It is a dark time for Jack "Clutch" Thompson. After the release of his first book, Hitting in the Clutch, his cool and trusted friends have abandoned him. Although cheered by the fans and media for his brutal, honest writings about baseball, he has angered his former friends and teammates for giving away too much information about what happens behind closed doors. Now an outcast journeyman across Major League Baseball, he has landed on the Texas Rangers and seeks to regain his old notoriety and status amongst baseball's best. To do so, he'll have to ally with the not-so-popular crowd, ignore his new horrendous and generic nickname, and attempt to take his sub par team to the playoffs, as he has in years past. Follow him through another crass and outrageous season in what critics are calling, "hands down, the best book you will ever read in your entire life."* New friends. Old enemies. Same Clutch. *No critic has said this

Baseball is America's pastime. No other sport has so captured our country's spirit and loyalty throughout the ages. We see our shiny-faced heroes on the field, signing autographs, making unbelievable plays, and doing unthinkable athletic feats night after night. We see them beaming at press conferences (always well manicured), answering 'yes ma'am, no ma'am, ' and never missing a beat. The players and heroes on the field are America's champions. But.but are they really that way? What about that one? Yes, look at that player over there. The one ogling down that woman's blouse as she leans over to wipe her child's mustard painted face? That guy seems different. Or is he? Most baseball novels follow the standard method described in the opening paragraph. As readers, we never see the real men behind the façade. What if a novel existed for the Maxim crowd about baseball? What if we could see how things really are? Now we can. Follow the always crude and crass Jack "Clutch" Thompson through a baseball season as he canoodles with monkey (women), plays pranks with his friends and teammates, and tries to break his own personal curse of only succeeding in clutch, pinch hit situations. Open up this novel and see how baseball players really are.

Get inside the minds of the stars of the diamond in this extraordinary tour of brain power, psyche, and sheer will. Yogi Berra once said, "Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical." Even so, the Yankee great may have underestimated the brain power professional baseball players routinely draw on to perform such astounding feats of athleticism as hitting 98-mph fastballs and diving to catch line drives. In The Psychology of Baseball, Mike Stadler goes beneath the surface of the game to explore the psychology behind the actions of the game’s greats--and breaks down legendary moments from baseball history, such as Willie Mays’s full-sprint over-the-shoulder grab in the 1954 World Series. Stadler begins with the mind’s role in the game’s basic skills, explaining the anticipatory thinking that can make a hitter see a "rising fastball," the complex muscular coordination required to throw a major league heater, and the intense spatial calculations the brain must perform in a split second in order for a fielder to catch a struck ball. Stadler then discusses the hidden nature of streaks and slumps, explaining why a "hot" hitter is most likely just getting lucky and why there’s no such thing as a clutch hitter, and also looks at the psychological basis of the so-called "sophomore slump" and the effect that a big-money contract has on a player’s performance. He also examines the personality types that are best suited to baseball, and explains what traits are most associated with success at the highest levels. A revolutionary new look at America’s pastime that will appeal to the many fans of bestsellers like Moneyball and Three Nights in August, The Psychology of Baseball is a must-read book for the serious baseball fan.

Foreword by Drew Olson of ESPN and praise ("the best compilation of fascinating sports stories I have read") from David Houle, producer of Hank Aaron and Harlem Globetrotters documentaries. More.

Visualizing Baseball provides a visual exploration of the game of baseball. Graphical displays are used to show how measures of performance, at the team level and the individual level, have changed over the history of baseball. Graphs of career trajectories are helpful for understanding the rise and fall of individual performances of hitters and pitchers over time. One can measure the contribution of plays by the notion of runs expectancy. Graphs of runs expectancy are useful for understanding the importance of the game situation defined by the runners on base and number of outs. Also the runs measure can be used to quantify hitter and pitch counts and the win probabilities can be used to define the exciting plays during a baseball game. Special graphs are used to describe pitch data from the PitchFX system and batted ball data from the Statcast system. One can explore patterns of streaky performance and clutch play by the use of graphs, and special plots are used to predict final season batting averages based on data from the middle of the season. This book was written for several types of readers. Many baseball fans should be interested in the topics of the chapters, especially those who are interested in learning more about the quantitative side of baseball. Many statistical ideas are illustrated and so the graphs and accompanying insights can help in promoting statistical literacy at many levels. From a practitioner’s perspective, the chapters offer many illustrations of the use of a modern graphics system and R scripts are available on an accompanying website to reproduce and potentially improve the graphs in this book.

Most Yankees fans have taken in a game or two at Yankee Stadium, have seen highlights of stars like Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio, and can tell the story of Babe Ruth's called-shot home run in 1932. But only real fans know who designed the team's iconic "NY" logo, have spent time at the Babe Ruth Museum, or have visited the site of the Yankees' original home ballpark. 100 Things Yankees Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die is the ultimate resource for true fans of the Bronx Bombers. Whether your favorite player is Lou Gehrig, Derek Jeter, or even Aaron Judge, these are the 100 things all fans need to know and do in their lifetime. In this revised and updated edition, featuring Judge and the Yankees' exciting next generation, author David Fischer has collected every essential piece of Yankees knowledge and trivia, as well as must-do activities, and ranks them all from 1 to 100, providing an entertaining and easy-to-follow checklist as you progress on your way to fan superstardom.

Is clutch performance innate-or can it be learned? Sooner or later everyone encounters a situation in which the stakes are high and the outcome is crucial. And even top performers can crumble when faced with such extreme pressure. Consider the CEO who panics in a desperate attempt to shore up his company's earnings, the veteran politician who grows overconfident and loses to the upstart candidate, the quarterback who carries his team to the Super Bowl but falls apart in the final quarter. All of them choked. But then there are the performers who thrive under such conditions: the ER doctor racing the clock to save someone's life, the lieutenant who leads his platoon to victory after an ambush, the young attorney who refuses to be intimidated in court and wins the crucial case. These people are clutch, and their ability to overcome extreme pressure consistently and beat the toughest odds fascinates us. How do they do it? According to Paul Sullivan, clutch performance does not stem from an innate ability. It's a learned skill: the art of operating in high-stress situations as if they were everyday conditions. Even some of the most experienced and talented performers lack this skill-but Sullivan shows that anyone can develop it. Drawing on new research and interviews with stars across a range of fields, Sullivan uncovers the shared traits that define clutch performers and explains how anyone can apply their strategies. He builds his case through many inspiring true stories, including those of * a skinny sergeant who saved his battalion in Iraq; * a rookie baseball player who pitched his team into its first World Series; * an eccentric psychiatrist who trained a group of financial traders to become the best in the world; * a lawyer who struggled in school but became one of the top litigators in America. Full of powerful advice and real-world examples, Clutch will show you how to overcome extreme pressure to achieve greatness.

"Highlights the athletes who rise to the top when the stakes are highest"--P. [4] of cover.

It has healed generations after times of war and throughout the depression. In more recent years, America's pastime has lost its prestige. Even so, baseball is still one of the most popular sports among youth all over the world. These kids don't care about contracts and don't cheat to be better at baseball. They still dream about playing for their favorite team. Zeke Morgan had the same dream. He and his best friend, Ronnie, dreamed of playing on the same diamond in the pros throughout their childhood. After a falling out and after fielding many of life's curve balls, Zeke Morgan followed that dream and made it his own. Follow young Zeke Morgan as he breaks into the world of baseball, makes a name for himself, and tries to resurrect a dream that died years earlier, while fending off a greedy and corrupt baseball system. Can he remain the pure and innocent baseball player he always wanted to be or will he fold under the dollar signs and glamour that are just within his reach?

Would Eve object to the presentation of her original sin in Genesis 3? Could Alexander Graham Bell possibly have foreseen the enslaving power of his great invention, the phone, over human beings today? In The Roots that Clutch, Thomas Esposito poses such questions directly by means of letters addressed to a host of deceased historical persons and literary characters. Esposito employs an eclectic blend of humor and honest curiosity in sharing insights with figures as diverse as the Greek goddess Nike, Saint Benedict, the holy city of Jerusalem, and Martin Luther King Jr. With each letter, the Cistercian monk and Catholic priest digs with the spade of his pen to unearth a dialogue on the roots or origins of realities such as sin, anger, prayer, monasticism, and his own family tree, among many others. Undergirding every letter is an invitation to discern the seeds of the Logos, the Word made flesh, planted in the soil of human thought and history. By examining these particular roots of the human condition, the author aims at cultivating fruitful meditations on the mysteries of God at work in every heart.