Sports & Recreation Audiobooks

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 (Author), Ian Esmo (Narrator)

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Tales from the Dugout: The Greatest True Baseball Stories Ever Told

This memorable collection of anecdotes about America's national pastime will take you into the dugout, clubhouse, and press box with some of the game's greatest players and storytellers. From Hall-of-Famers Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays to the always-quotable Casey Stengel, to modern-day stars Ken Griffey, Jr. and Larry Walker, Tales from the Dugout features more than 150 priceless stories. You'll hear about George Steinbrenner's revolving-door hiring policies, Tommy Lasorda's feud with the Phillie Phanatic, Yogi Berra's expansive strike zone, Earl Weaver's battles with American League umpires, and Phil Rizzuto's struggle with the English language. This intimate and entertaining collection is sure to delight fans of all generations.

Mike Shannon (Author), John Lescault (Narrator)

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Pitching in a Pinch: Baseball from the Inside

Christy 'Matty' 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, originally published in 1912, is an insider's account of the world of baseball, blending anecdote, biography, instruction, and social history. Always sensitive to psychology as well as technique, Mathewson describes the game as it was played in the first decade of the twentieth century: the 'dangerous batters'; the 'peculiarities' of big-league pitchers; the 'good and bad' of coaching, umpiring, sign-stealing, base-running, and spring training; and the importance of superstition to athletes. Baseball fans will enjoy first-hand accounts of Mathewson's famous contemporaries, including players Honus Wagner and Rube Marquand, managers like John McGraw and Connie Mack, and many others, and will learn how much—and just how little—has really changed in one hundred years.

Christy Mathewson (Author), Adams Morgan (Narrator)

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Be Quick- But Don't Hurry: Finding Success in the Teachings of a Lifetime

Perhaps the least controversial sports honor in living memory was the selection of John Wooden as "Coach of the Century" by ESPN, honoring his ten NCAA basketball championships in twelve years. His UCLA teams won with quickness and always with class. Wooden was a teacher first and foremost, and his lessons -- taught on the basketball court, but applicable throughout one's life -- are summarized in his famed Pyramid of Success. An all-city high school player in Los Angeles, Hill played -- a little -- in three national championships, from 1970 to 1972. Hill was upset at how unequally Wooden treated his starting players, and clashed with Wooden over a variety of social political issues. Hill went on to a successful career in television, rising to the presidency of CBS Productions. And one day, some twenty-five years after graduating from USLA, he realized that everything he knows about getting the best out of his people he had learned directly from Coach John Wooden. Be Quick -- But Don't Hurry! tells the story of their renewed friendship while sharing the lessons and secrets that hold the key to managing creativity in the idea-driven economy of the twenty first century. Full of sound advice and warm reminiscence, this is the management book of a lifetime.

Andrew Hill, John Wooden (Author), Andrew Hill, John Wooden (Narrator)

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No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks

THIS GRIPPING AND TRIUMPHANT MEMOIR FOLLOWS A LIVING LEGEND OF EXTREME MOUNTAINEERING AS HE MAKES HIS ASSAULT ON HISTORY, ONE 8,000-METER SUMMIT AT A TIME. For eighteen years Ed Viesturs pursued climbing’s holy grail: to stand atop the world’s fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of bottled oxygen. But No Shortcuts to the Top is as much about the man who would become the first American to achieve that goal as it is about his stunning quest. As Viesturs recounts the stories of his most harrowing climbs, he reveals a man torn between the flat, safe world he and his loved ones share and the majestic and deadly places where only he can go. Viesturs lives by an unyielding motto, “Reaching the summit is optional. Getting down is mandatory.” It is with this philosophy that he vividly describes fatal errors in judgment made by his fellow climbers as well as a few of his own close calls and gallant rescues. And, for the first time, he details his own pivotal and heroic role in the 1996 Everest disaster made famous in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. No Shortcuts to the Top is more than the first full account of one of the staggering accomplishments of our time; it is a portrait of a brave and devoted family man and his beliefs that shaped this most perilous and magnificent pursuit.

David Roberts, Ed Viesturs (Author), Stephen Hoye (Narrator)

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Play Poker Like The Pros: The greatest poker player in the world today reveals his million-dollar-wi

In Play Poker Like the Pros, poker master Phil Hellmuth, Jr., demonstrates exactly how to play and win, even if you have never picked up a deck of cards, the modern games of poker, including: Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Seven-Card Stud, and Razz. Phil Hellmuth, Jr., a ten-time World Champion of Poker, presents his tournament-tested strategies to beat any type of player, including: The Jackal (crazy and unpredictable) The Elephant (plays too many hands) The Mouse (plays very conservatively) The Lion (skilled and tough to beat) Play Poker Like the Pros begins by laying out the rules and set-up of each game and then moves on to easy-to-follow basic and advanced strategies. Hellmuth teaches exactly which hands to play, when to bluff, when to raise, and when to fold. In addition Hellmuth provides techniques for reading other players and staying cool under pressure. There are also special chapters on how to beat online poker games and an inside look at tournament play. Written and read by Phil Hellmuth, Jr.

Jr. Phil Hellmuth, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Hellmuth, Jr. (Author), Jr. Phil Hellmuth, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Hellmuth, Jr. (Narrator)

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The Smart Money

"Gamblers whisper about a legendary syndicate known as The Brain Trust because they seem to understand more about sports betting than anyone else. Though they operate in secret, everyone involved in sports gambling wants to know what The Brains are doing -- how they do what they do, and especially, what they'll do next. I'm one of the few people in the world who can tell you. Because for several years I was one of them." -- from The Smart Money In The Smart Money, Michael Konik takes listeners behind the veil of secrecy shrouding the most successful sports gambling operation in America, to its innermost sanctum. He reveals how they -- and he -- got rich by beating the Vegas lines and, ultimately, the multi-million-dollar offshore betting circuit. He details the perks and perils of a lifestyle in which staking inordinate sums of money on the outcome of a game -- sometimes as much as $1 million on a single event -- is a normal part of doing business.

Michael Konik (Author), Michael Konik (Narrator)

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The Blind Side

In football, as in life, the value we place on people changes with the rules of the games they play. When we first meet the young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school. And he has no serious experience playing organized football. What changes? He takes up football, and school, after a rich, Evangelical, Republican family plucks him from the mean streets. Their love is the first great force that alters the world's perception of the boy, whom they adopt. The second force is the evolution of professional football itself. In THE BLIND SIDE, Lewis shows us a largely unanalyzed but inexorable trend in football working its way down from the pros to the high school game, where it collides with the life of a single young man to produce a narrative of great and surprising power.

Michael Lewis (Author), Stephen Hoye (Narrator)

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No Shortcuts to the Top

David Roberts, Ed Viesturs (Author), Ed Viesturs (Narrator)

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The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the Worl

The 1951 regular season was as good as over. The Brooklyn Dodgers led the New York Giants by three runs, with just three outs to go in their third and final playoff game. And not once in Major League Baseball's 278 preceding playoff and World Series games had a team overcome a three-run deficit in the ninth inning. But New York rallied, and at 3:58 p.m. on October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson hit a home run off Ralph Branca. The Giants won the pennant. The Echoing Green follows the reverberations of that one moment, the "Shot Heard Round the World", from the West Wing of the White House to the Sing Sing death house to the Polo Grounds clubhouse, where a home run forever turned hitter and pitcher into hero and goat. It was also in that centerfield block of concrete that, after the home run, a Giant coach tucked away a Wollensak telescope. The spyglass would remain undiscovered until 2001, when, on the jubilee of that home run, Joshua Prager laid bare on the front page of the Wall Street Journal a Giant secret: from July 20, 1951, through the very day of that legendary game, the orange and black stole the finger signals of opposing catchers. The Echoing Green places that revelation at the heart of a larger story, re-creating in extravagant detail the 1951 pennant race and illuminating as never before the impact of both a moment and a long-guarded secret on the lives of Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca. A wonderfully evocative portrait of the great American pastime, The Echoing Green is baseball history, social history, and biography, and an irresistible listen from any angle.

Joshua Prager (Author), Joshua Prager (Narrator)

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For All Who Love the Game: Lessons and Teachings for Women

Harvey Penick's Little Red Book introduced millions of golfers to a national treasure - a gentle, wise teacher who has helped some of the game's greats become champions. Unique among golf teachers, Harvey has worked with, helped - and learned from - as many women champions as men. In For All Who Love the Game, he shares the lessons he has learned from all the women he's watched in his seven decades of teaching the game he loves. He describes the techniques that can help women gain greater power, discusses the psychological hurdles every golfer must overcome to improve their game, and gives tips for developing the parts of the game where women can and should outplay their male partners. With the same blend of sage advice and common sense that made his first two audio programs essential parts of every golfer's library, Harvey tells how every woman, whatever her athletic gifts might be, can play great golf and enjoy the game to the fullest.

Bud Shrake, Harvey Penick (Author), Jack Whitaker (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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