Sports

In Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis invaded the insular world of competitive Scrabble players, ultimately achieving an expert-level ranking. Now, in his new book, he infiltrates a strikingly different subculture-pro football. After more than a year of preparation, Fatsis molded his fortyish body into one that could stand up-barely-to the rigors of NFL training. And for three months he became a placekicker for the Denver Broncos. Making the most of unprecedented access to an NFL team and its players, and drawing on his own personal experience, Fatsis with wry candor and hard-won empathy unveils the mind of the modern pro athlete and the workings of a storied sports franchise as no writer has before.

In this valuable guide, survivalist Dave Canterbury goes beyond bushcraft basics to teach you how to survive in the backcountry with little or no equipment. Using the foundation you learned in Bushcraft 101, Canterbury shows you how to completely immerse yourself in the wilderness with advanced bushcraft and woodcraft techniques. He covers crucial survival skills like tracking to help you get even closer to wildlife, crafting medicines from plants, and navigating without the use of a map or compass. He also offers ways to improvise and save money on bushcraft essentials like fire-starting tools and packs. With Canterbury's expert advice and guidance, you will learn how to forgo your equipment, make use of your surroundings, and truly enjoy the wilderness.

Whether you're eager to learn more after your first real outdoor adventure or have been exploring the backcountry for years, Advanced Bushcraft will help you take your self-reliance and wilderness experience to the next level.

From 1954 to 1975, the Milan-based San Marco boatyard wrote some of the most interesting pages in the post-war history of powerboating. San Marco is the only yard that has extensively used Italian car engines for both its racing and production boats, including those of Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Fiat and Abarth. The yard produced such models as the 600 Del Mare, Giulietta del Mare, Appia; all fast and prestigious wooden runabouts with elegant lines and refined details. Like a fashion designer or a famous Italian coachbuilder, for over 20 years Oscar Scarpa, founder of the yard, promoted a tradition of excellence, building several hundred exclusive boats with his son Sandro each with unique specifications, either technical or aesthetic, and all beautifully finished. The San Marco boatyard has also enjoyed a successful racing career, with more than 30 world speed records and hundreds of victories to its credit at the highest competitive level - often with Oscar Scarpa in the driver's seat! This book is both a tribute to the full history of the San Marco boatyard and its unique contribution to the world of speed boats. Racing Cars of the Seas is illustrated with a remarkable collection of hundreds of unpublished archival documents and photographs, as well as detailed information, including extensive production and racing records.

Ball Four is a baseball classic, a number one bestseller when it was published; it still is in demand throughout the U.S. Now in a new updated hardcover edition, Ball Four will reach a whole new generation of avid baseball fans. In fact, Ball Four has been selected by the NY Public Library as one of the Books of the Century. And David Halberstam writes: a book deep in the American Vein, so deep in fact that is by no means a sports book. Bouton has written a baseball book about the reality of the game. Thirty years after its publication, it remains as wonderful to read as ever.

Manny Ramirez is a future Hall of Fame outfielder who has played in Los Angeles, Boston, and Cleveland. He ranks 17th in career homeruns and eighth in career slugging percentage--the only players above him on both lists are Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, and Barry Bonds. Manny is the hottest icon in baseball right now, and that will continue throughout the offseason, where speculation regarding his free agency will be the top baseball news on ESPN and throughout

sports media. In contrast to most sports biographies, Becoming Manny brings an unusually

thoughtful analysis to the territory, examining

Manny's life through the lens of larger issues like youth-mentoring and immigration, while also telling the story of a great career. Manny has perplexed the baseball world for years now with his amazing hitting and his unique approach to life and the game. Incredibly focused at the plate and incredibly carefree everywhere else, Manny has become a constant topic of discussion on national sports radio and television, on sports websites, and in print. With unprecedented access, Jean Rhodes and Shawn Boburg have uncovered fascinating stories and family photos spanning from Manny's early years in the Dominican Republic to the present. This is an authorized inside look at the roots, development, and career of an individual and player on his way from Washington Heights to the Hall of Fame.

Even now, years after his death, Billy Martin remains one of the most intriguing and charismatic figures in baseball history. And the most misunderstood. A manager who is widely considered to have been a baseball genius, Martin is remembered more for his rabble-rousing and public brawls on the field and off. He was combative and intimidating, yet endearing and beloved.

​In Billy Martin, Bill Pennington resolves these contradictions and pens the definitive story of Martin's life. From his hardscrabble youth to his days on the Yankees in the 1950s and through sixteen years of managing, Martin made sure no one ever ignored him. Drawing on exhaustive interviews and his own time covering Martin as a young sportswriter, Pennington provides an intimate, revelatory, and endlessly colorful story of a truly larger-than-life sportsman.

"The hair on my forearms was standing up by the end of the fifth paragraph of this book's introduction. I knew Billy Martin. I covered Billy Martin. But I never knew him like this." -- Dan Shaughnessy, best-selling author of Francona

"An exhaustive, detailed and fascinating look at a baseball genius whose biggest fight might very well have been against himself." -- Tampa Tribune

"Bottom of the 33rd is chaw-chewing, sunflower-spitting, pine tar proof that too much baseball is never enough." --Jane Leavy, author of The Last Boy and Sandy Koufax

"What a book--an exquisite exercise in story-telling, democracy and myth-making." --Colum McCann, winner of the National Book Award for Let The Great World Spin

From Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Dan Barry comes the beautifully recounted story of the longest game in baseball history--a tale celebrating not only the robust intensity of baseball, but the aspirational ideal epitomized by the hard-fighting players of the minor leagues. In the tradition of Moneyball, The Last Hero, and Wicked Good Year, Barry's Bottom of the 33rd is a reaffirming story of the American Dream finding its greatest expression in timeless contests of the Great American Pastime.

Fame. Sex. Pain. Drugs. Death. Booze. Money. Addiction. Redemption. Dizzying heights. Rock-bottom depths. Desperation and elation--sometimes in the same hour. Not to mention power . . . and the struggle for it.

The world knows Lamar Odom as a two-time NBA world champion who rocketed to uncharted heights of fame thanks to being a member of both the storied Los Angeles Lakers and the ubiquitous Kardashian empire.

But who is Lamar, really?

Fans have long praised his accessibility and genuine everyman quality--he is a blinding talent who has suffered a series of heartaches, setback, and loss. But until now, his most candid moments have remained behind closed doors . . . sometimes face-down on the floor.

In Darkness to Light, Lamar gives readers an intimate look into his life like never before. His exclusive and revealing memoir recounts the highs and lows of fame and his struggle with his demons along the way to self-discovery and redemption. From the pain of his unraveled marriage to Khloé Kardashian to the harmful vices he used to cope--and the near-death experience that made him rethink everything about his life--this is Lamar as you have never before seen him.

Lamar brings basketball fans directly into the action of a game during the Lakers championship years. He shares his personal account of the lifelong passion that started as one shining light in a childhood marked by loss and led to his international fame as one of the most extraordinary athletes of all time. In this profoundly honest book, Lamar invites you to walk with him through the good times and bad, while looking ahead to a brighter future.

No matter their favorite team or player, young sports fans can look to baseball legend Derek Jeter for information on America's national pastime. Derek Jeter's Ultimate Baseball Guide 2015 is jam-packed with facts about each of the thirty Major League teams. Brief team histories are peppered with Jeter's handwritten notes and interwoven with cool trivia, covering everything from the sport's start and the original Knickerbocker Rules to baseball's weirdest superstitions. Not sure how to compute a slugging average? Want to know how many teams have won over 10,000 games? Ever wondered how many stitches are in a baseball? Fans will find answers to these and much more in this annual collector's guide.

First distinguishing himself as a player with the Cleveland Browns (under the great Paul Brown), Baltimore Colts, and Washington Redskins, Donald Francis Shula went on to be the boy wonder of the NFL as a coach. After serving for three seasons as the defensive coordinator for the Detroit Lions, where he oversaw one of the NFL's toughest units,

Shula was named the youngest head coach in NFL history when he took over the Baltimore Colts in 1963. But after public feuding with star quarterback Johnny Unitas and owner Carroll Rosenbloom, and despite leading the team to two NFL championship games, Shula accepted the job as head coach of the perennial doormat Miami Dolphins in 1970.

Within a few seasons, he took the Dolphins to three straight Super Bowls, winning twice, including the only undefeated Super Bowl championship season in 1972 behind a bruising running attack led by two 1,000-yard rushers, Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris, as well as the unheralded "No-Name Defense."

Shula won more games (328) than any other coach in NFL history, led his teams to six Super Bowls, and only posted a losing record twice in thirty-three seasons on the sideline. He was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1997. Don Shula chronicles the life of one of the greatest minds ever to be involved with the game, from the dawn of modern football to the close of the twentieth century.

Originally drawn to the game by his father, Carl wisely quit golfing in 1973, when "Richard Nixon was hunkered down like a meth-crazed badger in the White House, Hank Aaron was one dinger shy of Babe Ruth's all-time home run record, and The Who had just released Quadrophenia." But some ambitions refuse to die, and as the years--and memories of shanked 7-irons--faded, it dawned on Carl that there might be one thing in life he could do better in middle age than he could as a youth. So gradually he ventured back to the dreaded driving range, this time as the father of a five-year-old son--and also as a grandfather.

"What possesses a man to return in midlife to a game at which he'd never excelled in his prime, and which in fact had dealt him mostly failure, angst and exasperation? Here's why I did it: I'm one sick bastard."

And thus we have Carl's foray into a world of baffling titanium technology, high-priced golf gurus, bizarre infomercial gimmicks and the mind-bending phenomenon of Tiger Woods; a maddening universe of hooks and slices where Carl ultimately--and foolishly--agrees to compete in a country-club tournament against players who can actually hit the ball. "That's the secret of the sport's infernal seduction," he writes. "It surrenders just enough good shots to let you talk yourself out of quitting."

Hiaasen's chronicle of his shaky return to this bedeviling pastime and the ensuing demolition of his self-esteem--culminating with the savage 45-hole tournament--will have you rolling with laughter. Yet the bittersweet memories of playing with his own father and the glow he feels when watching his own young son belt the ball down the fairway will also touch your heart. Forget Tiger, Phil and Ernie. If you want to understand the true lure of golf, turn to Carl Hiaasen, who has written an extraordinary book for the ordinary hacker.