Baseball Audiobooks | Sports & Recreation

The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris

The intriguing, inspiring history of one small, impoverished area in the Dominican Republic that has produced a staggering number of Major League Baseball talent, from an award-winning, bestselling author. In the town of San Pedro in the Dominican Republic, baseball is not just a way of life. It's the way of life. By the year 2008, seventy-nine boys and men from San Pedro had gone on to play in the Major Leagues—that means one in six Dominican Republicans who have played in the Majors have come from one tiny, impoverished region. Manny Alexander, Sammy Sosa, Tony Fernandez, and legions of other San Pedro players who came up in the sugar mill teams flocked to the United States looking for opportunity, wealth, and a better life. Because of the sugar industry and the influxes of migrant workers from across the Caribbean to work in the cane fields and factories, San Pedro is one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the Dominican Republic. A multitude of languages are spoken there, and a variety of skin colors populate the community; but the one constant is sugar and baseball. The history of players from San Pedro is also a chronicle of racism in baseball, changing social mores in sports and in the Dominican Republic, and the personal stories of the many men who sought freedom from poverty through playing ball. The story of baseball in San Pedro is also that of the Caribbean in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and on a broader level opens a window into U.S. history. As with Mark Kurlansky's Cod and Salt, this small story, rich with anecdote and detail, becomes much larger than ever imagined. Kurlansky reveals two countries' love affair with a sport and the remarkable journey of San Pedro and its baseball players. In his distinctive style, he follows common threads and discovers wider meanings about place, identity, and, above all, baseball.

Mark Kurlansky (Author), Ed Sala (Narrator)

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Woman's Guide to Baseball

Tell your man: "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"...and Mean it! Is your favorite guy spending more time talking to the 'tube' than to you? Would you like to score with that nice looking single at the sports bar? Well, ladies, it's time to step up to the plate and get into the game with this relationship hit that's just in time for the playoffs! Paula Duffy, lifelong sports enthusiast, and founder of Incidental Contact (www.incidentalcontact.com), a sports learning site for women, takes you out to the ball game and explains the basics of America's favorite pastime, step-by-step, in just under an hour. In his language, that's equal to approximately three innings, four beers and two belches. So grab a hot dog and some pretzels and find out what all that cheering is about. Besides teaching you the basics of the sport, Duffy entertainingly shows you the practical applications of baseball knowledge (aka "sports speak") as it pertains to success in business, personal relationships, and, of course, romance. Yes ladies, there's more to baseball than just crotch grabbing, spitting and congratulatory pats on the butt. Remember, to hit a grand slam, you've got to get off the couch, and head for the diamond!

Paula Duffy (Author), Paula Duffy (Narrator)

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The Eternal Summer

Was there ever a year in golf like 1960? It was the year that the sport and its vivid personalities exploded on the consciousness of the nation, when the past, present, and future of the game collided. Television, still a new medium, provided a fresh window to this fascinating show and enabled this "rich man's sport" to win over millions of new fans. Here was Arnold Palmer, the working man's hero, "sweating, chain-smoking, shirt-tail flying," winning, it seemed, every tournament with a last-second charge; grim Ben Hogan, Arnie's opposite, the greatest player of the '50s, a perfectionist battling the twin demons of age and nerves; and, making his debut in the big time, a chunky, crewcut college kid who seemed to have the makings of a champion-20-year-old Jack Nicklaus.

Curt Sampson (Author), Dennis McKee (Narrator)

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The Progress of the Seasons: Forty Years of Baseball in Our Town

Beginning in 1946, a then eight-year-old George Higgins, accompanied by father and grandfather, began taking the long train ride out to Fenway Park to find some truth in immortals like Doerr, DiMaggio, York, and Williams, and later, Yastremski, Marty Barrett, and many more. This is a book about baseball and about the Boston Red Sox; but that is only part of the story. Beyond the games, the book turns on thoughts about family and continuity and, of course, the progress of the seasons. There's a magical moment when Higgins calls on his own mythic Emily to check the all-time lineup with his deceased forebears. By then, you've come to know what the author's values have in common with those in Our Town, and why certain professional athletes achieve immortality and others don't. The Progress of the Seasons confirms what admirers of the author's sparkling accurate prose already know: Higgins is to writing what Ted Williams was to baseball, an all-star. "George V. Higgins is a writer of genius."-Washington Post

George V. Higgins (Author), Ian Esmo (Narrator)

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When The Boys Came Back: Baseball and 1946

In the aftermath of World War II, few events in the United States were as eagerly awaited as baseball's spring training. But the national pastime was as unsettled as the rest of the country. Had some of the stars seen their careers ended by their service? How would wartime players fare against returning veterans? These questions would be answered as the dramatic season unfolded-a season that included Jackie Robinson's signing by the Brooklyn Dodgers, a pennant race in the National League that ended in history's first tie, challenges from a rival Mexican league, and a World Series culminated in the seventh game by Enos Slaughter's legendary dash from first to home. Drawing on new interviews with many of the players who wrote the season's history, Frederick Turner brings this historic chapter in American culture to life. "Each player who went away to the service endured personal battles in returning to baseball, and this book puts those battles on record as never before. Every baseball historian fan, and player should read it."-Lou Brissie of the Philadelphia A's

Frederick Turner (Author), Brian Emerson, Brian Emerson (Narrator)

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Game of Shadows

The complete inside story of the shocking steroids scandal that turned the sports world upside down For years, in the shadowy reaches of the world of sports, there were rumors that some of our nation's greatest athletes were using steroids, human growth hormone, and other drugs to run faster, jump higher, and hit harder. But as track stars blazed their way to Olympic medals and sluggers brought fans back to baseball, sports officials, the media, and fans looked past the rumors and cheered on the athletes to ever-higher levels of performance. Then, in December 2004, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams broke the story of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a tiny nutritional supplement company that, according to sworn testimony, was supplying elite athletes with banned drugs. The stories shocked the nation and the exposés led to congressional hearings on baseball's drug problems and a revived effort to purge the U.S. Olympic movement of drug cheats. Now, in GAME OF SHADOWS, Fainaru-Wada and Williams tell the complete story of BALCO and the investigation that has shaken the foundations of the sporting world. And at the center of the story is the biggest star of them all, Barry Bonds, the muscle-bound MVP outfielder for the San Francisco Giants whose suspicious late-career renaissance has him threatening Hank Aaron's all-time home run record. Shocking, revelatory, and riveting, GAME OF SHADOWS casts light into the shadows of American sports to reveal the dark truths at the heart of the game today.

Lance Williams, Mark Fainaru-Wada (Author), Arnie Mazer (Narrator)

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Pujols: More Than the Game

After a decade starring for the St. Louis Cardinals, Albert Pujols is already compared with names in the highest reaches of baseball’s pantheon: Ruth, Gehrig, Aaron, Mays. Slugging his way toward the Hall of Fame, Pujols has raised the game’s standard for greatness almost beyond any statistical measure. But the standard by which Pujols measures himself has less to do with baseball performance than with honoring God and exemplifying his faith for the millions who follow him. From his birthplace in the Dominican Republic to his high-school days in Kansas City, from a single season in the minor leagues to the World Series and nine All-Star Games, Pujols has developed his immense talents on the baseball diamond, all the while focusing his direction—and the direction of his family—with the belief that a greater purpose is behind every achievement. Authors Scott Lamb and Tim Ellsworth spare no tale of this growing baseball legend, all the while accentuating “the unseen hand of divine providence” that has shaped the man Albert Pujols has become. It’s a story that will inspire, and a reminder of the human quality behind superhuman achievement. A story—still in the making—of allowing God’s strength to guide one man’s path to be the best his game has ever seen. ***Please Contact Member Services for Additional Documents***

Scott Lamb, Tim Ellsworth (Author), Wes Bleed (Narrator)

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Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game

Best-selling author George Vecsey is an esteemed and award-winning sports journalist for the New York Times. In Baseball, he recounts the history of America's national pastime. Baseball has been around in various forms for thousands of years, but within the last 200 years it has become an American institution. Growing from a sport played in open fields and in big city streets, baseball has seen its share of innovators and detractors, heroes and villains. Vecsey details them all from the scandalous Black Sox of 1919 and modern steroid abusers to icons like Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and the countless underdogs that came out of nowhere to capture the imaginations of fans everywhere. As with each Modern Library Chronicle, Vecsey's Baseball is a concise history filled with details and stories that will appeal to rookie and veteran fans alike. Narrator Alan Nebelthau's warm voice punctuates all of the wit and charm of Vecsey's prose. Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game is an invitation to [Vecsey's] house for Sunday dinner. The pace is more relaxed, the meal much larger, the result as wonderful as you suspected it would be.-Leigh Montville

George Vecsey (Author), Alan Nebelthau (Narrator)

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Finley Ball: How Two Outsiders Turned the Oakland A’s into a Dynasty and Changed the Game Forever

When Charlie Finley bought the A’s in 1960, he was an outsider to the game—an insurance businessman with a larger-than-life personality. He brought his cousin Carl on as his right-hand man, moved the team from Kansas City to Oakland, and pioneered a new way to put together a winning team. With legendary players like Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Vida Blue, the Finleys’ Oakland A’s won three straight World Series and riveted the nation. Now Carl Finley’s daughter Nancy reveals the whole story behind her family’s winning legacy—how her father and uncle developed their scouting strategy, why they employed odd gimmicks like orange baseballs and “mustache bonuses,” and how the success of the ’70s Oakland A’s changed the game of baseball. “From the Charlie Finley dynasty years, to Billy Martin’s Billy Ball years, Nancy Finley reveals the inner workings of one of baseball’s greatest franchises and offers insights into the creative genius of one of its most colorful owners.”—Brian Kingman, pitcher, Oakland A’s, 1978–1982

Nancy Finley (Author), Pam Ward (Narrator)

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Out of My League: The Classic Hilarious Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball

The baseball classic that Ernest Hemingway called "beautifully observed and incredibly conceived," now recorded and including a foreword from Jane Leavy. The first of Plimpton's remarkable forays into participatory journalism, OUT OF MY LEAGUE chronicles with wit, charm, and grace what happens when a self-professed amateur has the chance to answer every fan's question: could he strike out a major league star? Plimpton's inspired idea--to get on the mound and pitch a few innings to the All-Stars of the American and National Leagues--begins as a fun-filled stunt and comes to a deeply hellish, nearly humiliating end. This honest and hilarious tale features Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Whitey Ford, Ralph Houk, and other baseball greats and is "a baseball book such as no one else ever wrote, and one of the best ever." --New York Herald Tribune ***Please contact member services for additional documents***

George Plimpton (Author), Robert Fass (Narrator)

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The Long Ball : The Summer of '75-Spaceman, Catfish, Charlie Hustle, and the Greatest World Series E

Includes an exclusive interview with the author Critically acclaimed writer Tom Adelman crafts a dynamic re-telling of baseball's thrilling 1975 season. The year ended with the greatest World Series of all time, featuring a legendary home run by Boston catcher Carlton Fisk. From the preseason through the final game, Adelman gives a behind-the-scenes account that is blunt, funny, and sometimes shocking.

Tom Adelman (Author), Richard Davidson, Richard M. Davidson (Narrator)

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Electric October: Seven World Series Games, Six Lives, Five Minutes of Fame That Lasted Forever

The 1947 World Series was "the most exciting ever" in the words of Joe DiMaggio, with a decade's worth of drama packed into seven games between the mighty New York Yankees and underdog Brooklyn Dodgers. It was Jackie Robinson's first Series, a postwar spectacle featuring Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway, and President Harry Truman in supporting roles. It was also the first televised World Series-sportswriters called it "Electric October." But for all the star power on display, the outcome hinged on role players: Bill Bevens, a journeyman who knocked on the door of pitching immortality; Al Gionfriddo and Cookie Lavagetto, bench players at the center of the Series' iconic moments; Snuffy Stirnweiss, a wartime batting champion who never got any respect; and managers Bucky Harris and Burt Shotton, each an unlikely choice to run his team. Kevin Cook brings the '47 Series to life, introducing us to men whose past offered no hint they were destined for extraordinary things. For some, the Series was a memory to hold onto. For others, it would haunt them to the end of their days. And for us, Cook offers new insights-at once heartbreaking and uplifting-into what fame and glory truly mean.

Kevin Cook (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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