fans everywhere in exploring how we root, why we take it so seriously, and what it all means.

Chris Coste dreamed of playing major-league baseball from the age of seven. But after eleven grueling years in the minors, a spot on a major-league roster still seemed just out of his reach --- until that fateful call came from the Philadelphia Phillies in May 2006. At age thirty-three (“going on eighty”), Coste was finally heading to the big time.

Steve Garvey spent five years as a bat boy. The fact that he would go on to become a first baseman with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and one of the most successful players of his era, is like something out of a Hollywood script. MY BAT BOY DAYS is his moving collection of indelible memories, fascinating profiles and lessons learned --- about the game and about life.

Peter Morris, author of the prizewinning A GAME OF INCHES, takes a fresh look at the early amateur years of the game. Mr. Morris retrieves a lost era and a lost way of life. Offering a challenging new perspective on baseball's earliest years, and conveying the sense of delight that once pervaded the game and its players, Mr. Morris supplants old myths with a story just as marvelous --- but one that really happened.

Emmeline Amos is sick of her ex saying she's boring and prissy. After all, she works for a phone-sex company! (As general manager, but still.) On a rare girls' night out, fueled by blender drinks and bravado, Em accepts a shocking dare --- to handle a call herself. But it's tipsy Em who gets an earful from an irate single father on the other end of the line. Awkward.

Former mean girl Dixie Davis is back in town and it’s payback time. Literally. Dixie is flat broke and her best --- make that only --- friend, Landon, is throwing her a lifeline from the Great Beyond. Dixie stands to inherit his business…if she meets a few conditions.

If ever there was a figure who changed the game of baseball, it was Walter O'Malley. Criticized in New York and beloved in Los Angeles, O'Malley was one of the most controversial owners in the history of American sports, altering the course of history when he uprooted the Dodgers and transplanted them to Los Angeles. While many critics attacked him, O'Malley looked to the future, declining to defend his stance. As a result, fans across the nation have never been able to stop arguing about him and his strategy --- until now. FOREVER BLUE is a uniquely intimate portrait of a man who changed America's pastime forever, a fascinating story fundamental to the history of sports, business, and the American West.

AS THEY SEE 'EM is an insider’s look at the largely unknown world of professional umpires, the small group of men (and the very occasional woman) who make sure America’s favorite pastime is conducted in a manner that is clean, crisp, and true. Bruce Weber, a New York Times reporter, not only interviewed dozens of professional umpires but entered their world, trained to become an umpire, then spent a season working games from Little League to big league spring training. AS THEY SEE 'EM is Weber’s entertaining account of this experience as well as a lively exploration of what amounts to an eccentric secret society, with its own customs, its own rituals, its own colorful vocabulary.