A “hilarious” look back at the worst baseball team in history—the 1962 Mets—by the New York Times–bestselling author (Newark Star-Ledger). Five years after the Dodgers and Giants fled New York for California, the city’s National League fans were offered salvation in the shape of the New York Mets: an expansion team who, in the spring of 1962, attempted to play something resembling the sport of baseball. Helmed by the sagacious Casey Stengel and staffed by the league’s detritus, the new Mets played 162 games and lost 120 of them, making them statistically the worst team in the sport’s modern history. It’s possible they were even worse than that. Starring such legends as Marvin Throneberry—a first baseman so inept that his nickname had to be “Marvelous”—the Mets lost with swashbuckling panache. In an era when the fun seemed to have gone out of sports, the Mets came to life in a blaze of delightful, awe-inspiring ineptitude. They may have been losers, but a team this awful deserves to be remembered as legends. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

New York Times bestseller: A novel of a messy mob war in Brooklyn that “makes you laugh out loud” (Chicago Sun-Times). Kid Sally Palumbo has been a loyal servant to the Brooklyn Mafia for years. His specialty is murder, and he is so skilled at it that he has gotten the attention of Mafia boss Papa Baccala. But unfortunately for Kid Sally, murder pays poorly. He wants to make real dough, to get respect, and to be able to tell his colleagues where to sit when they eat dinner. In short, he wants to be boss. The job would be his for the taking—if only Kid Sally weren’t a Grade A moron. To keep Sally from stirring up trouble, Baccala tosses him an easy assignment: Organize a bicycle race through Brooklyn, and keep the profits. Kid Sally bungles it, setting off a turf war that quickly engulfs the borough. The dimwitted mobsters are masters in the art of murder, and they are about to put on a show. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jimmy Breslin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

The Best Children's Books of the Year 2019, Bank Street College In 1950, girls didn't play baseball––until Kathryn Johnston changed Little League. In 1950, Kathryn Johnston wanted to play Little League baseball, but an unwritten "rule" kept girls from trying out. So she cut off her hair and tried out as a boy under the nickname "Tubby." She made the team—and changed Little League forever. This is a story about wanting to do something so badly, you're willing to break the rules, and how breaking those rules can lead to change.

Even before the New York Mets began the 1992 season, they had set a critical record: the highest payroll ever for a major-league team, $45 million. With players Bobby Bonilla, Vince Coleman, Bret Saberhagen, and Howard Johnson, winning another championship seemed a mere formality. The 1992 New York Mets never made it to Cooperstown, however. Veteran newspapermen Bob Klapisch and John Harper reveal the extraordinary inside story of the Mets? decline and fall?with the sort of detail and uncensored quotes that never run in a family newspaper. From the sex scandals that plagued the club in Florida to the puritanical, no-booze rules of manager Jeff Torborg, from bad behavior on road trips to the downright ornery practical ?jokes? that big boys play, The Worst Team Money Could Buy is a grand-slam classic.

Riding in a helicopter with the Beatles ... Overhearing Jackie Kennedy's conversation with the priest who administered last rites to JFK ... Falling in love at first sight (in a Queens bar) with a woman he would marry ... Catching Joe McCarthy in a lie...Surviving a Brooklyn race riot ... Running for public office in New York City (on a ticket with Norman Mailer) ...These are among the moments that Jimmy Breslin recalls, movingly and hilariously, in his acclaimed memoir -- a book written with all the brashness, candor, and style that have distinguished Breslin's newspaper columns and made him one of the most admired and enjoyed journalists of our time.The starting point: the almost accidental discovery that Breslin required brain surgery. What then unfolds, as Breslin weighs his medical options, is the story of a life crowded with memorable moments and memorable characters -- not least of all, Breslin himself. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

“This is a weird, wonderful, and essential book about both America and its pastime. It’s about a place as vast as New York City and as intimate as the human heart. Fred Exley meets Richard Ben Cramer—a funny, wild, heartfelt, and keenly observed portrait of yearning itself.”—Wright Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of The Cost of These Dreams “Mr. Gordon’s ability to explain the Sisyphean plight of all Mets fans is truly remarkable. Bravo!”—Ron Darling, New York Times bestselling author of Game 7, 1986 The Mets lose when they should win. They win when they should lose. And when it comes to being the worst, no team in sports has ever done it better than the Mets. In So Many Ways to Lose, author and lifelong Mets fan Devin Gordon sifts through the detritus of Queens for a baseball history like no other. Remember the time the Mets lost an All-Star after Yoenis Céspedes got charged by a wild boar? Or the time they blew a six-run ninth-inning lead at the peak of a pennant race? Or the time they fired their manager before he ever managed a game? Sure you do. It was only two years ago, and it was all in the same season. The Mets have an unrivaled gift for getting it backward, doing the impossible, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and then snatching defeat right back again. And yet, just ask any Mets fan: Amazing and/or miraculous postseason runs are as much a part of our team's identity as losing 120 games in 1962. The DNA of seasons like 1969, the original Miracle Mets, and the 1973 “Ya Gotta Believe” Mets, who went from last place to Game 7 of the World Series in two months, and the powerhouse 1986 Mets, has encoded in us this hapless instinct that a reversal of fortune is always possible. It’s happened before. It’s kind of our thing. And now we've got Steve Cohen's hedge-fund billions to play with! What could go wrong? In this hilarious history of the Mets and love letter to the art of disaster, Devin Gordon presents baseball the way it really is, not in the wistful sepia tones we've come to expect from other sportswriters. Along the way, he explains the difference between being bad and being gifted at losing, and why this distinction holds the key to understanding the true amazin’ magic of the New York Mets.

A fascinating and charming encyclopedic collection of baseball firsts, describing how the innovations in the game—in rules, equipment, styles of play, strategies, etc.—occurred and developed from its origins to the present day. The book relies heavily on quotations from contemporary sources.

This New York Times bestseller “takes you into the heart of baseball as it was in the 1960s, conveyed with humor and insight” (Tim McCarver, The Wall Street Journal). Acclaimed New Yorker writer Roger Angell’s first book on baseball, The Summer Game, originally published in 1972, is a stunning collection of his essays on the major leagues, covering a span of ten seasons. Angell brilliantly captures the nation’s most beloved sport through the 1960s, spanning both the winning teams and the “horrendous losers,” and including famed players Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Willie Mays, and more. With the panache of a seasoned sportswriter and the energy of an avid baseball fan, Angell’s sports journalism is an insightful and compelling look at the great American pastime.

“A funny, revealing, Ball Four–like romp through mid-seventies baseball” from the longtime sports columnist and author of The Last Real Season (Booklist). You think your team is bad? In this “disastrously hilarious” work on one of the most tortured franchises in baseball, one reporter discovers that nine innings can feel like an eternity (USA Today). In early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire agreed to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, not realizing that the Rangers were arguably the worst team in baseball history. Seasons in Hell is a riotous, candid, irreverent behind-the-scenes account in the tradition of The Bronx Zoo and Ball Four, following the Texas Rangers from Whitey Herzog’s reign in 1973 through Billy Martin’s tumultuous tenure. Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique (and likely never-to-be-seen-again) baseball personalities, Seasons in Hell recounts some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game and brings to life the no-holds-barred culture of major league baseball in the mid-seventies. “The single funniest sports book I have ever read.”—Don Imus “The locker-room shenanigans of a lousy team of the 1970s.”—Publishers Weekly

Our language is full of hundreds of quotations that are often cited but seldom confirmed. Ralph Keyes's The Quote Verifier considers not only classic misquotes such as "Nice guys finish last," and "Play it again, Sam," but more surprising ones such as "Ain't I a woman?" and "Golf is a good walk spoiled," as well as the origins of popular sayings such as "The opera ain't over till the fat lady sings," "No one washes a rented car," and "Make my day." Keyes's in-depth research routinely confounds widespread assumptions about who said what, where, and when. Organized in easy-to-access dictionary form, The Quote Verifier also contains special sections highlighting commonly misquoted people and genres, such as Yogi Berra and Oscar Wilde, famous last words, and misremembered movie lines. An invaluable resource for not just those with a professional need to quote accurately, but anyone at all who is interested in the roots of words and phrases, The Quote Verifier is not only a fascinating piece of literary sleuthing, but also a great read.