This thoroughly revised edition of "Baseball's Best 1,000" includes updated listings plus new players, rankings, and photographs, all in a handier format that makes it a terrific pocket reference. A must-have book for baseball fans obsessed with stats, quick facts, and the age-old debates over who the best players are and why, "Baseball's Best 1,000" showcases the lives, legends, and lore of the game's top players, ranked in order. Sportswriter Derek Gentile has pared down the total list of players--tens of thousands of them--to an elite ranking of the thousand greatest, based on criteria including lifetime stats; player durability and consistency; All-Star participation; MVP, Gold Glove, and Cy Young awards; individual statistical championships; personal and professional contributions to the game; sportsmanship; and election to the Hall of Fame. Each entry includes positions played, teams played for, years played, lifetime stats, and a biography of the player featuring his great moments and little-known facts. *New players include Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, and Manny Ramirez. *Barry Bonds has moved up from Number 19 to Number 6. *Roger Clemens has moved from Number 33 into the top 20. *Dozens of Negro League players are here, as well as rankings of the best Japanese players, women players, and "prehistoric" players (from the time before stats were formally recorded).

Get ready for the mother of all numbers. If you had to give just one number to determine a baseball player's success, which would you pick? Batting average, RBI, OPS, home-run percentage? It's impossible to choose. Now you don't have to. For the first time ever, there's a formula that incorporates every aspect of a player's offensive game into one stat that gets straight to the core of performance. The Offensive Production and Efficiency Average, or P/E Average for short, gives you a comprehensive measure of everyone who has ever played the game. Stat One walks you through the calculations and then takes you around the field to analyze, rate, and rank the greatest players in baseball history at every position. You'll find surprising answers to the questions that really matter: Who's better on first, Foxx or Gehrig? Is Jim Rice a Hall of Famer? Would Derek Jeter come up short next to old Honus Wagner? How does Mantle compare with Mays? And much more--plus the 100 greatest players of all time

Who's the greatest slugger of all time, Babe Ruth or Ted Williams? Where do Derek Jeter and Cal Ripken Jr. rank on the list of the best shortstops? At third base, would you rather have Mike Schmidt or Brooks Robinson? Is Fenway or Wrigley the better ballpark? This book will end many arguments-and start some new ones. Sports Illustrated's has polled its Major League Baseball experts to determine the ultimate Top 10 in more than 20 categories. The rankings appear alongside stunning photography and classic stories from SI's archives. This is the best of the best in the major leagues, or, more simply, Baseball's Greatest.

When it comes to sports talk, no city has more to say than Philadelphia. With their 2007 The Great Book of Philadelphia Sports Lists, WIP sports radio hosts Glen Macnow and Big Daddy Graham compiled dozens of sports lists to stir up dialog and debate within the buzzing Philadelphia sports community (and beyond). A lot has happened in Philly sports since 2007 -- the Phillies' 2008 World Series win; the Eagles' record-breaking 2017 season, now-famous Philly Special play, and Super Bowl LII victory over the Patriots; the Sixers' "Trust the Process" campaign; and, of course, Gritty -- so now Glen and Big Daddy are back with dozens of new lists to keep the conversation fresh, ranking things like: The most overrated and underrated players in Philly sports history The top 10 Philadelphia sports quotes The 10 worst Eagles draft picks ever The greatest duos in Philly sports history The 10 best sports movies set in Philadelphia The worst bosses in Philly sports history and much more!

When Bill James published his original Historical Baseball Abstract in 1985, he produced an immediate classic, hailed by the Chicago Tribune as the “holy book of baseball.” Now, baseball's beloved “Sultan of Stats” (The Boston Globe) is back with a fully revised and updated edition for the new millennium. Like the original, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is really several books in one. The Game provides a century's worth of American baseball history, told one decade at a time, with energetic facts and figures about How, Where, and by Whom the game was played. In The Players, you'll find listings of the top 100 players at each position in the major leagues, along with James's signature stats-based ratings method called “Win Shares,” a way of quantifying individual performance and calculating the offensive and defensive contributions of catchers, pitchers, infielders, and outfielders. And there's more: the Reference section covers Win Shares for each season and each player, and even offers a Win Share team comparison. A must-have for baseball fans and historians alike, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is as essential, entertaining, and enlightening as the sport itself.

Certain to create new controversies, and stir up some old ones, here is a fascinating historical and comparative look at the national pastime and its greatest players over the past one hundred years.

Move over, Moneyball -- this New York Times bestseller examines major league baseball's next cutting-edge revolution: the high-tech quest to build better players. As bestselling authors Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik reveal in The MVP Machine, the Moneyball era is over. Fifteen years after Michael Lewis brought the Oakland Athletics' groundbreaking team-building strategies to light, every front office takes a data-driven approach to evaluating players, and the league's smarter teams no longer have a huge advantage in valuing past performance. Lindbergh and Sawchik's behind-the-scenes reporting reveals: How undersized afterthoughts José Altuve and Mookie Betts became big sluggers and MVPs How polarizing pitcher Trevor Bauer made himself a Cy Young contender How new analytical tools have overturned traditional pitching and hitting techniques How a wave of young talent is making MLB both better than ever and arguably worse to watch Instead of out-drafting, out-signing, and out-trading their rivals, baseball's best minds have turned to out-developing opponents, gaining greater edges than ever by perfecting prospects and eking extra runs out of older athletes who were once written off. Lindbergh and Sawchik take us inside the transformation of former fringe hitters into home-run kings, show how washed-up pitchers have emerged as aces, and document how coaching and scouting are being turned upside down. The MVP Machine charts the future of a sport and offers a lesson that goes beyond baseball: Success stems not from focusing on finished products, but from making the most of untapped potential.

The Des Moines Majestyks are deep in the cellar...so deep that it seems nothing short of divine intervention could even get them up to the ground floor. They do have one star, Juan-Tanamera "Bueno" Aires, an ex-basketball phenom who performs miracles at the plate and magic in the field. Unfortunately, team owner Holden Canfield, who’s struck it rich with an Internet start-up, spent the entire team budget on acquiring "Bueno," leaving the rest of the roster painfully devoid of talent. Manager Zuke Johansen has just about given up hope when an unexpected thing happens: A scout introduces him to Marvin Kowalski. A straight-A student, valedictorian of his high school class, and on his way to MIT, Marvin knows little about the rules of the game, and his pencil-thin physique would get him laughed off a big-league diamond. But Marvin has one brilliant skill. The ultimate "one-tool" player, he has such a good eye that he can tell what kind of pitch is coming almost before it leaves the pitcher's hand. And even though he's not much of a hitter, his reflexes and coordination are incredibly fast–-so fast, in fact, that nobody can strike him out, as Zuke Johansen quickly sees. Marvin may not be Babe Ruth, but he has found a way to exhaust–-and utterly enrage–-opposing pitchers, driving them to distraction before he takes his inevitable base. Faced with the prospect of leading his team to one of the worst season records since the game was played without gloves, Zuke is desperate enough to wonder if Marvin's strange talent might just lift his Majestyks out of the cellar.... The Kid Who Batted 1.000 is one of those rare sports novels that will appeal to fervent fans as well as those still trying to figure out the infield fly rule. Generously sprinkling his story with some of the best-loved one-liners in the game, Troon McAllister delivers a darkly funny behind-the-scenes look at our national pastime, cementing his place as a major-league humorist.

An essential experience of being a baseball fan is the hopeful anticipation of seeing the hometown nine make a run at winning the World Series. In Paths to Glory, Mark L. Armour and Daniel R. Levitt review how teams build themselves up into winners. What makes a winning team like the 1900 Brooklyn Superbas or the 1917 White Sox or the 1997 Florida Marlins? And how are these teams different? What makes each championship team a unique product of its time? Armour and Levitt provide the historical context to show how the sport's business side has changed dramatically but its competitive environment remains the same. Utilizing new statistics to evaluate a player's value and career patterns, Armour and Levitt explore the teams that took risks, created their own opportunities, and changed the game. How did the Washington Senators achieve the unthinkable and blow past Babe Ruth's Yankees in 1924 and 1925? How did the 1965 Minnesota Twins quickly rise to the top and why did they just as suddenly fall? Did Charlie Finley assemble the last old-fashioned championship team before free agency, or was the Moustache Gang another example of winning by building from within? Why did the star-laden Red Sox of the 1930s keep falling short? In exploring these teams and more, Armour and Levitt analyze the players, the managers, and the executives who built teams to win and then lived with the consequences.

Offering a fresh approach to the familiar concept of all-time baseball teams, this exhaustive work ranks more than 2,500 players by state of birth and includes both major league and Negro League athletes. Each chapter covers one state and opens with the all-time team, naming a top selection for each position followed by honorable mentions. Also included are all-time stat leaders in nine categories--games, hits, average, RBI, home runs, stolen bases, pitching wins, strikeouts and saves--a brief overview of the state's baseball history, notable player achievements, historic baseball places to see, potential future stars, a comprehensive list of player nicknames, and the state's all-time best player.