Mike Matheny was just 41, without professional managerial experience and looking for a next step after a successful career as a Major League catcher, when he succeeded the legendary Tony La Russa as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012. While Matheny has enjoyed immediate success, leading the Cards to the postseason three times in his first three years, people have noticed something else about his life, something not measured in day-to-day results.

Baseball iQ is the first book written directly to young baseball players who want to level up their game. With sections on baserunning, hitting, infield, outfield, pitching and catching, Baseball iQ is a fun and comprehensive guide to playing smarter baseball for kids and teenagers.

Tracing the evolution of pitching and the pitcher's art of deception, Terry McDermott tells the fascinating story of baseball's 150-year hunt for the perfect pitch. Using the framework of a single game (nine chapters, nine innings, nine pitches), he explores the history of every type of pitch, combining the folk wisdom of the players with the enormous wealth of new data brought to the sport by the growing legion of statisticians who are transforming many of the sport's once sacred beliefs.

In Ninety Percent Mental, Bob Tewksbury shows listeners a side of the game only he can provide, given his singular background as both a longtime MLB pitcher and a mental skills coach for two of the sport's most fabled franchises, the Boston Red Sox and San Francisco Giants. Fans watching the game on television or even at the stadium don't have access to the mind games a pitcher must play in order to get through an at-bat, an inning, a game.

There was a turning point in Michael Lewis' life, in a baseball game when he was 14 years old. The irascible and often terrifying Coach Fitz put the ball in his hand with the game on the line and managed to convey such confident trust in Lewis's ability that the boy had no choice but to live up to it. "I didn't have words for it then, but I do now: I am about to show the world, and myself, what I can do."