It was 1986, and the New York Mets won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, capturing the hearts (and other assorted body parts) of fans everywhere. But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin's left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake-hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox.

Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,​The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski that tells the story of the sport through the remarkable lives of its 100 greatest players. In the book’s introduction, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator George F. Will marvels, “Posnanski must already have lived more than 200 years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?”

The story of the 1969 New York Mets’ season has long since entered sports lore as one of the most remarkable of all time. But beyond the “miracle” is a compelling narrative of an unlikely collection of players and the hallowed manager who inspired them to greatness.

New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game: a countdown of 50 of the most memorable moments in baseball’s history, to make you fall in love with the sport all over again. Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It's Willie Mays’s catch, Babe Ruth’s called shot, and Kirk Gibson’s limping home run; the slickest steals; the biggest bombs; and the most triumphant no-hitters.

When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries. Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four.

The definitive history of the 1990s New York Knicks, illustrating how Pat Riley, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, Charles Oakley, and Anthony Mason resurrected the iconic franchise through oppressive physicality and unmatched grit. Blood in the Garden is a portrait filled with eye-opening details that have never been shared before, revealing the full story of the franchise in the midst of the NBA’s golden era. And rest assured, no punches will be pulled. Which is just how those rough-and-tumble Knicks would like it.

This best-selling, highly-acclaimed account is a hilarious but scathing baseball tell-all. After being voted the 1977 American League Cy Young Award winner, Sparky Lyle was rewarded for his efforts by being benched. The Yankees, a leader of free agency, signed Goose Gossage as their closer. Things only went downhill from there and the 1978 season turned out to be one of controversy, firings, fights, and acrimony. In short, it was a zoo.

This is New York Times bestselling author and Emmy-nominated broadcaster Ron Darling's 108 baseball anecdotes that connect America’s game to the men who played it. Darling has played with or reported on just about everybody who has put on a uniform since 1983, and they in turn have played with or reported on just about everybody who put on a uniform in a previous generation. Like the 108 stitches on a baseball, Darling's experiences are interwoven with every athlete who has ever played, every coach or manager, and every fan.

He was called Tom Terrific for a reason. Tom Seaver is “among the greatest pitchers of all time” (Bob Costas). He is one of only two pitchers with 300 wins, 3,000 strikeouts, and an ERA under 3.00. He was a three-time Cy Young award winner, twelve-time All Star, and was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame with the highest percentage ever at the time. Popular among players and fans, Seaver was fiercely competitive but always put team success ahead of personal glory.

Few names in the history of baseball evoke the excellence and dynamism that Rickey Henderson’s does. He holds the record for the most stolen bases in a single game, and he’s scored more runs than any player ever. “If you cut Rickey Henderson in half, you’d have two Hall of Famers,” the baseball historian Bill James once said. But perhaps even more than his prowess on the field, Rickey Henderson’s is a story of Oakland, California, the town that gave rise to so many legendary athletes like him.

Lawrence "Yogi" Berra was never supposed to become a major league ballplayer. That's what his immigrant father told him. That's what Branch Rickey told him, too—right to Berra's face, in fact. Even the lowly St. Louis Browns of his youth said he'd never make it in the big leagues. Yet baseball was his lifeblood. It was the only thing he ever cared about. Heck, it was the only thing he ever thought about.

Celebrated sports writer Roger Kahn casts his gaze on the golden age of baseball, an unforgettable time when the game thrived as America's unrivaled national sport. The Era begins in 1947, with Jackie Robinson changing major league baseball forever by taking the field for the Dodgers. Dazzling, momentous events characterize the decade that followed....

Baseball has been defaced and consumed by corporate America. As Moneyball-thinking and Ivy League graduates grabbed hold of the sport, the Astros set out to build a cost-efficient winning machine on the principles of the outside business world, squeezing every dollar out of every transaction, player and employee. In less than a decade, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow helped revolutionize the game and create an environment that led to one of the worst cheating scandals in baseball history, a Shakespearean tragedy of innovation and failed change management.

This is a story about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a story by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is the story about what happened to the team when their glory days were behind them.

Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two.

For Rich Cohen and millions of other fans, the Chicago Cubs have always been more than a team: they've been the protagonists of a King Arthur epic, in search of the Holy Grail that is winning the World Series. A chronicle of the last few miraculous seasons as experienced through the prism of Cubs history, The Chicago Cubs tracks the famous curse, which was placed on the team in 1945 by the infamous owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, who was ejected from Wrigley Field when he tried to bring his goat into the grandstand for the fifth game of the World Series.

This is New York Times bestselling author and Emmy-nominated broadcaster Ron Darling's 108 baseball anecdotes that connect America’s game to the men who played it. Darling has played with or reported on just about everybody who has put on a uniform since 1983, and they in turn have played with or reported on just about everybody who put on a uniform in a previous generation. Like the 108 stitches on a baseball, Darling's experiences are interwoven with every athlete who has ever played, every coach or manager, and every fan.

It was a Thursday at Chicago's Wrigley Field, mostly sunny with the wind blowing out. Nobody expected an afternoon game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs on May 17, 1979, to be much more than a lazy early-season contest matching two teams heading in opposite directions - the first-place Phillies and the Cubs, those lovable losers - until they combined for 13 runs in the first inning. Ten Innings at Wrigley is Kevin Cook's vivid account of a game that could only have happened at this ballpark, in this era, with this colorful cast of heroes and heels.

Mike Piazza was selected by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 62nd round of the 1988 baseball draft as a "courtesy pick". The Dodgers never expected him to play for them - or anyone else. Mike had other ideas. Overcoming his detractors, he became the National League Rookie of the Year in 1993, broke the record for season batting average by a catcher, holds the record for career home runs at his position, and was selected as an All Star 12 times. Mike was groomed for baseball success by his ambitious, self-made father in Pennsylvania, a classic father-son American-dream story.

The World Series is the most enduring showcase in American team sports. It’s the place where legends are made, where celebration and devastation can hinge on a fly ball off a foul pole or a grounder beneath a first baseman’s glove. And there’s no one better to bring this rich history to life than New York Times national baseball columnist Tyler Kepner, whose bestselling book about pitching, K, was lauded as “Michelangelo explaining the brush strokes on the Sistine Chapel” by Newsday.

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-'70s.

The Bronx Is Burning meets Chuck Klosterman in this wild pop-culture history of baseball's most colorful and controversial decade. The Major Leagues witnessed more dramatic stories and changes in the 70s than in any other era. The American popular culture and counterculture collided head-on with the national pastime, rocking the once-conservative sport to its very foundations. For the millions of fans who grew up during this time, Big Hair and Plastic Grass serves up a delicious trip down memory lane.

In 2012 the Los Angeles Dodgers were bought out of bankruptcy in the most expensive sale in sports history. Los Angeles icon Magic Johnson and his partners hoped to put together a team worthy of Hollywood. By most accounts they have succeeded, if not always in the way they might have imagined.

Legendary Dodgers Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Wes Parker, Jeff Torborg, Dick Tracewski, and Tommy Davis encapsulated 1960s America: white and black, Jewish and Christian, wealthy and working class, pro-Vietnam and anti-war, golden boy and seasoned veteran. The Last Innocents is a thoughtful, technicolor portrait of these seven players - friends, mentors, confidants, rivals, and allies - and their storied team that offers an intriguing look at a sport and a nation in transition.

Before the team headed to Los Angeles in 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers were one of the most colorful and beloved teams in baseball. In Bums, best-selling author Peter Golenbock has compiled a fascinating oral history of the Ebbets Field heroes with recollections from former players, writers, front-office executives, and faithful fans.

For 53 years, San Francisco waited. Waited for a team like the 2010 Giants to come along. Waited for a team that could end a title drought that started in New York and carried on for more than five decades after a move to the West Coast. Waited for that one magical postseason run that could unleash more than a half-century of pent-up frustration. At long last, the 2010 Giants hopped on that magic carpet and made it happen. San Jose Mercury News beat reporter Andrew Baggarly captured the 2010 Giants' incredible run through the regular season, playoffs and World Series in his new book.

Every spring, Little Leaguers across the country mimic his stance and squabble over the right to wear his number, 2, the next number to be retired by the world’s most famous ball team. Derek Jeter is their hero. He walks in the footsteps of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle, and someday his shadow will loom just as large. Yet he has never been the best player in baseball. In fact, he hasn’t always been the best player on his team. But his intangible grace and Jordanesque ability to play big in the biggest of postseason moments make him the face of the modern Yankee dynasty, and of America’s game.

From the beginning, ’68 was a season rocked by national tragedy and sweeping change. Opening Day was postponed and later played in the shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral. That summer, as the pennant races were heating up, the assassination of Robert Kennedy was later followed by rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. But even as tensions boiled over and violence spilled into the streets, something remarkable was happening in major league ballparks across the country. Pitchers were dominating like never before, and with records falling and shut-outs mounting, many began hailing ’68 as “The Year of the Pitcher".

It was 1986, and the New York Mets won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, capturing the hearts (and other assorted body parts) of fans everywhere. But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin's left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake-hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox.

Pete Rose played baseball with a singular and headfirst abandon that endeared him to fans and peers, even as it riled others--a figure at once magnetic, beloved and polarizing. Rose has more base hits than anyone in history, yet he is not in the Hall of Fame. Twenty-five years ago he was banished from baseball for gambling, then ruled ineligible for Cooperstown; today, the question "Does Pete Rose belong in the Hall of Fame?" has evolved into perhaps the most provocative in sports, a layered, slippery and ever-relevant moral conundrum.

Baseball has been defaced and consumed by corporate America. As Moneyball-thinking and Ivy League graduates grabbed hold of the sport, the Astros set out to build a cost-efficient winning machine on the principles of the outside business world, squeezing every dollar out of every transaction, player and employee. In less than a decade, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow helped revolutionize the game and create an environment that led to one of the worst cheating scandals in baseball history, a Shakespearean tragedy of innovation and failed change management.

Childhood for Evan Roberts was defined by outings to the old Shea Stadium with his father, always with a scorebook in hand. What began as a gameday ritual replete with misspelled player names and scrawled symbols turned into an obsession with scoring every game he watched, one which persisted as Roberts rose through the ranks at WFAN. Taken together, those scorebooks form a living, breathing Mets diary spanning 30 years of thrilling—and, at times, tortured—fandom. My Mets Bible is an exercise in memory and nostalgia, and a meditation on the things that stick with us as sports fans.

Eugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the 20th century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of 11 to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. When his journey led him to Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African-American fighter pilot in history. After the war, Bullard returned to Paris a celebrated hero. But little did he know that the dramatic, globe-spanning arc of his life had just begun.

Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during World War I, having survived a two-month forced march and a terrifying shootout in the desert, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, join forces to bamboozle their iron-fisted captors. To stave off despair and boredom, Jones takes a handmade Ouija board and fakes elaborate séances for his fellow prisoners. Word gets around, and one day, an Ottoman official approaches Jones with a query: Could Jones contact the spirit world to find a vast treasure rumored to be buried nearby?

It was 1986, and the New York Mets won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, capturing the hearts (and other assorted body parts) of fans everywhere. But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin's left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake-hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox.

The New York Mets are one of the most historic teams in Major League Baseball, with superstars over the years including Jacob deGrom, Mike Piazza, David Wright, and Tom Seaver. Aided by dozens of new, exclusive interviews, listeners will gain the perspective of players, coaches, and personnel from Mets history in moments of greatness as well as defeat, making for a keepsake no fan will want to miss.

In this groundbreaking book, Keith Law, the ESPN baseball writer and author of the acclaimed Smart Baseball, offers an era-spanning dissection of some of the best and worst decisions in modern baseball, explaining what motivated them, what can be learned from them, and how their legacy has shaped the game....

In We Promised You a Great Main Event, longtime sports journalist Bill Hanstock pulls back the curtain to give a smart fan’s account of WWE and Vince McMahon’s journey to the top. Untangling the truth behind the official WWE storyline, Hanstock does a deep dive into key moments of the company’s history, from the behind-the-scenes drama at the Montreal Screwjob, to the company’s handling of the Jimmy Snuka scandal, to the real story of the Monday Night Wars.

Baseball is “the New York game” because the city is where the white lines were first drawn, where a bunt was first laid, and where the curve ball was first thrown. It’s also where the superstars first emerged, and where social progress in the sport was first made. With nuance and depth, historian Kevin Baker brings this all back to life: the games–World Series in 1905, 1919, 1932; the players–Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig; the coaches and managers–John McGraw, “Foxy Ned” Hanlon, Clark Griffith; and even the writers, reporters, and spectators.

Prince, coauthor of the highly regarded blog of the same name, examines how the life of the franchise mirrors the life of its fans, particularly his own. Unabashedly and unapologetically, Prince stands up for all Mets fans and, by proxy, sports fans everywhere in exploring how we root, why we take it so seriously, and what it all means.