How to Play Smart Baseball By: Leighton L. Smith How to Play Smart Baseball is a user-friendly guide to playing baseball that anyone can use. It gives practical suggestions on how to play baseball better, including ideas and tactics for managers, coaches and players of all positions. Using real-life examples from throughout the history of the sport, How to Play Smart Baseball advocates a smarter, more engaging way to play the game while memorizing some of the best players and plays of all time. Amateur of professional, all readers can use this book as a companion to enhance their experience in watching, discussing, or playing the game.

A fascinating and informative look at what goes on in the psyche of professional baseball players as they play the game, Smart Baseball is a unique chance for baseball fans to see what it takes for ballplayers to succeed at the Major League level. What goes on in a baseball player's mind is critical to the outcome of the game. Since most major leaguers are in peak physical condition, the difference between success and failure on the field often depends on a player's mental approach. Looking at everything from a player's confidence to his leadership skills, instincts, and hunches, Smart Baseball uses entertaining anecdotes to get inside the mind of baseball's greats and show fans what goes through a player's head when he steps onto the field. Smart Baseball presents the knowledge and accumulated experience of one of the few three-generation baseball families--the Bells. In addition, this book is full of insights from more than one hundred of Major League Baseball's greatest players--from Willie Mays to Barry Bonds to Ferguson Jenkins.

Using his uncle's time machine, a fringe major league ballplayer travels 60+ years back in time to play for Chicago's National League team, the Barrons. Shortstop Jack Dillon and his uncle believe today's players are bigger, faster and more talented than their counterparts of the 1940s. Jack's goal is to alter the results of the 1946 pennant race by enabling the second place Barrons to edge out the first place Cardinals allowing his grandfather to win a large wager. With these winnings, grandpa will continue to own a computer company that will be worth billions of dollars by the year 2000. While in 1946, Jack falls deeply in love with a beautiful model and finds himself associating with a group of people who are threatened by a serial killer.

This account of the four baseball seasons of 1900 through 1903 seeks to capture the flavor of the period by providing yearly overviews from the standpoint of each team and by focusing more deeply on 30 or more players of the era--not only such legendary stars as Cy Young and Willie Keeler, but also relative unknowns such as Bill Keister and Kip Selbach. Each team section is supplemented by a table providing the significant batting and pitching statistics for each regular team member. The major theme of the period was the baseball war between the National and American leagues from 1900 to 1903. But the broad multi-season, multi-team view allows varying the focus. The pennant races receive due attention but there are other aspects of the baseball drama, such as: the aging star who finds a way to extend his period of dominance (Cy Young); the young, unpolished phenom whose raw talent enables him to excel (Christy Mathewson); and the fierce competitor who risks injury to help his team (Joe McGinnity or Deacon Phillippe).

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The foremost historian of the "blackball" era spent nearly 10 years researching this acclaimed oral history, interviewing 17 outstanding players including Cool Papa Bell, Buck Leonard, and Willie Wells. Over 80 vintage photographs.

This ambitious study of major league managers since the formation of the National League applies a sabermetric approach to gauging their performance and tendencies. Rather than focusing solely on in-game tactical decisions, it also analyzes broader, off-the-field management issues such as handling players, fans, and media, enforcing team rules, working with the front office, and balancing pressure versus performance.

The college baseball season doesn’t end when the school year is finished. Many of the top NCAA Division I, II, and III baseball players continue to play in one of the game’s most unique environments, the summer wood bat leagues. They swap aluminum bats for wood and play from June through August in more than forty states. The poetry of America’s pastime persists as soon-to-be stars such as Gordon Beckham, Buster Posey, and Aaron Judge crash in spare bedrooms and play for free on city and college ball fields. Summer Baseball Nation chronicles a season in America’s summer collegiate baseball leagues. From the Cape to Alaska and a lot of places in between, Will Geoghegan tells the stories of a summer: eighteen of the best college players in the country playing Wiffle ball on Cape Cod, the Midnight Sun Game in Alaska, a California legend picking up another win, home runs flying into Lake Michigan, and the namesake of an old Minor League club packing the same charming ballpark. At every stop, players chase dreams while players and fans alike savor the moment.

PRO BASEBALL COMES TO THE MAINE COAST is a fictional baseball story about a newly-formed low minor league baseball team that played in a beautiful region of Maine known as Penobscot Bay. The team joined a little-known league made up of independent professional teams that did not have an affiliation with a major league team. A local businessman and a successful small college baseball coach joined together to make something that seemed to be impossible become a reality. A team made up of undrafted small college players played their first season with determination. They were a bunch of team-oriented overachievers. This “feel good” story of the first season is an example of how a sports team can be the bond that can bring an area of small towns together.