Practicing for Perfection provides specific drills for each position and skill set in baseball and softball. Just playing the game will improve a player's performance, but it will take a long time to reach any level of proficiency. Meanwhile, the player's team probably will not be too successful. This book will shorten the learning curve dramatically, from years to just weeks. Players who practice these drills diligently will maximize their natural athletic abilities and have an advantage over nearly every opponent they face. The narrative is written clearly and concisely, and is amplified with over 60 photographs that demonstrate exactly what the narrative says. A player, coach, or parent can read AND see exactly what needs to be done. You might need to buy quite a few books to get all the information contained in just this volume. Practicing for Perfection is "one-stop shopping" at its best.
The time is darker, the stakes are higher, Freedom Bound is now on the run from every known military body in the land. Many mysteries are revealed, Prophecies told, and Destinies shown. More history is uncovered, and hidden plots are discovered. With the fall of Gabriel founder of the FB, comes a twist within the war. The rise of Michel, a new muscle to the Rogue Soldiers, and powers from the Gods to those chosen to protect the Phoenix. The cry for change that was heard, continues to sound. As confusion of the prophecies continue to tear the truth apart, the only light within the darkness are the words of the ancients themselves. The need for the rise of the phoenix couldnt be stronger, as the super natural forces increase. One thing is common knowledge, one fact that most wont admit to, every one is in the struggle together.
The Best Travel Writing 2010 is the seventh volume in the annual Travelers' Tales series launched in 2004 to celebrate the world's best travel writing — from Nobel Prize winners to emerging new writers. The points of view and perspectives are global, and themes encompass high adventure, spiritual growth, romance, hilarity and misadventure, service to humanity, and encounters with exotic cuisine. In The Best Travel Writing 2010 readers will explore the mysteries of superstition in Cameroon, discover the meaning of life with an Irish carpenter on a long flight, take adopted children to Korea on a Homeland Tour, delve deep into a sacred Japanese pilgrimage, travel solo in Panama's forbidding Darien jungle, comprehend the nuances of bargaining in Senegal...and much more.
This book is about the life of cowboys on cattle drives and other experiences they endured. It is about hard times and good times and making lifelong friends including Black, White, Mexican, American Indian, and a woman trail boss. It is about facing hostile Indian attacks and rustlers and the battles that ensued, and about sheer bravery and fear when facing down another man in a gunfight. It is also about a quiet, shy young cowboy falling in love and marrying the girl of his dreams and working on a ranch. It includes flashbacks interrupting the chronological order of the main narrative to take the reader back in time to the past events in a character's life. It explores notable historical figures and time periods in these settings. Considering the cowboy code #4 "Do what has to be done," most of the men and women in this novel served their country in times of conflict and distress. It discusses the family's lineage, patriotism and war service including the Mexican War, Civil War, Indian wars of 1876, Spanish American War, WW1, WW2, the Korean Conflict, and Vietnam.
After the Revolutionary War, millions of African descendent men and women remained slaves despite being freed by the English. Nearly 100 years later they were freed, but remained living in fear for their lives in the Southern States.This book details first hand accounts of what it was like to live under the hand of oppression and slavery. The language is harsh and direct, but shows what life truly was like by the stories and pictures of individuals who lived during this era.This book is for any history major or any individual who wants to find Americas dark past. It is filled with stories and language that may be disturbing to some, but shows the true life under slavery in America.This book has been left unedited as originally written in 1938-39.
“Lyrics have been the poetry of my life.” A former disc jockey who has “lived, worked, and played in every corner” of Vancouver Island, recounts in this absorbing memoir the livelihoods, lessons, and loves of several generations of working people in the resource-based industries of British Columbia, with in-depth and interesting descriptions of how jobs were and are performed and how communities come together and splinter. The author provides equally detailed accounts of his subsequent careers in broadcasting and business in Toronto, Vancouver, the Okanagan, and back on the Big Island. This book resounds with themes of music. It’s about learning and growing through life experiences; taking chances and pursuing your dreams; family values and responsibility; respect and tolerance for others; finding out it’s okay to fail; and redemption and forgiveness. With “album cuts” to introduce and highlight each chapter, Finding My Groove is a study in cultural differences between different industry sectors and ways of life, as well as different regions of Canada. This book brings to light themes that are common despite these differences—danger, tragedy, life and death, triumphs and disappointments, mental and physical health, lessons learned, lost dreams, love, and renewed commitment. It provides firsthand knowledge of logging, of broadcasting, of the comparison of big-city life to small-town experiences. It is a guide to finding satisfaction and contentment in life, and coming to peace with yourself.
Most fans don’t know how far the Jewish presence in baseball extends beyond a few famous players such as Greenberg, Rosen, Koufax, Holtzman, Green, Ausmus, Youkilis, Braun, and Kinsler. In fact, that presence extends to the baseball commissioner Bud Selig, labor leaders Marvin Miller and Don Fehr, owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Stuart Sternberg, officials Theo Epstein and Mark Shapiro, sportswriters Murray Chass, Ross Newhan, Ira Berkow, and Roger Kahn, and even famous Jewish baseball fans like Alan Dershowitz and Barney Frank. The life stories of these and many others, on and off the field, have been compiled from nearly fifty in-depth interviews and arranged by decade in this edifying and entertaining work of oral and cultural history. In American Jews and America’s Game each person talks about growing up Jewish and dealing with Jewish identity, assimilation, intermarriage, future viability, religious observance, anti-Semitism, and Israel. Each tells about being in the midst of the colorful pantheon of players who, over the past seventy-five years or more, have made baseball what it is. Their stories tell, as no previous book has, the history of the larger-than-life role of Jews in America’s pastime.
Derek and Margo Ackerman were an ordinary working couple with grown children, looking forward to retirement in the next five years. Derek, age sixty, is a human-relations consultant for a high-end furnishings manufacturer in Omaha, NE. Margo is the executive secretary for the owner of Aksarben Publishing. By chance, something theyve come to regard as nonexistent, they cross paths with Tomas Talbert who is from a parallel universe. After they saved his life, they took him home with them, Tomas recruits Derek and Margo to join him in creating a team whose purpose is to save not only this world but also his own parallel world. As on Earth, so in Parallel becomes the theme for the rescue missions on which they embark. After a visit to Parallel, which is many hundreds of years advanced scientifically over Earth, they return to their own world rejuvenated and ready for the missions on which they will be sent. In Parallel, they were voluntarily implanted with language chips, allowing them to read, write, and speak numerous languages fluently. With Tomas and his wife, Judith, they make use of an advanced cigar-shaped ship, and Bart, a centuries-advanced computer able to manage rapid transit using wormholes, the space-warp technologies, and the capabilities of the ship. In addition, the team was outfitted with inner and outer suits that cover their entire bodies including multipurpose face masks. All equipment with which they were supplied is in existence or on the drawing boards of scientists in this world. With Barts help, the team turns a simple European vacation into a working one as the team is enlarged and the missions become more dangerous and complex.
About the Book Recipe for a fun read: 1. Start with four college roommates who banded together to beat heroin addiction 2. Reunite them years later in an effort to save a school for special needs children 3. Add in a generous helping of adrenaline rush that only a busy emergency department can provide 4. Top with exciting harness racing action 5. Season well with humor and intrigue Save room for dessert. A sequel, “Never Becomes Now,” is in progress. About the Author Larry J Kachik, MD grew up in western Pennsylvania. He obtained his premedical education at Johns Hopkins University. He never graduated because he was accepted into medical school after his junior year. He received his MD degree from Jefferson Medical College. Although his main interest throughout medical school was emergency medicine, he elected to complete a residency in Family Medicine. Although there were emergency medicine residencies at the time, emergency medicine was not an ABMS approved specialty. Upon completion of his residency, he began his career in emergency medicine. During his career he obtained and maintained board certification from both the American Board of Emergency Medicine and The American Academy of Family Physicians. His clinical work in the emergency department spanned twenty-five years and included fifteen years as the Chair of his department. In addition, Dr Kachik also was appointed as the medical director of an acute care hospital. Upon completion of his clinical career Dr Kachik transitioned to working as a physician surveyor for The Joint Commission. He felt it was, and still is, the premier healthcare accrediting body in the world. While working for The Joint Commission he became a member of their Speaker’s Bureau and wrote occasional items for various Joint Commission Resources publications. He was a surveyor in the hospital accreditation division. He surveyed acute care hospitals, critical access hospitals, Department of Defense hospitals and hospitals run by the Bureau of Prisons. He also participated frequently in “for cause” surveys done to investigate serious hospital complaints. Dr. Kachik became infatuated with harness racing while in college. Shortly after he began his clinical career, he embarked upon racehorse ownership. Over a span of greater than twenty years, he owned interests in more than fifty horses. He is still an avid race fan to this day.
This novella is based on the character Sheriff Kriss Talbot from Cattle Drive 1882, copyright 2021 Larry Kendrick, and there are several references to the novel. Kriss faced a family tragedy as a child with the murder of his entire family influencing his decision-making and leading to him becoming a gunslinger and later in life, a lawman. It includes several flashbacks interrupting the sequential order of the main narrative, giving the reader a look at past events in the character's life, offering a better understanding of present-day elements in the story.
IT ALL HAPPENED SO FAST One minute the two space Hab astronauts were scoop-diving the atmosphere, the next they'd been shot down over the North Dakota Glacier and were the object of a massive manhunt by the United States government. That government, dedicated to saving the environment from the evils of technology, had been voted into power because everybody knew that the Green House Effect had to be controlled, whatever the cost. But who would have thought that the cost of ending pollution would include not only total government control of day-to-day life, but the onset of a new Ice Age Stranded in the anti-technological heartland of America, paralyzed by Earth's gravity, the "Angels" had no way back to the Space Habs, the last bastions of high technology and intellectual freedom on or over the Earth. But help was on its way, help from the most unlikely sources .... Join # 1 national bestsellers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn in a world where civilization is on the ropes, and the environmentalists have created their own worst nightmare: A world of Fallen Angels At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
When committed agnostic Gabriel Stone’s wife dies in an unlikely airline disaster, he pours himself into the writing of a story that has haunted him since his youth—a novel his devout wife had warned him never to finish. Inspired by a visit to the island of Patmos, he is fascinated with the visions beheld there by St. John The Divine while in political exile for his beliefs. Those visions included terrifying events delivered by what John described as “seven thunders,” which he was instructed to withhold, to seal up and “write them not” (Revelation 10:4). As Stone becomes entrenched in his speculative interpretation of what those visions might have been, an embedded code within the Book of Revelation itself reveals startling connections to covert operations that are about to tear the world’s political landscape to shreds, perhaps signaling the beginning of the prophesied end of times. As Stone’s novel nears publication, he finds himself the pawn in a war between superpowers and supernatural forces, each hoping to control the book, each driven by hidden agendas beyond Stone’s comprehension. Facing choices that are at once spiritual and life-dependent, with global stakes pivoting on his ability to accept the unbelievable and stop the unthinkable, The Seventh Thunder is a secular thriller that stops at nothing short of our very souls hanging in the balance, while ringing frighteningly relevant to today’s headlines. Winner of the 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Award for best novel in the SUSPENSE/THRILLER category.
The first interstellar starship, John Glenn, fled a Solar System populated by rogue AIs and machine/human hybrids, threatened by too much nanotechnology, and rife with political dangers. The John Glenn's crew intended to terraform the nearly pristine planet Ymir, in hopes of creating a utopian society that would limit intelligent technology. But by some miscalculation they have landed in another solar system and must shape the gas giant planet Harlequin's moon, Selene, into a new, temporary home. Their only hope of ever reaching Ymir is to rebuild their store of antimatter by terraforming the moon. Gabriel, the head terraformer, must lead this nearly impossible task, with all the wrong materials: the wrong ships and tools, and too few resources. His primary tools are the uneducated and nearly-illiterate children of the original colonists, born and bred to build Harlequin's moon into an antimatter factory. Rachel Vanowen is one of these children. Basically a slave girl, she must do whatever the terraforming Council tells her. She knows that Council monitors her actions from a circling vessel above Selene's atmosphere, and is responsible for everything Rachel and her people know, as well as all the skills, food, and knowledge they have ever received. With no concept of the future and a life defined with duty, how will the children of Selene ever survive once the Council is through terraforming and have abandoned Selene for its ultimate goal of Ymir? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
What if you had to live with a gift you neither sought nor wanted...forever? Dr. Nathan Egin dropped to the dirt floor of his bunk in the now-notorious Auschwitz death camp in 1943. Believing he has drawn his last breath, he is surprised to see a blue-tinted white light. He is informed by a voice that he must survive this camp in order to tell the world what has happened. He is told that people will believe him because he will be given the miraculous power to heal people of their afflictions. When the camp is liberated, Nathan attempts to continue his career as a surgeon. He finds his "gift" has made all the medical knowledge he had acquired throughout the years virtually useless, as a simple touch heals all. The novel takes us from World War II to well beyond the present day where Nathan struggles to deal with his power and attempts to find happiness in a difficult and rapidly changing world. The end of the book reveals an incredible plot twist and the true meaning of destiny.
Like Kofi Annan, Larry Miller is one of the most irresistible comic personalities working today. Known for years as an actor, writer, comedian, and sexual pioneer, he's gained a new following as a cultural commentator and frequent guest on political shows. Now, in Spoiled Rotten America, he fixes his gaze on what's funny about our daily lives—which includes, roughly speaking, everything. From middle-aged drinking ("When you're in your twenties, you can drink all night and bungee-jump off a bridge the next day. If I drank all night, I'd want to go off that bridge without the cord") to the excesses of our eating habits ("This is why the world hates us: the size of the portions we order. Thank God they've never shown us eating on Al Jazeera—that would be the end of it"), Miller finds the silver lining of absurdity within every black cloud. Ultimately, though, Spoiled Rotten America is more than just the average yukfest. It's an insightful, and surprisingly heartfelt, plea for us to notice what's best and worst about ourselves. "The American pendulum only swings to extremes," he writes. "The news is on all day, but we know less and less; there's music in every mall, but we don't hear it; everyone has a phone but nothing to say. The chubbiest of us have the strictest diets, because we can't learn to modulate and moderate. It's all or nothing. One bite of a cookie, and suddenly you're on a plane to Vegas with a hooker. To the Cranky Nitpickers of America—a club I'd join in a second if I weren't already its president—it's long been understood that the world is going to Hell in a handbasket. "What better time for a collection of seventeen comic essays?" What better time indeed.
At fifteen, Sanford Brunson Campbell (1884-1952) became enchanted with the new sounds of ragtime and ran away from his rural Kansas home, hopping a train to Sedalia, Missouri, determined to take piano lessons from a black musician he had never met. Scott Joplin nicknamed his white protege "The Ragtime Kid." A composer and entertainer at the dawn of the ragtime era, "Brun" was a prime mover in the ragtime revival of the 1940s and helped establish Joplin's prominence as one of America's most innovative composers. Campbell's own legacy was tarnished by his inability to tell a straight story and he was often dismissed as a liar and a clown. Based on his memoirs, musical compositions and correspondence with music industry notables, this first comprehensive biography of Campbell reveals an engaging storyteller and a devotee wholly dedicated to a musical genre that had been largely forgotten. His firsthand account of life as an itinerant pianist in the Midwest provides a unique picture of life a century ago.
Lost two Cy Young winners in two years, signed a forty-seven-year-old to be his starting first baseman, played seventeen rookies in 2005, and still took his team to the playoffs: baseball is John Schuerholz's world, and everyone else is just playing in it. In Built to Win, the legendary general manager takes you behind the scenes of the Braves' front office—the most successful in baseball since 1990—and shows how his unique philosophies and leadership techniques have helped Atlanta achieve something no team in sports has ever come close to accomplishing. He candidly peels back the curtain, taking you to his first World Series with the Kansas City Royals and the other moments that defined his career, including his eventual departure to the league doormat Atlanta Braves. No sooner did Schuerholz arrive than they won their first title in 1991—and the rest is history. You'll be there on the incredible night in 1992 when Schuerholz improbably traded for Barry Bonds-only to have the deal nixed at the eleventh hour. You'll see how through shrewd negotiation he swooped in to sign reigning Cy Young-winner Greg Maddux out from under the free-spending Yankees. You'll hear how he dealt with the horrific comments made by John Rocker, helping the Braves overcome the biggest PR nightmare in team history to win yet another division crown. Through the eyes of one of the game's sharpest executives, you'll see why Moneyball only scrapes the tip of Schuerholz's time-tested theories, as well as how he developed the premier scouting system in the majors and a free agent strategy that led the Braves to the top of the heap-fourteen years running. And in the end, you'll see what the rest of the baseball world has known for the better part of two decades: that through the brilliance of John Schuerholz, the Braves have lived with one motto, and one motto alone: "All We Do Is Win.
Major League Baseball has been in crisis in recent years. Game attendance is down by millions and fan interest is in free fall. The future of the game is in jeopardy. While the League acknowledges the issues, many are stumped as to how to address them. This book explores in detail the critical challenges facing MLB, and their ramifications, along with some potential solutions. Interviews with baseball insiders, players to executives, give a perspective on baseball's struggle to reinvent itself for future generations.
An essential work for rock fans and scholars, Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock 'n' Roll surveys the origins of rock 'n' roll from the minstrel era to the emergence of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley. Unlike other histories of rock, Before Elvis offers a far broader and deeper analysis of the influences on rock music. Dispelling common misconceptions, it examines rock's origins in hokum songs and big-band boogies as well as Delta blues, detailing the embrace by white artists of African-American styles long before rock 'n' roll appeared. This unique study ranges far and wide, highlighting not only the contributions of obscure but key precursors like Hardrock Gunter and Sam Theard but also the influence of celebrity performers like Gene Autry and Ella Fitzgerald. Too often, rock historians treat the genesis of rock 'n' roll as a bolt from the blue, an overnight revolution provoked by the bland pop music that immediately preceded it and created through the white appropriation of music till then played only by and for black audiences. In Before Elvis, Birnbaum daringly argues a more complicated history of rock's evolution from a heady mix of ragtime, boogie-woogie, swing, country music, mainstream pop, and rhythm-and-blues--a melange that influenced one another along the way, from the absorption of blues and boogies into jazz and pop to the integration of country and Caribbean music into rhythm-and-blues. Written in an easy style, Before Elvis presents a bold argument about rock's origins and required reading for fans and scholars of rock 'n' roll history.
Enshrinement in the Hall of Fame is the ultimate honor for major leaguers. This rousing oral history recounts stories of 17 players who came up just short: Virgil Trucks, Gene Woodling, Carl Erskine, and others.
Against a dramatic background of desert mountains, the sparkling green fairways of the Coachella Valley have attracted world-class golf tournaments, athletes and dignitaries for decades. In the 1920s, enterprising oil tycoon Tom O'Donnell built one of the first nine-hole courses in Palm Springs, and the area was a hangout for Hollywood's elite by the 1940s and '50s. Bob Hope's namesake PGA Tour event became a mainstay, while Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, the Marx Brothers, Marilyn Monroe and more frequented over the years. Today, the valley is a renowned perennial golf destination boasting over 120 courses and exceptional resorts. Follow award-winning local golf columnist Larry Bohannan as he recounts the storied history of the game under the desert palms.
Passion, fear and jealousy culminate in the murder of illicit lovers and set long-time friends on a collision course. When Luke Johnson, Chief of Police in Somerset, begins to unravel clues to recent murders of two life-long friends, he does not anticipate solving the massacre of a mother and her three children eight years earlier. Chief Johnson's investigation leads him to a remote cave in Pine Hills Forest Preserve near treacherous Devil's Backbone high above Sugar Creek where he discovers the hideout of a mysterious evil stranger.--From publisher's description.
The stories ... are childhood reflections of the author ... The children ... made up their own games and adventures to replace the boredom of daily chores."--Preface.
The author of this book used the book as a therapeutic attempt to get his experiences out. Instead of keeping them all bottled in. He writes about everything from roadside bombs, small arms fire, and how he deals with the stress of returning to America after a horrific tour in the desert of the middle east. He shows patriotism and wants to keep his Lieutenant's memory alive. POW, MIA, KIA, you are not forgotten!
Retailing pioneer Fred Meijer comes alive in the pages of this intimate biography, told in part by the people in Fred's life from store cashiers to American presidents. Astute businessman, visionary arts patron, homespun philosopher Fred is a man of many parts. His story weaves a chronicle of how to succeed in business, how to shape one's life, how to leave the world a better place, and how to have fun along the way. / "Fred, in his unpretentious way, has always been a leader. . . . He is able, he is dedicated, and he's fun." Gerald R. Ford / "I have always admired Fred Meijer as the great visionary who first recognized the potential of the supercenter in the United States. As we developed our Wal-Mart model, we learned a great deal by watching what he did." Don Soderquist - former Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of Wal-Mart / "Fred Meijer's life story is a supersize grocery cart, full to the brim with values that we should live by honesty, fairness, and respect for others." Mike Lloyd - Grand Rapids Press
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