Sports / Recreation

This up-to-minute book follows the story of Barbaro, the Triple Crown contender whose unlikely fight back from almost certain death from a shattered leg and ensuing complications captured the hearts of a nation who responded with a stunning display of love.

In 132 years of derby races, only 11 horses have won the Triple Crown, the last in 1978. Barbaro was a favorite to be the twelfth until May 20, 2006, at the Preakness Stakes, when his jockey, Edgar Prado pulled him up a couple of hundred yards from the starting gate. Subsequent examination revealed that he had virtually exploded bones in his right rear leg so badly that under normal conditions he would have been euthanized right on the track. But his owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, chose another path, one filled with anxiety and tears--but also courageous determination to save his life.

This touching, soaring book--filled with insights from Barbaro's trainers, breeders, caretakers, and owners--follows Barbaro from foal to colt to champion to perfect patient. But In the end it is not just a story of a down-but-not-out champion, but of human beings at their very best.

But what's really going on behind the scenes and inside the barns? It's a year-round labor of love in which scores of people--trainers, jockeys, stable hands--and hundreds of horses, work in harmony to create champions. It takes a total team effort to develop a competitive horse, never mind a Triple Crown winner like American Pharoah.

And few trainers in the history of horse racing, in a century and a half of trying, have created more champions than the sport's most celebrated trainer, Bob Baffert. In the past ten years, Baffert has had three colts win the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, only to lose at the Belmont. In 2015, he had the first Triple Crown winner in thirty-seven years, American Pharoah. In 2016, his top Derby contender failed to place. Horse racing is notoriously unpredictable, which has always been part of the allure. But seeing how the potential champions are trained and groomed is surprising, illuminating, and even, at times, emotional and moving, as readers learn about the powerful bond between the horses and the stable employees who dedicate their lives to them.

David Israel is a journalist turned television and film producer who made horse racing his successful third career and became the head of the California Horse Racing Board. Together, Israel, Baffert, and the horses themselves will tell the story of a whole season in Baffert's barn, as readers witness Baffert's yearly--and endless--quest to create another champion.

A perfect gift for the die-hard fan of America's favorite pasttime. Baseball is rich in anecdotes about team superstitions (from the black cat that haunted the Cubs to the Curse of the Babe), the antics of the superstars, and other facts that come out of left field. Think today's umpires have a temper? Wait till you read about the 19th century New Jersey ump who pulled out a gun and shoved it in the face of a player who came at him with a bat. Or about the time three Brooklyn Dodger runners found themselves at third base--together. Fans will laugh, they'll learn--and they won't put this down!

"An instant sports classic." --New York Post * "Stellar." --The Wall Street Journal * "A true masterwork...880 pages of sheer baseball bliss." --BookPage (starred review) * "This is a remarkable achievement." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A magnum opus from acclaimed baseball writer Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100 is an audacious, singular, and masterly book that took a lifetime to write. The entire story of baseball rings through a countdown of the 100 greatest players in history, with a foreword by George Will.

Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious, ? The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski. In the book's introduction, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator George F. Will marvels, "Posnanski must already have lived more than two hundred years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?"

Baseball's legends come alive in these pages, which are not merely rankings but vibrant profiles of the game's all-time greats. Posnanski dives into the biographies of iconic Hall of Famers, unfairly forgotten All-Stars, talents of today, and more. He doesn't rely just on records and statistics--he lovingly retraces players' origins, illuminates their characters, and places their accomplishments in the context of baseball's past and present. Just how good a pitcher is Clayton Kershaw in the 21st-century game compared to Greg Maddux dueling with the juiced hitters of the nineties? How do the career and influence of Hank Aaron compare to Babe Ruth's? Which player in the top ten most deserves to be resurrected from history?

No compendium of baseball's legendary geniuses could be complete without the players of the segregated Negro Leagues, men whose extraordinary careers were largely overlooked by sportswriters at the time and unjustly lost to history. Posnanski writes about the efforts of former Negro Leaguers to restore sidelined Black athletes to their due honor and draws upon the deep troves of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and extensive interviews with the likes of Buck O'Neil to illuminate the accomplishments of players such as pitchers Satchel Paige and Smokey Joe Williams; outfielders Oscar Charleston, Monte Irvin, and Cool Papa Bell; first baseman Buck Leonard; shortstop Pop Lloyd; catcher Josh Gibson; and many, many more.

The Baseball 100 treats readers to the whole rich pageant of baseball history in a single volume. Engrossing, surprising, and heartfelt, it is a magisterial tribute to the game of baseball and the stars who have played it.

For more than a decade, New York University President John Sexton has used baseball to illustrate the elements of a spiritual life in a wildly popular course at NYU. Using some of the great works of baseball fiction as well as the actual game's fantastic moments, its legendary characters, and its routine rituals from the long-sought triumph of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, to the heroic achievements of players like the saintly Christy Mathewson and the sinful Ty Cobb, to the loving intimacy of a game of catch between a father and son Sexton teaches that through the game we can touch the spiritual dimension of life.
"Baseball as a Road to God "is about the elements of our lives that lie beyond what can be captured in words alone ineffable truths that we know by experience rather than by logic or analysis. Applying tothe secular activity of baseball a form of inquiry usually reserved for the study of religion, Sexton reveals a surprising amount of common ground between the game and what we all recognize as religion: sacred places and time, faith and doubt, blessings and curses, and more.
In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, this book elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to a deeper and more meaningful life."