In four months in the summer of 1930, Bobby Jones, a twenty-eight-year-old amateur did what sports writers described as the impossible, winning the British Amateur Championship, the British Open, the United States Open, and the United States Amateur Championship. Here, from Pulitzer-Prize winner Red Smith, is the captivating story of Jones's Grand Slam.

An inside baseball memoir from the game’s first superstar, with a foreword by Chad HarbachChristy Mathewson was one of the most dominant pitchers ever to play baseball. Posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of the “Five Immortals,” he was an unstoppable force on the mound, winning at least twenty-two games for twelve straight seasons and pitching three complete-game shutouts in the 1905 World Series. Pitching in a Pinch, his witty and...

Spanning nearly fifty years and featuring hard-to-find pieces, this anthology collects the most essential writings on American baseball, boxing, and more, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning sports journalistWalter Wellesley “Red” Smith was the most widely read sports writer of the last century and the first to win the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. From the 1940s to the 1980s, his nationally syndicated columns for the New York Herald Tribune and later for

"Collectively thought-provoking and provocative . . . Essential insights, masterfully assembled, on the precarious state of American publishing." — Kirkus ReviewsWriters write—but what do they do for money?In a widely read essay entitled "MFA vs NYC," bestselling novelist Chad Harbach ( The Art of Fielding) argued that the American literary scene has split into two cultures: New York publishing versus university MFA programs. This book bring...

This #1 bestselling baseball classic of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is "a celebration of a vanished heroic age" ( The New York Times Book Review ).The summer of 1949: It was baseball's Golden Age and the year Joe DiMaggio's New York Yankees were locked in a soon-to-be classic battle with Ted Williams's Boston Red Sox for the American League pennant. As postwar America looked for a unifying moment, the greatest players in b...

From "the clear-eyed poet laureate of baseball"—a definitive collection of three nonfiction classics chronicling MLB into the modern age ( New York Post).In these three classic volumes, legendary New Yorker sportswriter Roger Angell chronicles the triumphs, travails, heroes, and history of America's favorite pastime.In The Summer Game, Angell covers ten seasons in the major leagues from the 1960s to the early 1970s. With his signa...

A chronicle of our national pastime's most unforgettable era from the bestselling author of The Summer Game—"No one writes better about baseball" ( The Boston Globe).Classic New Yorker sportswriter Roger Angell calls 1972 to 1976 "the most important half-decade in the history of the game." The early to mid-1970s brought unprecedented changes to America's ancient pastime: astounding performances by Nolan Ryan and Hank Aaron; the intensity...

On a torridly hot August day in 1920, Ray Chapman was struck and killed by a Carl Mays fastball, in what was and remains the only on-the-field fatality in the history of major league baseball. The drama of Good Guy Chapman versus Bad Guy Mays is a wrenching human tale. Add to it an intense pennant race, the meteoric ascension of Babe Ruth to baseball supremacy, the banning of the Black Sox for throwing the previous year's World Series, and the story grows to one of the most fascinating and...

The legendary NPR sports commentator and Sports Illustrated journalist retells the story of an unusual friendship between two towering figures in baseball history.At the turn of the twentieth century, Christy Mathewson was one of baseball's first superstars. Over six feet tall, clean cut, and college educated, he didn't pitch on the Sabbath and rarely spoke an ill word about anyone. He also had one of the most devastating arms in all of baseball. New York ...

#1 New York Times Bestseller"A delightful look at all the little things that make major league baseball a subtle spectacle." — Seattle TimesIn his classic tribute to America's pastime, political commentator, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and lifelong sports enthusiast George F. Will travels from the baseball field to the dugout to the locker room to get to the root of the game we all love. He breaks down the sport to ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In Slaying the Tiger, one of today’s boldest young sportswriters spends a season inside the ropes alongside the rising stars who are transforming the game of golf.For more than a decade, golf was dominated by one galvanizing figure: Eldrick “Tiger” Woods. But as his star has fallen, a new, ambitious generation has stepped up to claim the crown. Once the domain of veterans, golf saw a youth revolution in 2014. In Sla...

“Football is force and fanatics, basketball is beauty and bounce. Baseball is everything: action, grace, the seasons of our lives. George Vecsey’s book proves it, without wasting a word.”—Lee Eisenberg, author of The NumberIn Baseball, one of the great bards of America’s Grand Old Game gives a rousing account of the sport, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day. George Vecsey casts a fresh eye on the game, illuminates its foibles a...