In 1958, San Francisco welcomed its first major league baseball team when the Giants left New York and journeyed across the country to the Bay Area. Steeped in tradition, the orange-and-black team has captivated fans for decades with rosters including Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry, Will Clark, Barry Bonds, and Tim Lincecum. This book provides a look into the team's history, highlighting the players and other notables who were instrumental in shaping the Giants organization.

The Original San Francisco Giants is a nostalgic look at the team that brought Major League Baseball to San Francisco, the 1958 Giants. Author Steve Bitker, who attended his first big-league game in 1958 at age five at a charming little downtown ballpark called Seals Stadium, traveled as far as the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands to interview virtually every surviving member of the team.

San Francisco Giants ABC is the ultimate alphabet book for every young Giants fan! A is for at-bat (Willie Mays), B is for baseball, S is for splash hits and, of course, V is for victory in the 2012 World Series.

The definitive collection of San Francisco's odd, wacky, and most offbeat people, places, and things, for San Francisco residents and anyone else who enjoys local humor and trivia with a twist.

Believe Your Ears is the memoir of composer Kirke Mechem, whose unorthodox path to music provides a fascinating narrative. He wrote songs and played music by ear as a newspaper reporter, a touring tennis player, and a Stanford creative-writing major before studying composition and conducting at Harvard. He describes his residencies in San Francisco, Vienna, London, and Russia, and gives detailed attention to his choral music, operas, and symphonies. He writes that “the twentieth century gave us much brilliant music” but shows how atonality came to dominate the post-war period. His lyric style belongs to no particular “school,” avoiding the trends, –isms, experiments, fads, and lunacies of the period. He encourages younger composers who are trying to bring back beauty, passion, and humor—even entertainment—to classical music. He asks music lovers to believe their own ears, not the lectures of “experts.” Believe Your Ears is addressed to all who love classical music. Along the way, readers will meet Dimitri Shostakovich, Wallace Stegner, Billie Jean King, the Grateful Dead, Richard Rodgers, Benjamin Britten, Bill Tilden, and Aaron Copland—a who’s who in Mechem’s storied career.

Here is the life story of Horace Stoneham, who inherited the New York Giants Major League Baseball franchise in 1936 and owned and operated the organization until 1976.

He pitched a baseball game that was more than perfect, and yet he lost. Southpaw Harvey Haddix had logged a solid but unspectacular career by the time he took the mound on May 26, 1959. Facing the Milwaukee Braves, he set down the first 36 batters in a row, or 12 innings' worth--a perfect game three innings longer than the norm. But his Pittsburgh Pirates couldn't score, either, and Haddix lost in the 13th inning on a controversial play. This book recounts Haddix's one-of-a-kind performance and describes the official decisions that changed the historical record.

The first National League franchise to be featured in the new, exciting, and completely original Sports by the Numbers series! THE TEAM: The Giants franchise is the winningest in professional baseball history, having won more regular season games than the Cubs, Yankees, Dodgers, or Red Sox. The Giants have been to the World Series 18 times and claimed six championships during baseball's modern era-and the success of this franchise has been built on legends, as the club also boasts more Hall of Fame players than any other in the sport. THE FORMAT: The presentation created by the authors distinguishes Sports by the Numbers from everything else available today. San Francisco Giants is composed of ten chapters, each offering one hundred numbered "mini-stories"-facts, anomalies, records, coincidences, and enthralling lore and trivia from Hall of Fame legends such as Willie Mays, Mel Ott, and Bill Terry, to contemporary stars such as Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Buster Posey. Each chapter begins with an introduction that highlights the many exciting stories found in these pages such as the "Shot Heard 'Round the World," Mays' catch in the 1954 World Series, Barry Bonds' pursuit of Hank Aaron, and rivalry games against the hated Dodgers. Sports by the Numbers books are not just for diehard sports fans, but for every fan and sports history reader who loves sports and wants to know more about their heroes and favorite teams.

The first book in the new Lyons Press GAME CHANGERS sports series answers the questions: What were the 50 most revolutionary personalities, rules, pieces of equipment, controversies, organizational changes, radio and television advancements, and more in the history National Pastime? And how, exactly, did they forever change the game? Baseball’s Game Changers offers fascinating, detailed explanations along with a ranking system from 1 to 50 that is sure to inspire debate among baseball aficionados. Ranging from each sport’s beginnings to today and tackling on-the-field and off-the-field developments, the Game Changers series offers a history of each sport through their turning-points and innovations. Full-color, and including 30 photos plus pull-outs and sidebars, books within the Game Changers series are important and entertaining additions to every sports fan’s library.