Author: Alan Maimon
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476604363
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
If unpredictability is so much of what makes sports compelling, the baseball draft might be the best place to look. This book explores the intricate uncertainties of the draft and the people who face it. Since the modern draft began in 1965, major league teams have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to identify and develop stars of the future. Whether because of injury, poor performance or mental and physical struggles, a large percentage of the most ballyhooed prospects never reach the game's highest level. Though teams have improved in recent years at turning top picks into major leaguers, the baseball draft is still centered on educated guesswork. This book explains why.
Author: Allan Simpson
Publisher: Baseball America
ISBN: 9781932391657
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Baseball America invented coverage of the baseball draft. So who better than Baseball America to chronicle 50 years of draft history? As the baseball draft grows in prominence and more and more fans connect winning on draft day to winning in the major leagues, the BA draft book takes you through 50 years of great draft stories and the biggest hits and misses in draft history. The Baseball America 50th Anniversary Draft Book combines all the information of a great reference title with all the great stories that make draft history so rich. For every year of the draft, from 1965-2015, you'll get a complete team by team draft list, with who signed and who didn't, who reached the big leagues and who washed out. And the draft lists are more than just lists; they also feature interesting tidbits on people who became prominent baseball or in other sports or other careers altogether. You'll get the story of the most prominent storylines and people for every year of the draft, as well as plenty of charts and photos to take you in-depth on every year. This book will feature lots of information that has never been publicly available before, especially with signing bonuses from the early days of the draft. It goes without saying that anyone who has an interest in the baseball draft will have to have this book, but anyone who loves good stories (longshots that became major league stars, touted phenoms who washed out) will find fun on every page of this book.
Author: Mike Stadler
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440623252
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
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.
Author: Keith Law
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062942743
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
In this groundbreaking book, Keith Law, baseball writer for The Athletic and author of the acclaimed Smart Baseball, offers an era-spanning dissection of some of the best and worst decisions in modern baseball, explaining what motivated them, what can be learned from them, and how their legacy has shaped the game. For years, Daniel Kahneman’s iconic work of behavioral science Thinking Fast and Slow has been required reading in front offices across Major League Baseball. In this smart, incisive, and eye-opening book, Keith Law applies Kahneman’s ideas about decision making to the game itself. Baseball is a sport of decisions. Some are so small and routine they become the building blocks of the game itself—what pitch to throw or when to swing away. Others are so huge they dictate the future of franchises—when to make a strategic trade for a chance to win now, or when to offer a millions and a multi-year contract for a twenty-eight-year-old star. These decisions have long shaped the behavior of players, managers, and entire franchises. But as those choices have become more complex and data-driven, knowing what’s behind them has become key to understanding the sport. This fascinating, revelatory work explores as never before the essential question: What were they thinking? Combining behavioral science and interviews with executives, managers, and players, Keith Law analyzes baseball’s biggest decision making successes and failures, looking at how gambles and calculated risks of all sizes and scales have shaped the sport, and how the game’s ongoing data revolution is rewriting decades of accepted decision making. In the process, he explores questions that have long been debated, from whether throwing harder really increases a player’s risk of serious injury to whether teams actually “overvalue” trade prospects. Bringing his analytical and combative style to some of baseball’s longest running debates, Law deepens our knowledge of the sport in this entertaining work that is both fun and deeply informative.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Baseball
Languages : en
Pages : 2524
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Book Description
Author: Frederick J. Day
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781663231710
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
Feeling A Draft takes a comprehensive look at the origins of Major League Baseball's amateur player draft and the many twists and turns the draft has taken since it was instituted in 1965. The book delves into the mysteries of why some "can't miss" prospects fail to make an impact while other unheralded players carve out a place in the pantheon of baseball stars. In telling the story of the amateur player draft, Feeling A Draft presents the heretofore untold stories of the many baseball scouts who have scoured the country in search of those special athletes capable of achieving success at the Major League level.
![American Sports [4 volumes] PDF](https://books.google.com/books/content/images/frontcover/kRfOEAAAQBAJ?fife=w80-h100)
Author: Murry R. Nelson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313397538
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 1678
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Book Description
America loves sports. This book examines and details the proof of this fascination seen throughout American society—in our literature, film, and music; our clothing and food; and the iconography of the nation. This momentous four-volume work examines and details the cultural aspects of sport and how sport pervasively reflects—and affects—myriad aspects of American society from the early 1900s to the present day. Written in a straightforward, readable manner, the entries cover both historical and contemporary aspects of sport and American culture. Unlike purely historical encyclopedias on sports, the contributions within these volumes cover related subject matter such as poetry, novels, music, films, plays, television shows, art and artists, mythologies, artifacts, and people. While this encyclopedia set is ideal for general readers who need information on the diverse aspects of sport in American culture for research purposes or are merely reading for enjoyment, the detailed nature of the entries will also prove useful as an initial source for scholars of sport and American culture. Each entry provides a number of both print and online resources for further investigation of the topic.
Author: Rich Marazzi
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476604290
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 457
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Book Description
The playing and post-playing careers of all 1,560 players who appeared in a major league box score between 1950 and 1959--the "golden age," many say--are profiled in this exhaustive work. From Aaron to Zuverink: this treasure-trove of anecdotes, many gathered from personal interviews, is full of historical facts, controversy, and trivia. Readers will be reminded, that Milwaukee Braves pitcher Humberto Robinson was asked by a gambler to fix a game against the Phillies (he refused), Joe Adcock chased Giants pitcher Ruben Gomez around the field with a bat, Bob Turley reached the top of the corporate ladder after his playing days, Casey Wise became an orthodontist, Bobby Brown became a heart surgeon and president of the AL, and that Chuck Conners became an actor. All of this and much more can be found here.
Author: W. C. Madden
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
In response to escalating signing bonuses and in an attempt to bring parity to the major leagues, Commissioner Ford Frick used a gavel to open the proceedings of the inaugural First-Year Player Draft in 1965. This reference book looks back at the first 35 years of the draft, and includes data on every player selected through 1999 who made the majors. The author analyzes each big-league club's big-name picks, sleeper surprises, best and worst draft crops, and biggest busts, and current bonus babies. The analyses are supported by pertinent quotes from the players themselves, and a look at the future of the draft is offered. The book is richly illustrated with over 100 player photographs.
Author: Baseball Prospectus,
Publisher: Baseball Prospectus
ISBN: 1732355592
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 1411
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Book Description
FUTURES GUIDE 2020 features: - Detailed reports on top 10 prospects for every major-league team. - Condensed reports on many additional key prospects for each team. - Top talents 25 years old and younger for each team. - Baseball Prospectus’ 2020 organizational rankings. - Top 101 real-life and fantasy prospects. - Top 50 players who entered pro baseball in 2020. - Essays on prospect hype cycles and what scouting grades mean.
