Sporting House

Baseball is “the New York game” because New York is where the diamond was first laid out, where the bunt and the curveball were invented, and where the home run was hit. It’s where the game’s first stars were born, and where everyone came to play or watch the game. With nuance and depth, historian Kevin Baker brings this all vividly back to life: the still-controversial, indelible moments—Did the Babe call his shot? Was Merkle out? Did they fix the 1919 World Series? Here are all the legendary players, managers, and owners, in all their vivid, complicated humanity, on and off the field.

Mat Fraser is undisputedly the fittest man in CrossFit history for winning the CrossFit Games an unprecedented five times. A student of engineering, Fraser optimized his body like a machine, and his absolute dedication to the training program he designed for himself is now legendary. Fraser became a master of identifying his weaknesses and then seeking out training methods to improve them, and he's idolized in the fitness community for his relentless pursuit of peak performance. It's not hard to see why he achieved so much success - but how is a different question.

"Your only job is to help your players be better." That single idea had a huge impact on Tony Dungy when he heard it from one of his earliest mentors, and it led him to develop the successful leadership style so admired by players and coaches throughout the NFL. Now, a storied career and a Super Bowl victory later, Tony Dungy is sharing his unique leadership philosophy with you.

Vikram Shastri has always been a good kid. He’s got a 4.6 GPA, listens to his parents, barely hits the parties, and is on track for a fancy college. But when he gets the chance to play on his high school football team, his world suddenly starts to shift. Basking in their recent victory, Vikram and his teammates Diego and MJ attend a party at an abandoned house in the Southern California foothills, located right below three ancient caves. They find themselves lost in the dark of night in one of the caves, carried away by male bravado, with a classmate who has annoyed them for years.

In what he says is the most important piece of environmental writing in his long and award-winning career, Mark Kurlansky, best-selling author of Salt and Cod, The Big Oyster, 1968, and Milk, among many others, employs his signature multi-century storytelling and compelling attention to detail to chronicle the harrowing yet awe-inspiring life cycle of salmon.

The third and most complete edition of How to Become a Football Agent yet.With the ever-evolving nature of the beautiful game, the authors have updated the entire book to ensure HOW TO BECOME A FOOTBALL AGENT: 3rd Edition provides an all-encompassing insight into how to become, and succeed as, a football agent in the current landscape. With new forewords from World Cup Winner Mesut Özil and former Arsenal and England defender Kieran Gibbs, the new edition also features brand new chapters covering an exclusive and detailed insight into: the new FIFA regulations an agent’s work in ...

In 2011, three years after leaving the NFL, Steve Gleason was diagnosed with ALS, a terminal disease that paralyzes the entire body. Doctors gave him three years to live. He was thirty-four years old. As Steve says, he is now ten years past his expiration date. His memoir is the chronicle of a remarkable life, one filled with optimism and joy, despite the trauma and pain and despair he has experienced.

Over its seventy-plus years of history, Formula 1 racing has grown from a niche motorsport with just a few events per season into a global phenomenon followed by more than a billion fans. With just twenty drivers competing at speeds of over 220 miles per hour on more than twenty of the world’s most glamorous and challenging racetracks, Formula 1 is the ultimate test of machine and humankind. To become a champion means to be counted among the most elite athletes the world has ever known.

An avid golfer with a demanding career in the greeting card business, Mike Keiser found a new calling on the authentic links courses of Scotland and Ireland. Seized by the beauty of the landscape and the holes running through it, he determined this was how golf was meant to be: inclusive, not private; played on foot, not riding a cart; the courses natural, neither lavish nor contrived. Vowing to transplant this experience to the States, Keiser entered the golf business and, ignoring the advice of experts, built a true links course in Oregon.

In most sports the pinnacle is Wheaties-box notoriety. But in the world of pool, notoriety is the last thing a hustler desires. Such is the dilemma that faces one Danny Basavich, an affable, generously proportioned Jewish kid from Jersey, who flounders through high school until he discovers the one thing he excels at - the felt - and hits the road.

In Playing for Keeps, David Halberstam takes the first full measure of Michael Jordan's epic career, one of the great American stories of our time. A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights, the audiobook chronicles the forces in Jordan's life that have shaped him into history's greatest basketball player and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world.

The man who invented shock rock tells the amazing and, yeah, shocking story of how he slayed his thirsty demons with a golf club. It started one day when Cooper was watching a Star Trek rerun between concerts, bored and drunk on a quart-of-whiskey-a-day habit. A friend dragged the rocker out of his room and suggested a round of golf. Cooper has been a self-confessed golf addict ever since.

College football has never been more popular - or more chaotic. Millions fill 100,000-seat stadiums every Saturday; tens of millions more watch on television every weekend. The 2013 Discover BCS National Championship game between Notre Dame and Alabama had a viewership of 26.4 million people, second only to the Super Bowl. Billions of dollars from television deals now flow into the game; the average budget for a top-ten team is $80 million; top coaches make more than $3 million a year; the highest paid, more than $5 million.

In this behind-the-scenes look at the making of a champion, the coach of the Villanova University men's basketball team shares his competitive and cooperative philosophy along with lessons from his coaching career and the story of his personal road to success.

Once in a great while a writer comes along who can truly capture the drama and passion of the life of a family. David James Duncan, author of the novel The River Why and the collection River Teeth, is just such a writer. And in The Brothers K he tells a story both striking and in its originality and poignant in its universality.

In 1930, two novice paddlers - Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port - launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe from the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages.

A dramatic and revelatory account of Joe Torre’s 12 years as manager of the New York Yankees. Joe Torre is the most successful - and most respected - baseball manager of the modern era, steering the Yankees to six American League pennants and four World Series championships. When he left the team in 2007, it was front-page news around the country. Famously diplomatic during his tenure with the Yankees, Torre finally speaks out about what it was like building and managing the dynasty during those 12 glorious and tumultuous years.

The NFL has come a long way from its founding in Canton, Ohio, in 1920. In the 100 years since that fateful day, football has become America’s most popular and lucrative professional sport. The former scrappy upstart league that struggled to stay afloat has survived a host of challenges to produce American icons like Vince Lombardi, Joe Montana, and Tom Brady. It is an extraordinary and entertaining history that could be told only by Joe Horrigan, former executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and perhaps the greatest living historian of the NFL.

Bryant and benShea share the blueprint, explained in layman's terms, for taking your mental game to the next level. The Successful Mindset is for the competitive athlete, the entrepreneur, or anyone who strives to get better and be the best.

From the best-selling author and renowned coach duo from Born to Run, a practical guide to running for everyone from amateurs to seasoned runners, about how to eat, race, and train like the world's best. Whether you're ramping up for a race or recuperating from an injury, Born to Run 2 is a holistic program for runners of every stripe that centers on seven key themes: food, fitness, form, footwear, focus, fun, and family.