Sports Science

Ted Williams was arguably the greatest pure hitter who ever lived. A lifelong student of hitting, he sought advice from every great hitter - and pitcher - he met. Drawing on that advice, as well as his own legendary life in baseball, Williams produced the all-time batting classic, The Science of Hitting. Using its detailed and concise coaching, players of all skill levels will learn how to improve their fundamentals and gain keen insights into the finer points of hitting.

Of all the sports played across the globe, none has more curses, superstitions, or supernatural events like baseball, America's national pastime. While some of these can easily be explained, there are just as many that cannot. Field of Fantasies delves right into that superstition with short stories written by several key authors about baseball and the supernatural.

Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to shut down their senses and stumble through each day in an oblivious bubble, and yet some people end up having much richer experiences than others. In this guidebook, natural navigator Tristan Gooley strives to reawaken our senses to help us understand and deepen our personal experience of nature. His message is to connect - however we can and to whatever draws us in.

In The Secret Wisdom of Nature, master storyteller and international sensation Peter Wohlleben takes listeners on a thought-provoking exploration of the vast natural systems that make life on Earth possible. In this tour of an almost unfathomable world, Wohlleben describes the fascinating interplay between animals and plants.

The inspirational teachings in this collection show that the real way of the warrior is based on compassion, wisdom, fearlessness, and love of nature. The teachings are drawn from the talks and writings of Morihei Ueshiba, founder of the popular Japanese martial art of Aikido, a mind-body discipline he called the "Art of Peace", which offers a nonviolent way to victory in the face of conflict. Ueshiba believed that Aikido principles could be applied to all the challenges we face in life.

When Edmund Hillary first conquered Mt. Everest, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay was at his side. Indeed, for as long as Westerners have been climbing the Himalaya, Sherpas have been the unsung heroes in the background. In August 2008, when eleven climbers lost their lives on K2, the world’s most dangerous peak, two Sherpas survived. They had emerged from poverty and political turmoil to become two of the most skillful mountaineers on earth. Based on unprecedented access and interviews, Buried in the Sky reveals their astonishing story for the first time.

A "normal" Caribbean hurricane travels from east to west, but Lenny was anything but normal. Spawned south of Cuba in 1999, this late-season storm defied all predictions by moving steadily east toward the Leeward Islands. Eventually building almost to Category 5 strength, Lenny squatted for two days between the Virgin Islands and St. Martin, whipping the ocean with 155 mile-per-hour winds and sixty-foot seas.

When the Detroit Red Wings were rebooting their franchise after more than two decades of relative futility, they knew the best place to find world-class players who could turn things around more quickly were conscripted servants behind the Iron Curtain. All they had to do to get them was make history by drafting them and then figure out how to get them out of the Soviet Union.

Moses and Troy Horne here. Your mental-toughness guides! We know exactly how you feel. If you are reading this, you probably have a young athlete who struggles with in-game stress and maybe even sports performance anxiety. That is why this version was mostly written by Moses. As of the time of the writing of this book, Moses Horne is a 15-year-old elite athlete who can talk directly about the triumphs and struggles of working toward being mentally tough. This is the only book that I know of with input from an actual young athlete.

Everyone has a common misconception that sports for athletes must be grueling, exhausting, and herculean. But should that really be the case when it comes to sports nowadays? Science is in every aspect of our lives, evolving it for the better. And when it infiltrated the world of sports, something great came out.

Of all the things humans rely on plants for - sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber - surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable.

In Sport Matters: Leadership, Power, and the Quest for Respect in Sports, Shropshire examines the need for diversity, inclusion, respect, and equality in sports, focusing on the need for leadership to embrace and deliver these principles in a real and tangible way within the sports industry. He also introduces the sports power matrix, a framework for understanding power within the sports industry.

When Chris McDougall agreed to take in a donkey from an animal hoarder, he thought it would be no harder than the rest of the adjustments he and his family had made after moving from Philadelphia to the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country. But when he arrived, Sherman was in such bad shape he could barely move, and his hair was coming out in clumps. Chris decided to undertake a radical rehabilitation program designed not only to heal Sherman's body but to heal his mind as well - and so Chris decided to teach Sherman how to run.

Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, the couple lose their home and their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset via Devon and Cornwall. They have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky.

In Brothers on Three, we follow Phil and Will, along with their teammates, coaches, and families, as they balance the pressures of adolescence, shoulder the dreams of their community, and chart their own individual courses for the future. Brothers on Three is not simply a story about high school basketball, about state championships and a winning team. It is a book about community, and it is about boys on the cusp of adulthood, finding their way through the intersecting worlds they inhabit and forging their own paths to personhood.

In 2016, Amy Tan grew overwhelmed by the state of the world: Hatred and misinformation became a daily presence on social media, and the country felt more divisive than ever. In search of peace, Tan turned toward the natural world just beyond her window and, specifically, the birds visiting her yard. But what began as an attempt to find solace turned into something far greater—an opportunity to savor quiet moments during a volatile time, connect to nature in a meaningful way, and imagine the intricate lives of the birds she admired.

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."

Well-known nature and conservation writer Ted Williams is an avid fisherman who has devoted many years to writing about the sport and advocating the preservation of bodies of water and species of fish. Here, he brings together his love of angling with his profound sense of responsibility for the environment.

What happens when a man of today's overconnected world sets off alone across the Pacific at the age of 71? Christian Williams, a veteran sailor and writer, planned a 6,000-mile voyage as a test of his own seamanship and endurance, and to fulfill a lifelong goal. But he found his focus quickly turning from the surrounding sea to all of us. Is anyone the same person when no one else is there? Do we dare to find out?

The Haywire Heart is the first book to examine heart conditions in athletes. Intended for anyone who competes in endurance sports like cycling, triathlon, running races of all distances, and cross-country skiing, The Haywire Heart presents the evidence that going too hard or too long can damage your heart forever. You'll find what to watch out for, what to do about it, and how to protect your heart so you can enjoy the sports you love for years to come.