Other books that might interest you

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  Football Is a Numbers Game - Pro...

  Matthew Coller

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  In the 1980s, Neil Hornsby was one of very few National Football League fans in England. Never one to do anything casually, he began keeping hand-written score sheets of every game using his own tracking system. Soon he'd enlisted some fellow British super fans in his mission to take football information an extra layer deeper. This was the beginning of Pro Football Focus, an analytics company that now supplies data to all 32 NFL teams and every major broadcasting corporation. PFF player grades appear on the screen during Sunday Night Football broadcasts, and PFF's pioneering research and analysis informs discussions at the highest level, from coaching to drafting to game-planning and player evaluation. In Football Is a Numbers Game, Matthew Coller chronicles this improbable start-up tale with unprecedented access, exploring the company's origin as a band of obsessive outsiders, its pivotal acquisition by Cris Collinsworth, and its role in the proliferation of data in the NFL and professional sports. Featuring a cast of memorable characters, this is a portrait of an unlikely business success as well as a behind-the-scenes look at the forces guiding modern NFL teams as they search for a competitive edge.

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  When the Tuna Went Down to Texas...

  Mike Shropshire

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  Bill Parcells was living in self-imposed exile from the National Football League sidelines. The Tuna had earned living-legend status after coaching the Giants, Patriots, and Jets from the skid-row district of the NFL and transforming those teams into champions. The final weeks of the 2002 season found Parcells working as an analyst at the ESPN studios. His heart aching, Parcells was like a televangelist with no cripples to heal. The Tuna urgently yearned for another lost cause.In Dallas, Cowboys' owner Jerry Jones—described by author Mike Shropshire as "a man involved in a heroic struggle to overcome what had been diagnosed as a terminal face-lift"—was suffering through sleepless nights. Although his once-proud pro football powerhouse traveled beneath a banner that read "America's Team," it had suffered three straight 5-11 seasons. This team was so sick, it had bedsores.After a clandestine meeting aboard Jones's private jet, parked at a New Jersey airport, Parcells agreed to abandon his East Coast roots and travel south to restore life to the Cowboys. The Tuna and Jones needed each other in the worst kind of way, so a shotgun wedding was performed. The pundits of the national media joined hands and shouted, "Parcells and Jones can't stand each other! They're too set in their ways! It'll never work!"As usual, the pundits were wrong. With Parcells the ultimate motivator and so-called Jock Whisperer applying his craft, Dallas rolled to a 10-6 regular-season record and shocked the NFL by making the playoffs. When the Tuna Went Down to Texas details the saga of how this unlikely partnership of men "too brittle for tango lessons, but not yet blind enough for assisted living" amazed the sports world and serves as absolute proof that while the truth is not always stranger than fiction, it's usually a lot funnier.

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  The Manaslu Adventure - Three...

  Mark Horrell

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  The mountain gods were protective of Manaslu, a two-pronged peak in the Nepal Himalaya, and one of the world’s fourteen 8,000m peaks. 
  Many years ago, a Japanese team tried to climb it, but the gods had sent an avalanche in their wake which destroyed a monastery and set the local people against them. When they returned the next year, they were met with sticks and stones, stripped naked and sent home with red cheeks. 
  Mark Horrell and his two friends Mark and Ian shared a dream to climb an 8,000m peak, but it seemed the gods were against them too. They had made no fewer than eight attempts without success (though they had managed to return with their clothes on). 
  With towering ice walls, monsoon rainstorms, arm-twisting crevasses and – most dangerous of all – welcoming teahouses ready to entrap them, would it be different this time?

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  The Hidden Game of Baseball

  John Thorn, Pete Palmer

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  The acclaimed classic on the statistical analysis of baseball records in order to evaluate players and win more games. 
   
  Long before Moneyball became a sensation or Nate Silver turned the knowledge he’d honed on baseball into electoral gold, John Thorn and Pete Palmer were using statistics to shake the foundations of the game. First published in 1984, The Hidden Game of Baseball ushered in the sabermetric revolution by demonstrating that we were thinking about baseball stats—and thus the game itself—all wrong. Instead of praising sluggers for gaudy RBI totals or pitchers for wins, Thorn and Palmer argued in favor of more subtle measurements that correlated much more closely to the ultimate goal: winning baseball games. 
   
  The new gospel promulgated by Thorn and Palmer opened the door for a flood of new questions, such as how a ballpark’s layout helps or hinders offense or whether a strikeout really is worse than another kind of out. Taking questions like these seriously—and backing up the answers with data—launched a new era, showing fans, journalists, scouts, executives, and even players themselves a new, better way to look at the game. 
   
  This brand-new edition retains the body of the original, with its rich, accessible analysis rooted in a deep love of baseball, while adding a new introduction by the authors tracing the book’s influence over the years. A foreword by ESPN’s lead baseball analyst, Keith Law, details The Hidden Game’s central role in the transformation of baseball coverage and team management and shows how teams continue to reap the benefits of Thorn and Palmer’s insights today. Thirty years after its original publication, The Hidden Game is still bringing the high heat—a true classic of baseball literature. 
   
  Praise for The Hidden Game 
   
  “As grateful as I was for the publication of The Hidden Game of Baseball when it first showed up on my bookshelf, I’m even more grateful now. It’s as insightful today as it was then. And it’s a reminder that we haven’t applauded Thorn and Palmer nearly loudly enough for their incredible contributions to the use and understanding of the awesome numbers of baseball.” —Jayson Stark, senior baseball writer, ESPN.com 
   
  “Just as one cannot know the great American novel without Twain and Hemingway, one cannot know modern baseball analysis without Thorn and Palmer.” —Rob Neyer, FOX Sports

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  Man City Quiz Book - 1000...

  Mart Matthews

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  How much do you really know about the club you love? You can find out by exploring the 1000 questions set out in 100 categories that make up this fascinating Man City FC Quiz Book.
  It's not often that books on football make reference to Basil Fawlty, James Bond, Haydock Park Racecourse, Harley Davidsons or Nijinsky, but this one does!
  'Call Yourself a City Fan?' is a quirky challenge for real City fans who can test themselves or take each other on, with the emphasis on enjoyment and discovery.
  Try these questions for size:
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  And then Arnie Told Chi - A...

  Done Wade

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  This collection of anecdotes—from Golf Digest editor Don Wade—brings out of the locker room and onto the green an engaging treasury of more than 100 of the greatest golf stories ever told from the game's legends: Ben Hogan, Nancy Lopez, Fred Couples, and others. From Augusta National to Royal St. George, this entertaining, intimate, and funny audio takes you onto some of the best courses alongside the greatest players in the world.

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