In the mythical town of Gold Ridge, California, Brett Corcoran is pursuing his dream of a career in professional baseball. After a disastrous fall training season, he is cut from the local community college team. But when his father, Don, finds his old high school coach Webb Johnson living in a flophouse in town, everything is about to change. Don persuades Webb to work with his son to rebuild his dream. But there is one provision: Webb must abstain from alcohol while ignoring Don's downward spiral into the same disease. Webb begins to bring himself and Brett back from rock bottom, teaching old school lessons and building confidence. Brett is helped along in his quest by Ramona, a passionate young nursing student and the love of his life. Meanwhile, as a pandemic and social chaos unfold, Don is heading towards the abyss. In this moving novella, a young man battles family conflicts and personal demons to resurrect his dream of professional baseball amid a pandemic and social upheaval.

The novel One Batter, One Pitch is a sequel to An Informal Boston Education, which chronicled the chaotic, frenetic, and hilarious career, social, and romantic missteps of quirky, wisecracking, ballplaying, weightlifting, and beer-drinking young Boston CPA Rocky Collins; until, with the help of a good woman and promising new job, he finally gets his life under control. But now hes approaching middle age, frustrated with limiting age-related physical issues and feeling increasingly out of tune with the culture; and worst of all, the changing competitive landscape facing the company hes been successful with for twenty years has become an insurmountable problem. Hes working too hard and long with disappointing results, and worrying that, despite his rewarding family life and a solid circle of old friends, hes going to end up a failed, essentially numerical man. But his unrelenting drive and determination, intelligence and wit, along with the unwavering empathetic support of his equally hard-working wife, finally have him hooking up with a couple of charismatic, successful Boston venture capitalists, who not only appreciate his talent and work ethic, but also his imagination and combative Boston-Irish humor. He gets his career back on track by helping them turn around a couple of mid-size manufacturing companies, while also helping found a new independent baseball league with some very unique rules, equipment, and playing fields; designing The Penultimate Boston Sports Bar; and helping a black Boston area youth minister build a Life Training and Development Center.

"This book provides practical strategies for developing the mental skills which help speed you to your full potential."---Dave Winfield What does it mean to play heads-up baseball? A heads-up player has confidence in his ability, keeps control in pressure situations, and focuses on one pitch at a time. His mental skills enable him to play consistently at or near his best despite the adversity baseball presents each day. "My ability to fully focus on what I had to do on a daily basis was what made me the successful player I was. Sure I had some natural ability, but that only gets you so far. I think I learned how to focus; it wasn't something that I was necessarily born with." -- Hank Aaron "Developing and refining my mental game has played a critical role in my success in baseball. For years players have had to develop these skills on their own. This book provides practical strategies for developing the mental skills that will help speed you toward your full potential." -- Dave Winfield

Pitch (i.e., fundamental frequency FO and fundamental period TO) occupies a key position in the acoustic speech signal. The prosodic information of an utterance is predominantly determined by this parameter. The ear is more sensitive to changes of fundamental frequency than to changes of other speech signal parameters by an order of magnitude. The quality of vocoded speech is essentially influenced by the quality and faultlessness of the pitch measure ment. Hence the importance of this parameter necessitates using good and reliable measurement methods. At first glance the task looks simple: one just has to detect the funda mental frequency or period of a quasi-periodic signal. For a number of reasons, however, the task of pitch determination has to be counted among the most difficult problems in speech analysis. 1) In principle, speech is a nonstationary process; the momentary position of the vocal tract may change abruptly at any time. This leads to drastic variations in the temporal structure of the signal, even between subsequent pitch periods, and assuming a quasi-periodic signal is often far from realistic. 2) Due to the flexibility of the human vocal tract and the wide variety of voices, there exist a multitude of possible temporal structures. Narrow-band formants at low harmonics (especially at the second or third harmonic) are an additional source of difficulty. 3) For an arbitrary speech signal uttered by an unknown speaker, the fundamental frequency can vary over a range of almost four octaves (50 to 800 Hz).

In Victorian England's gaslit heart, monstrous horrors lurk. In a cold London cemetery, Silas Mercer awakens in his grave, his past life an empty slate. As the newest member of the clandestine Order of the Golden Dawn, he is thrust into a world rich with supernatural intrigue and mystery. Tasked with investigating a haunting in the eerie woods of Leicester, Silas finds himself partnered with the scandalous libertine, Tobias Astaroth. A man of vile temperament, Tobias seems determined to make their journey a misery. As Silas grapples with his newfound existence and the cryptic machinations of the Order, he becomes increasingly fascinated by the irascible Mr. Astaroth, who is not without his devilish charms. When the Order's newest partnership blooms into something unexpected, and nefarious secrets begin to unfurl, Silas realises that the greatest peril lies not in the monsters that lurk without, but in the demons that dwell within. Together, this unlikely pair must navigate a treacherous labyrinth of deceit and danger, their fates entwined as they battle for survival against forces both infernal and divine. A slow-burn, dark historical fantasy series. Contains: Sexual content, violence and rather a lot of cursing. This is the first book in the thrilling Historical Fantasy series, The Diabolus Chronicles Also in series (Eight Books): The Verderer - Pitch & Sickle Book Two The Skriker - Pitch & Sickle Book Three The Greensward - Pitch & Sickle Book Four The Fulbourn - Pitch & Sickle Book Five The Herlequin - Pitch & Sickle Book Six The Simurgh - Pitch & Sickle Book Seven The Death Wish - Pitch & Sickle Book Eight (Finale)

The best of the best on the mound. Whether it's the legendary Cy Young and his impressive control, Greg Maddux and his dazzling repertoire of pitches, or Nolan Ryan with his sizzling fastball, pitching's Ph.D.s have important lessons to share on how they do what they do -- and why it works. Roger Clemens, Tom Glavine, Lee Smith, Goose Gossage, and Curt Schilling are only a few of the big-leaguers who offer their insights to aspiring hurlers. Book jacket.

Vols. for 1957-61 include an additional (mid-January) no. called Directory issue, 1st-5th ed. The 6th ed. was published as the Dec. 1961 issue.

"Founder of business strategy consulting firm argues that customers are more persuaded by improvised conversations than scripted sales pitches. Presents techniques and practices for six habits people can learn to enable spontaneous conversations that persuade customers to say 'yes'"--