Christy Mathewson, The Christian Gentleman: How One Man's Faith and Fastball Forever Changed Baseball

In Christy Mathewson, the Christian Gentleman: How One Man's Faith and Fastball Forever Changed Baseball, Bob Gaines delivers a close and personal look at the extraordinary life and soul of a gifted man living in a unique time. Including timeless images, this book brings to life Mathewson’s amazing career, faultless character, and unwavering faith.

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The Bicycling Big Book of Cycling for Women: Everything You Need to Know for Whatever, Whenever, and Wherever You Ride

Women are built differently, ride differently, train differently, burn different macronutrients as fuel, and have a different relationship with their bikes than men do. It's only natural they should need their own comprehensive cycling book.
The Bicycling Big Book of Cycling for Women is an instructional manual geared specifically toward women. It breaks down the sport of cycling into easily digestible sections, beginning with the history of women's cycling and progressing into equipment, lifestyle, technique, training, and fitness goals. The book also includes a women-specific section that covers cycling while menstruating, cycling while pregnant, how menopause affects training, and how specific parts of the female body are uniquely affected by cycling.
The Bicycling Big Book of Cycling for Women will serve as an indispensible, lifelong guide for every female cyclist.

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Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

A deeply rendered self-portrait of a lifelong surfer by the acclaimed New Yorkerwriter
Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses—off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships annealed in challenging waves.
Finnegan shares stories of life in a whitesonly gang in a tough school in Honolulu even while his closest friend was a Hawaiian surfer. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful folly—he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui—is served up with rueful humor. He and a buddy, their knapsacks crammed with reef charts, bushwhack through Polynesia. They discover, while camping on an uninhabited island in Fiji, one of the world’s greatest waves. As Finnegan’s travels take him ever farther afield, he becomes an improbable anthropologist: unpicking the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissecting the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, navigating the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity.
Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little understood art. Today, Finnegan’s surfing life is undiminished. Frantically juggling work and family, he chases his enchantment through Long Island ice storms and obscure corners of Madagascar.

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Hail to the Redskins: Gibbs, Riggins, the Hogs, and the Glory Days of D.C.'s Football Dynasty

A rollicking chronicle that takes fans behind the scenes of the legendary Super Bowl-champion Washington Redskins teams of the Joe Gibbs’ era and offers a revealing portrait of the NFL during the 1980s and early 1990s.
Based on more than seventy-five original interviews, here is the inside story of the glory days of the famed Washington Redskins teams of the Joe Gibbs’ era—one of the most remarkable and unique runs in NFL history. From 1981 to 1992, Gibbs coached the franchise to three Super Bowl victories, making the team the toast of the nation’s capital, both among the political elite and the city’s majority African-American population. Veteran sportswriter Adam Lazarus charts the team’s rise from mediocrity (the franchise had never won a Super Bowl and Gibbs’s first year as head coach started with a five-game losing streak that almost cost him his job) to its stretch of four championship games in ten years. What makes the run of sustained success all the more remarkable is that, unlike Joe Montana’s 49ers or Tom Brady’s Patriots, each of Gibbs’s Super Bowl victories featured a different quarterback—a testament to the genius of the team’s head coach, who proved himself one of the most adaptable and creative minds in NFL history.
Hail to the Redskins features an epic cast of characters: hard-drinking halfback John Riggins; the dominant, blue-collar offensive linemen known as “the Hogs” who became a cultural phenomenon; quarterbacks Doug Williams, the first African-American QB to win a Super Bowl, and Joe Theismann, a model-handsome pitchman whose leg was brutally broken by Lawrence Taylor on Monday Night Football; gregarious defensive end Dexter Manley, who would be banned from the league for cocaine abuse; and others including Darrell Green, Art Monk, Mark Rypien, owner Jack Kent Cooke, and more.
Building on Lazarus’s interviews with key inside sources, including Redskin players, personalities, and journalists,Hail to the Redskins paints a colorful picture of one of the most compelling teams in football history.

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The Shared Origins of Football, Rugby, and Soccer

What are the origins of all the modern day contact sports, from grid iron football to Aussie Rules, rugby, and soccer? In this book, Christopher Rowley reveals how ball games arose and took shape into what we know today as football, soccer, rugby, and others.

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The Pine Tar Game: The Kansas City Royals, the New York Yankees, and Baseball's Most Absurd and Entertaining Controversy

An award-winning veteran sportswriter who personally covered the Pine Tar Game looks back and explores one of the wackiest events in baseball history.

On July 24, 1983, during the finale of a heated four-game series between the dynastic New York Yankees and small-town Kansas City Royals, umpires nullified a go-ahead home run based on an obscure rule, when Yankees manager Billy Martin pointed out an illegal amount of pine tar—the sticky substance used for a better grip—on Royals third baseman George Brett’s bat. Brett wildly charged out of the dugout and chaos ensued. The call temporarily cost the Royals the game, but the decision was eventually overturned, resulting in a resumption of the game several weeks later that created its own hysteria.

The Pine Tar Game chronicles this watershed moment, marking a pivot in the sport, when benign cheating tactics, like spitballs, Superball bats, and a couple extra inches of tar on an ash bat, gave way to era of soaring salaries, labor struggles, and rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs. Filip Bondy paints a portrait of the Yankees and Royals of that era, featuring two diametrically opposed owners, in George Steinbrenner and Ewing Kauffman; a host of bad actors and phenomenal athletes; and lots of yelling. Players and club officials like Brett, Goose Gossage, Willie Randolph, Ron Guidry, Sparky Lyle, David Cone, and John Schuerholz offer fresh commentary on the events along with their take on a rivalry that culminated in one of the most iconic baseball tantrums of all time. Rush Limbaugh, employed by the Royals at the time as a promotions director, offers his own insider’s perspective. Through this one fateful game, the ensuing protest, and ultimate fallout,The Pine Tar Game examines a more innocent time in professional sports, as well as the shifting tide that gave us today’s modern iteration of baseball.

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The Ultimate Guide to Knife Throwing: Master the Sport of Knife and Tomahawk Throwing

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to throw knives or tomahawks, look no further thanThe Ultimate Guide to Knife Throwing. This comprehensive guide is perfect for everyone from novices who have never picked up a knife to seasoned knife and tomahawk throwers looking to compete in their first tournament.

Bobby Branton has been a foremost expert in the field of knife throwing and handcrafting custom throwing knives for over thirty years and shares his expertise here with easy step-by-step directions. Branton shows readers two methods of throwing knives that are most popular with knife throwers today. He will also share his extensive knife-making experience by showing readers how to make a quality throwing knife on a budget.

In addition to improving technical skills, this guide will also give readers a brief history of the sport—covering everyone from the pioneers of the sport to today’s modern impalement artists. This book will give you the tools needed to learn everything from the basics of knife and tomahawk throwing to how to start your own knife and tomahawk throwing club. Readers will learn how to construct targets, learn the basic stance, basic knife and tomahawk grips, and the mechanics of throwing knives and tomahawks. Branton’s guide gives an in-depth look at this fast-growing sport, with a strong emphasis placed on safety.

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The Keeper: A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them

In The Keeper, the man who electrified the world with his amazing performance in Brazil does something he would never do on a soccer field: he drops his guard. As fiercely protective about his privacy as he is guarding the goal on the field, Howard opens up for the first time about how a hyperactive kid from New Jersey with Tourette’s syndrome defied the odds to become one of the world’s premier goalkeepers.
The Keeper recalls his childhood, being raised by a single mother who instilled in him a love of sports and a devout Christian faith that helped him cope when he was diagnosed with Tourette’s in the fifth grade. He looks back over his fifteen-year professional career—from becoming the youngest player to win MLS Goalkeeper of the Year to his storied move to the English Premier League with Manchester United and his current team, Liverpool’s Everton, to becoming an overnight star after his record-making performance with the United States Men’s National Team. He also talks about the things closest to his heart—the importance of family and the Christian beliefs that guide him.

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It's Good to Be the Gronk

New England Patriots record-breaking tight-end Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski offers fans a front row seat to a football superstar’s life on and off the field.

Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski holds nine league-wide records and three Patriots franchise records. His accomplishments include thirty-eight receiving touchdowns in his first three seasons (thirteen more than any other tight end in the NFL) and the 2011 record for most touchdowns made by a tight end, with seventeen receiving and eighteen overall. With a Super Bowl victory under his belt and a nationwide reputation for a personality that’s “comedy gold” (CBS Sports), he has continued to win the hearts of fans through his fun-loving attitude.

From hamming it up at Super Bowl Media Day, to spicing up interviews with “Gronk-esque” dance moves, to cuddling with kittens in the pages ofESPN The Magazine, to christening a used party bus his ride of choice, Gronk’s good humor and playful persona make it seem like other players are “living in black and white, and Gronk is in color” (CBS Sports). But it’s not all fun and games. After multiple surgeries on his forearms, ankle, and back, Gronk tore his ACL and MCL, prematurely ending his 2013 season (but not before scoring four touchdowns and 592 receiving yards). His many injuries and subsequent recoveries made his key play in Super Bowl XLIX—which led to victory and the title of “Comeback Player of the Year”—all the sweeter. Gronk takes fans from the field to the locker room to the VIP room to the talk show green room to his parents’ kitchen table—a full tour of the world according to Gronk.

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The A Swing: The Alternative Approach to Great Golf

"David Leadbetter's first book in a decade helps golfers around the world finally reach their potential. The "A" stands for "alternative," as in a new and different way to swing the club that makes it so much easier to consistently hit good golf shots. David has taken his 30-plus years of teaching experience, working with players of all abilities including the best who have ever played the game, and developed a more efficient and effective way to hit good shots with minimal practice. In essence, it's a shortcut to good golf. The genius behind the A Swing is that golfers will consistently play well after only a short series of seven-minute practice sessions. The A Swing doesn't require textbook precision in order to see improvement--just a basic understanding of the technique will synchronize the swing and have golfers repeatedly hitting solid shots. The A Swing also easily fixes many of the game's most common faults--including the dreaded slice. It's especially beneficial to those who have little time toplay or practice, the aging golfer, and anyone who has struggled to realize their full potential. Until now, the standard paradigm for teaching the golf swing really hasn't changed. But the A Swing was developed on scientific principles and has been biomechanically tested to ensure it's a viable and easier alternative. Already adopted by pros and amateurs alike--the results have been transformative"--

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