Before he'd covered dozens of World Series; before he'd written about countless hirings, firings, superstars, and scandals, Bill Madden was a cub reporter on one of his first assignments at Yankee Stadium—and manager Ralph Houk had just gone out of his way to spit tobacco juice all over Madden's shoes. “That’s Ralph’s way with rookie writers he doesn’t recognize,” came the explanation. “He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

Larger than Life. In the history of American sports, rare is the athlete who fits that description better than Don Drysdale. On the mound, the towering six-foot-five righthander intimidated National League hitters for more than a decade, amassing career totals of 209 wins, 2,486 strikeouts . . . and hitting 154 batters, a stat he lead the major leagues in four times. Off the field, Drysdale's personality dominated every room he walked into. With a smile as immense as the sun, Drysdale's contemporaries included Frank Sinatra and Howard Cosell.

Art Shamsky, 1969 New York Met and noted author, shares with listeners stories and anecdotes from his fifty-year association with the New York Mets. Through stories of varying lengths, listeners will be privy to behind-the-scenes and first-hand accounts of the New York Mets from lovable losers to impossible winners in 1969, and beyond, including stories about today's players.

In 1996, professional wrestling was one of the most watched sports on cable television, with more than 5 million people tuning in every week. And in the late 1990s, pro-wrestling was the hottest thing in American pop culture, with companies making millions in action figures, video games, and simple black t-shirts emblazoned with three little letters: NWO. The NWO, or New World Order, became a business like no other, and was responsible for the explosive ratings and rabid fanbase.

In Hurdle-isms, renowned Major League Baseball player, hitting coach, manager, and current Special Assistant to the General Manager for the Colorado Rockies, Clint Hurdle, delivers a collection of his most inspirational stories. You'll find a ton of funny, insightful, and otherwise notable anecdotes from one of Major League Baseball's most successful personalities.

Batavia, New York—between Rochester and Buffalo—hosted its first professional baseball game in 1897. Despite decades of deindustrialization and evaporating middle-class jobs, the Batavia Muckdogs endured. When Major League Baseball cravenly shut them down in 2020—along with forty-one other minor league teams—the town fought back, reviving the Muckdogs as a summer league team comprised of college players.

In the 1880s, control over northeastern Africa was a political minefield into which Prime Minister Gladstone did not want to step—until his emissary Charles Gordon was besieged in Khartoum, and the city became the focal point for war. It was the height of European colonialism. Injustices were administered, bloody battles fought, and civilians caught in the crossfire. Among the British officers were figures who would later adopt starring roles in the First World War, such as Egyptian Army sapper Captain Herbert Kitchener.

The Whiz Kids recounts the history of a team that, though hand-built to be champions, fell short—yet remains legendary anyway.

Veteran NFL insider and New York Times bestselling author Gary Myers will draw on his unique and unparalleled access to Belichick and Brady over the course of the two decades, but also to the myriad players, coaches, personnel and family, to get to the bottom of this argument and resolve it once and for all. He will drill into the numbers, analyze the psychology and sociology of this partnership, and use the powerful wand of perspective and context to illuminate the greatest duo that has ever graced the game.

Skipper takes on an ambitious Moneyball-esque premise: a deep dive into the ongoing struggle for control that often takes place behind the scenes between Major League Baseball managers and the ownership groups, and now, their data analysts. In a culture still attempting to come to terms with the Digital Age, there’s a bigger story behind the evolution of authority of managing inside the major leagues.

A wild bull on the field, a fly ball caught by a train conductor, a pitcher taking the mound barefoot—Minor League Baseball has been played across the country in cities large and small for more than a century, and there are thousands of entertaining and improbable stories to tell from it.

From award-winning and bestselling author David Nasaw, a revelatory reexamination of post-World War II America and the nation's unhealed traumas, exposing the fault lines that characterized the country then and now.

The gritty memoir of a former US Marine and Presidential Guard, who, after being unjustly held and abused in a Russian gulag for three years and freed in a high-profile prisoner exchange, seeks revenge against his former Russian captors by volunteering to fight in Ukraine.

Long before the Moneyball Era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History’s feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968 to 1982. When Weaver was hired by the Orioles, managers were still seen as coaches and inspirational leaders, more teachers of the game than strategists. Weaver invented new ways of building baseball teams, prioritizing on-base average, elite defense, and strike throwing.

Though the Torah prohibits eating pig meat, it is not singled out more than other food prohibitions. The pig has become a symbol for people to signal their Jewishness, non-Jewishness, or rebellion from Judaism. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Jordan D. Rosenblum historicizes the emergence of the pig as a key symbol of Jewish identity, from the Roman persecution of ancient rabbis, to the Spanish Inquisition, to Shakespeare's writings, to modern memoirs of those leaving Orthodox Judaism.