NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers—five times the salary of all NFL quarterbacks combined. Pitchers are the lifeblood of the sport, the ones who win championships, but today they face an epidemic unlike any baseball has ever seen. 
One tiny ligament in the elbow keeps snapping and sending teenagers and major leaguers alike to undergo surgery, an issue the baseball establishment ignored for decades. For three years, Jeff Passan, the lead baseball columnist for Yahoo Sports, has traveled the world to better understand the mechanics of the arm and its place in the sport’s past, present, and future. He got the inside story of how the Chicago Cubs decided to spend $155 million on one pitcher. He sat down for a rare interview with Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, whose career ended at 30 because of an arm injury. He went to Japan to understand how another baseball-obsessed nation deals with this crisis. And he followed two major league pitchers as they returned from Tommy John surgery, the revolutionary procedure named for the former All-Star who first underwent it more than 40 years ago. 
Passan discovered a culture that struggles to prevent arm injuries and lacks the support for the changes necessary to do so. He explains that without a drastic shift in how baseball thinks about its talent, another generation of pitchers will fall prey to the same problem that vexes the current one. 
Equal parts medical thriller and cautionary tale, The Arm is a searing exploration of baseball’s most valuable commodity and the redemption that can be found in one fragile and mysterious limb.

The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports

History

Passan, Jeff

Americas

Harper

Yahoo’s lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports—the pitching arm—and how its vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors.
Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers—five times more than the salary of every NFL quarterback combined. Pitchers are the game’s lifeblood. Their import is exceeded only by their fragility. One tiny band of tissue in the elbow, the ulnar collateral ligament, is snapping at unprecedented rates, leaving current big league players vulnerable and the coming generation of baseball-playing children dreading the three scariest words in the sport: Tommy John surgery.
Jeff Passan traveled the world for three years to explore in-depth the past, present, and future of the arm, and how its evolution left baseball struggling to wrangle its Tommy John surgery epidemic. He examined what compelled the Chicago Cubs to spend $155 million on one arm. He snagged a rare interview with Sandy Koufax, whose career was cut short by injury at thirty, and visited Japan to understand how another baseball-mad country treats its prized arms. And he followed two major league pitchers, Daniel Hudson and Todd Coffey, throughout their returns from Tommy John surgery. He exposes how the baseball establishment long ignored the rise in arm injuries and reveals how misplaced incentives across the sport stifle potential changes.
Injuries to the UCL start as early as Little League. Without a drastic cultural shift, baseball will continue to lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually to damaged pitchers, and another generation of children will suffer the same problems that vex current players. Informative and hard-hitting, The Arm is essential reading for everyone who loves the game, wants to keep their children healthy, or relishes a look into how a large, complex institution can fail so spectacularly.

Business & Money

Industries

Harper Paperbacks

Product Description 
Pedro Gomez of ESPN was a beloved figure in baseball. His death from sudden cardiac arrest on Feb. 7, 2021, unleashed an outpouring of heartfelt tributes. He was 58, both a hard-nosed reporter and a smiling ambassador of the sport. These 62 personal essays soar beyond sports to delve into life lessons.\nPedro, a proud Cuban American, was known for his dramatic reporting from Havana. Fully and fluidly bilingual, he did as much as anyone to bridge the wide gap that had existed between U.S.-born players and the Latin Americans now so important to the game’s vitality and future growth. He was also a family man who loved to talk about his three children, 
Sierra, Dante and 
Rio, a Boston Red Sox prospect. Pedro was universally known as a smiling presence who brought out the best in people. His humanity and generosity of spirit shaped countless lives, including one of his ESPN bosses, 
Rob King, who was so moved by Pedro’s advice to him―“Remember who you are”―that he printed up the words and posted them on the wall of his office in Bristol. King is one of a diverse collection of contributors whose personal essays turn Pedro’s shocking death into an occasion to reflect on the deeper truths of life we too often overlook. Part 
The Pride of Havana and part 
Tuesdays With Morrie, part 
The Tender Bar and part 
Ball Four, this is the rare essay collection that reads like a novel, full of achingly honest emotion and painful insights, a book about friendship, a book about standing for something, a book about joy and love.\nFormer 
New York Times writer 
Jack Curry writes about Pedro’s passion for live music, and former 
Sports Illustrated writer 
Tim Kurkjian brings alive spring-training basketball games with executives like 
Sandy Anderson and 
Billy Beane and Pedro right in the mix. Detroit manager 
AJ Hinch and formers Texas manager 
Ron Washington both reveal that in their darkest hours Pedro gave them some of the best advice of their lives.\nHall of Famers 
Dennis Eckersley, Tony La Russa, Peter Gammons, Ross Newhan, Tracy Ringolsby and 
Dan Shaughnessy are among the contributors. So are likely future Hall of Famers 
Max Scherzer and 
Dusty Baker. Pulitzer-Prize-winning 
Washington Post war correspondent 
Steve Fainaru, award-winning writers from 
Howard Bryant and 
Mike Barnicle to 
Tim Keown, Ken Rosenthal and 
Dave Sheinin also contribute. Rounding out the mix are current and former ESPN stars including 
Rachel Nichols, Shelley M. Smith, Peter Gammons, Bob Ley and 
Keith Olbermann.\nThis is a book to rekindle in any lapsed fan a love of going to the ballpark, but it’s also a wakeup call that transcends sports. To any journalist, worn down by the demands of a punishing job, to anyone anywhere, pummeled by pandemic times and the dark mood of the country in recent years, these essays will light a spark to seize every opportunity to make a difference, in your work and in the lives of people who matter to you. 
 Review 
Advance praise for Remember Who You Are\n"Pedro Gomez was as kind as he was talented. I can think of no one else in the industry who would have inspired this many heartfelt essays by this diverse a group of writers, ballplayers, coaches, and front office executives. Everyone loved and respected him. And while he left this earth way too soon, his legacy will live on through his children and in the pages of this book." ― 
Molly Knight, Author, 
The Best Team Money Can Buy\n"The words in this collection share a common source―while they were crafted with the head, they originated from the heart. The Gomez Rules are the Commandments for those who cover the game. All who have lived the baseball life should have followed all at some point. They should be etched in tablet."―Broadcaster 
Ted Robinson\n" 
Remember Who You Are pulls together heartfelt and eloquent tributes to a man who was more than just America’s foremost baseball journalist, more than just an embodiment of the American dream, but a bona fide inspiratio

Remember Who You Are: What Pedro Gomez Showed Us About Baseball and Life

MARTIN, Frank

Sheinin, Dave

Keown, Tim

Jenkins, Bruce

Nichols, Rachel

Kreidler, Mark

Scherzer, Max

Ley, Bob

Gomez, Pedro

Gammons, Peter

Bryant, Howard

Barnicle, Mike

Murphy, Brian

Janes, Chelsea

Baker, Dusty

KING, ROB

Gomez, Rio

Newhan, Ross

Daniels, Jon

Rosenthal, Ken

Olney, Buster

Smith, Shelley M.

Quinn, T.J.

Boras, Scott

Alderson, Sandy

Shaughnessy, Dan

Swanson, Mike

Carr, Robin

La Russa, Tony

La Canfora, Jason

Ratto, Ray

Washington, Ron

Culpepper, Chuck

Ringolsby, Tracy

Black, Bud

Kurkjian, Tim

Curry, Jack

Zagaris, Michael

Begala, Paul

Mangin, Brad

Schaap, Jeremy

Melvin, Bob

Ostler, Scott

King III, George A.

Francona, Terry

Goold, Derrick

Coffey, Alex

McAdam, Sean

Snitker, Brian

Kurland, Brett

Gonzalez, Alden

Morales, Sarina

Bretón, Marcos

D'Anna, John

Fainaru, Steve

Hernandez, Orlando "El Duque"

Gomez, Dante

Geracie, Bud

Eckersley, Dennis

Hinch, AJ

Olbermann, Keith

Self-Help

Wellstone Books

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLEREvery year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers—five times the salary of all NFL quarterbacks combined. Pitchers are the lifeblood of the sport, the ones who win championships, but today they face an epidemic unlike any baseball has ever seen. One tiny ligament in the elbow keeps snapping and sending teenagers and major leaguers alike to undergo surgery, an issue the baseball establishment ignored for decades. For three years, Jeff Passan, the lead baseball columnist for Yahoo Sports, has traveled the world to better understand the mechanics of the arm and its place in the sport’s past, present, and future. He got the inside story of how the Chicago Cubs decided to spend $155 million on one pitcher. He sat down for a rare interview with Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, whose career ended at 30 because of an arm injury. He went to Japan to understand how another baseball-obsessed nation deals with this crisis. And he followed two major league pitchers as they returned from Tommy John surgery, the revolutionary procedure named for the former All-Star who first underwent it more than 40 years ago. Passan discovered a culture that struggles to prevent arm injuries and lacks the support for the changes necessary to do so. He explains that without a drastic shift in how baseball thinks about its talent, another generation of pitchers will fall prey to the same problem that vexes the current one. Equal parts medical thriller and cautionary tale, The Arm is a searing exploration of baseball’s most valuable commodity and the redemption that can be found in one fragile and mysterious limb. 

The Arm: Inside the Billion-dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Thing in Sports

Sports & Outdoors

Baseball

HarperAudio

A team of award-winning sports reporters takes down the Great Satan of college sports: the Bowl Championship Series. Every college sport picks its champion by a postseason tournament, except for one: Division I-A football. Instead of a tournament, fans are subjected to the Bowl Championship Series, an arcane mix of polling and mathematical rankings that results in just two teams playing for the championship. It is, without a doubt, the most hated institution in all of sports. A recent Sports Illustrated poll found that more than 90 percent of sports fans oppose the BCS, yet this system has remained in place for more than a decade. Built upon top-notch investigative reporting, Death to the BCS at last reveals the truth about this monstrous entity and offers a simple solution for fixing it. Death to the BCS includes findings from interviews with power players, as well as research into federal tax records, Congressional testimony, and private contracts, revealing: ?The truth behind the "Cartel"-the anonymous suits who run the BCS and who profit handsomely by protecting it ?The flawed math and corruption that determine which teams participate in the national championship ?How the system hurts competition by perpetuating "cupcake" schedules ?How "mid-major" teams are systematically denied a chance to play for the championship ?How a comprehensive sixteen-team playoff plan can solve the problem while enhancing profitability The first book to lay out the unseemly inner workings of the BCS in full detail, Death to the BCS is a rousing manifesto for bringing fairness back to one of our most beloved sports.

Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series

Wetzel, Dan

Peter, Josh

Football (American)

Gotham

With all-new reporting, a completely revised and updated second edition of the bestseller that takes down the Great Satan of college sports: the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Every college sport picks its champion by a postseason tournament, except for one: Divsiion I-A football. Instead of a tournament, fans are subjected to the Bowl Championship Series, an arcane mix of polling and mathematical rankings that results in just two teams playing for the championship. It is, without a doubt, the most hated institution in all of sports. A recent Sports Illustrated poll found that more than 90% of sports fans oppose the BCS, yet this system has remained in place for more than a decade.
Building upon top-notch investigative reporting, Wetzel, Peter, and Passan at last reveal the truth about this monstrous entity and offer a simple solution for fixing it. Death to the BCS: Totally Revised and Updated is brought up to date to cover the 2010-2011 season, listing which teams were screwed by the BCS (such as TCU), how much money college football left on the table by not having a playoff (based on 2011 tax filings), and how the calls for the abolition of the BCS grew even louder this past year. The book also includes findings from interviews with power players, as well as research into federal tax records, congressional testimony, and private contracts. The first book to lay out the unseemly inner workings of the BCS in full detail, Death to the BCS is a rousing manifesto for bringing fairness back to one of our most beloved sports.

Death to the BCS: Totally Revised and Updated: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series

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