What happens when three financial industry whiz kids and certified baseball nuts take over an ailing major league franchise and implement the same strategies that fueled their success on Wall Street? In the case of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, an American League championship happens—the culmination of one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history. In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team’s Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. When former Goldman Sachs colleagues Stuart Sternberg and Matthew Silverman assumed control of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2005, it looked as if they were buying the baseball equivalent of a penny stock. But the incoming regime came armed with a master plan: to leverage their skill at trading, valuation, and management to build a model twenty-first-century franchise that could compete with their bigger, stronger, richer rivals—and prevail. Together with “boy genius” general manager Andrew Friedman, the new Rays owners jettisoned the old ways of doing things, substituting their own innovative ideas about employee development, marketing and public relations, and personnel management. They exorcized the “devil” from the team’s nickname, developed metrics that let them take advantage of undervalued aspects of the game, like defense, and hired a forward-thinking field manager as dedicated to unconventional strategy as they were. By quantifying the game’s intangibles—that extra 2% that separates a winning organization from a losing one—they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay something that Billy Beane’s “Moneyball” had never brought to Oakland: an American League pennant. A book about what happens when you apply your business skills to your life’s passion, The Extra 2% is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.

The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First

Biographies & Memoirs

Jonah Keri

Professionals & Academics

ESPN Books

That's Why I'm Here: The Chris and Stefanie Spielman Story

Spielman, Chris

Dingers! - 6 Copy Counter Display: A Short Book about Long Ball

Sports & Outdoors

KEATING, Peter

Baseball

In a boldly designed, highly energetic book, Kevin Carroll leads readers through a series of exercises designed to help them discover their Red Rubber Ball--a dream to chase for a lifetime. With a cardboard box to be decorated, punch-out inspiration cards, a removable dream statement, and gatefold pages that can be written on, this engaging new book offers tweens and teens a fun, accessible way to think about their hopes and dreams.

What's Your Red Rubber Ball?

Carroll, Kevin

VARSITY GREEN: Millionaire Coaches, Ruthless Sneaker Wars, and the Battle for the Soul of College Sports

Yost, Mark

For more than ten years, the ESPN Sports Almanac has been the go-to reference for answers to nearly every sports question. From all-time record holders to yearly champions, from auto racing to the Iditarod, from the Australian Open to the Super Bowl—the ESPN Sports Almanac 2009 covers all the bases, with hundreds of photographs, thousands of tables, countless facts and figures, plus expert analysis from ESPN’s most respected commentators. Add fan input from ESPN.com’s SportsNation polls, along with ESPN’s unique blend of irreverence, and this new edition remains the reigning champion among sports information resources.New for 2009:• Full recaps of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games and Ryder Cup 2008• Expanded sections of pro-football records• More in-depth fantasy sports league analysis• Bigger and better coverage of ballparks and arenas, mixed martial arts, and more

ESPN Sports Almanac 2009: America's Best-selling Sports Almanac (ESPN Information Please Sports Almanac)

Reference

Brown, Gerry

Morrison, Mike

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Get your red-hot sports fiction right here! ESPN QUICK PITCHES fires ten great pieces of short fiction right at the intelligent sports fan’s strike zone. Featuring authors as diverse as bestselling writer Dave Eggers and major league pitcher Miguel Batista, these stories demonstrate that sports in the post-ESPN world is no mere metaphor for life, but increasingly life itself. These tales—selected by the editors of ESPN The Magazine and McSweeney’s, and originally published in the inaugural Fiction Issue of ESPN The Magazine—range from whimsical to serious, from based-on-fact to surreal, but each one shares with the best sports literature a deep love for that place where games, memory and imagination intersect. ESPN QUICK PITCHES includes: Bleacher Couch Man by JESS WALTER Perfectly capturing the teasing, banged-up banter of a group of weekend warriors, Bleacher Couch Man chronicles the belated transformation of an unemployed 42-year-old divorcee. My Life in Baseball by DAVE EGGERS The autobiography of a surprisingly articulate beard, whose latest gig is working the face of a San Francisco relief pitcher. Angel Wings by SUSAN STRAIGHT A bold piece of experimental fiction, chronicling a mother’s heartbreaking lament for her hoops-star son, senselessly shot dead at a fast-food drive-thru, then mercilessly mocked by online trolls. Moto by WELLS TOWER An 11-year-old boy is pressed by fate into a doomed competition with a fearless but troubled neighbor. The Favorite by JOHN BRANDON A financial wunderkind fallen on hard times returns to his boyhood home and concocts a small-time scheme to rebuild his bank account by framing a local football star. What if… by JEFF PINKNER Five counterfactual premises demonstrate that the sports history we take for granted could just as easily have been a dream. The Kudzu League by CHRIS BACHELDER An elegy for an obscure baseball league with finances so shaky that even a boy’s circus catch of a foul ball affects the bottom line. The Bow-Tie Miracle by MICHAEL BIBLE With his girlfriend in tow, a high school junior under the influence breaks into the restricted areas of Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium during a Carolina Panther game. John Brisker’s Greatest Game by GARE JOYCE A journalist obsessed with ABA bad-ass and black separatist John Brisker—presumed dead years before at the hands of Idi Amin—tracks him down in Monrovia, Liberia. Or does he? The Family Business by MIGUEL BATISTA Sixty years after her father died in an airplane crash that killed his entire baseball team, a 73-year-old grandmother in the Dominican Republic decides to introduce her grandson to the family’s brilliant, tragic past.

ESPN Quick Pitches: A Star-Studded Lineup of Original Sports Fiction

Literature & Fiction

The Editors of ESPN The Magazine & McSweeney's

Genre Fiction

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