Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Aces The Last Season on the Mound with the Oakland A's Big Three -- and Barry Aces: The Last Season on the Mound with the Oakland A's Big Three: Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and . San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller From the speedy rise of the Big Three to their stunning breakup, Urban's book says it all."" - John Shea, National Writer, San Francisco Chronicle During the 2004 season, each of Oakland's Big Three aces had something to prove. Tim Hudson was determined to demonstrate his recovery from a recurring injury. Barry Zito had to show the world that after a ho-hum 2003, his 2002 Cy Young Award was not a fluke. Mark Mulder missed the 203 playoffs entirely with a stress fracture, but the . Read More. Aces: The Last Season on the Mound with the Oakland A's Big Three -- Tim Hudson Mark Mulder and Barry Zito by Mychael Urban. San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller. From the speedy rise of the Big Three to their stunning breakup, Urban's book says it all." - John Shea, National baseball Writer, San Francisco Chronicle. During the 2004 season, each of Oakland's Big Three aces had something to prove. Tim Hudson was determined to demonstrate his recovery from a recurring injury. Barry Zito had to show the world that after a ho-hum 2003, his 2002 Cy Young Award was not a fluke. Mark Mulder missed the 203 playoffs entirely with a stress fracture, but the way he saw it, he simply needed to be himself-the natural-born . Given unprecedented access to the Big Three , Mychael Urban recreates their tumultuous season through their eyes. he explores the nuts and bolts of major league pitching, examining each player's unique approach to this craft while revealing how three very different personalities cope with the demands, rewards, and challenges of sports stardom. Now with a new afterword on the 2005 season. Urban traces the fortunes of the Big Three after Hudson was sent to Atlanta and Mulder to St. Louis, trades which held the dramatic promise of them being reunited again-as opponents-in the playoffs. "Written with great color, style, humor, and grace, Aces takes readers on a captivating ride." - Mike Silver, Sports Illustrated. "Mychael Urban's book is a fabulous read. This is hardly just a baseball book. It's about life, and he tremendous burden each pitcher carried while trying to lead the Oakland A's to the playoffs. I absolutely loved it." - Bob Nightengale, Senor Writer/Columnist, USA Today Sports Weekly. Aces: The Last Season on the Mound with the Oakland A's Big Three -- Tim Hudson Mark Mulder and Barry Zito by Mychael Urban. An Amazon book-subject search for "baseball" returns 6,844 hits. Google for the narrower "Babe Ruth book" and you get 2,870. Occasional requests for baseball book recommendations in Internet chat rooms launch endless streams of responses, all unique. With this overwhelming backdrop, compile and present a list of the 10 best baseball books ever? Sheer folly. The field is too broad. Furthermore, there is no definitive list; everyone's differs. However, that also means there are no "wrong" answers. Only choices, then let the debates begin. All baseball books perform a list of common services; the "best" just do it best -- inform, amuse, educate, inspire, thrill, analyze, connect, reflect, transport us back to favorite places and people, provide perspective on significant eras, not all of them bright. So, the current hot read, 's "Juiced," may belong on future such lists. It will never be the literary equal of, for instance, any of the tomes that so richly chronicle baseball's trek away from segregation. But backward glances may value it as the study of another bleak culture baseball had to move beyond. In this Top 10, we made it a point to on several genres. We didn't omit the obvious. But we also strived to include some obscure gems -- never-known, or long-forgotten -- worthy of discovery, or re-discovery. The Teammates David Halberstam/2003 Gist: In October 2001, Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky embarked on a 1,300-mile drive to the deathbed of a friend and former Boston teammate -- Ted Williams. It became a trip to self-discovery and nostalgia, too. Glimpse: "Ted was dying, and the idea for the final trip, driving down to Florida to see him one last time, was Dominic's. It was in early October 2001, and Dominic was not eager to get aboard a plane and fly to Florida so soon after the September 11 terrorist attack, and his wife, Emily, most decidedly did not like the idea of him driving there all by himself. . "Pesky loved the idea and he too quickly signed on, and in the way that these things are decided without being formally decided, it was agreed that Dominic and Dick (Flavin) would share the driving and John, 82, would sit in the backseat. As a kind of penance, Pesky agreed not to smoke his requisite two cigars a day." Baseball's Great Experiment Jules Tygiel/1983 Gist: Detailed and comprehensive narrative of the integration of America's game, and of America, that only began with and did not conclude until 1959 with Pumpsie Green and the Boston Red Sox. Glimpse: [Setup -- In the Montreal Royals' International League opener against the Jersey Giants on April 18, 1946, Robinson becomes the first black man in Organized Baseball in the 20th century. First inning, one out. Robinson settles in for his first at-bat.] "Standing at home plate, Jackie Robinson avoided looking at the spectators, 'for fear I would see only Negroes applauding -- that the white fans would be sitting stony-faced or yelling epithets.' The capacity crowd responded with a polite, if unenthusiastic welcome. "Robinson's knees felt rubbery; his palms, he recalled, seemed 'too moist to grip the bat.' Warren Sandell, a promising young left-hander, opposed him on the mound. For five pitches Robinson did not swing and the count ran to three and two. On the next pitch, Robinson hit a bouncing ball to the shortstop, who easily retired him at first base. Robinson returned to the dugout accompanied by another round of applause. He had broken the ice." The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract Bill James/1985 Gist: The groundbreaking -- and not nearly as dry as the egghead "sabermetrics" label would have you believe -- tome that ushered in a new way of looking at, and interpreting, baseball statistics. Last rites for long-unchallenged views and traditions. Glimpse: "Tinker, Evers, and Chance were not really great ballplayers, they merely happened to win a huge number of games. The definition of a great ballplayer is a ballplayer who helps his team to win a lot of games. "I go back and forth on this issue . it seems to me, you have to deal somehow with the phenomenal success of their team. This team won more games, over any period of years, than the Yankees with Ruth and Gehrig, than the Dodgers with Robinson, Reese, Snider, and Campy, more games with the Reds with Bench, Morgan, Rose, and Concepcion -- more games than anybody." Shoeless Joe W.P. Kinsella/1982 Gist: Broader and even more spine-tingling than the film rendition ("Field of Dreams"), the novel includes more compelling characters and plot detours. But the moral is the same. Forgiveness and reconciliation; first offenses and second chances. Glimpse: "Three years ago at dusk on a spring evening, when the sky was a robin's-egg blue and the wind as soft as a day-old chick, I was sitting on the verandah of my farm home in eastern Iowa when a voice very clearly said to me, 'If you build it, he will come.' "He, of course, was Shoeless Joe Jackson. . "Was it really a voice I heard? Or was it perhaps something inside me making a statement that I did not hear with my ears but with my heart? Why should I want to follow this command? But as I ask, I already know the answer. I count the loves in my life: Annie, Karin, Iowa, Baseball. The great god Baseball." Ball Four Jim Bouton/1970 Gist: The pioneer fly-on-the-clubhouse-wall diary. The Reds' Jim Brosnan ("The Long Season" and "Pennant Race") kissed-and-told a decade earlier, but Bouton's platform had more impact; he was a New York Yankee. Glimpse: "I didn't hear from (Ralph) Houk again until two weeks before spring training, when he came up another thousand, to $16,500. This was definitely final. He'd talked to (Dan) Topping, called him on his boat, ship to shore. Very definitely final. "I said it wasn't final for me, I wanted $20,000. "'Well, you can't make twenty,' Houk said. 'We never double contracts. It's a rule.' "It's a rule he made up right there, I'd bet." The Boys of Summer Roger Kahn/1971 Gist: A loving, tender and pragmatic -- all at the same time -- look at a time and place unlike any other. Brooklyn and its Bums. A travel down Flatbush Avenue and back in time, as the Men of Autumn recall their time in the sun. Glimpse: "There had been time neither to pack nor to sort thoughts. Quite suddenly, after twenty-four sheltered, aimless, wounding, dreamy, heedless years, spent in the Borough of Brooklyn, I was going forth to cover the Dodgers. "Too many games, and the loneliness, the emphatic, crowded loneliness of the itinerant, ravage fantasy. Nothing on earth, Lardner said, is more depressing than an old baseball writer. It was my fortune to cover baseball when I was very young." The Game: One Man, Nine Innings Robert Benson/2001 Gist: The author deciphers his life, chapter by inning, through a random Triple-A game in Nashville. Each event "between two teams that will finish far out of first place in the Pacific League" becomes a prism through which he gains understanding of things far greater. Glimpse: "I do not know if my children will remember any of these things when they are grown-ups and taking their kids to the ballpark. I do not even know for sure that they will take their kids to the ballpark, though Heaven knows that I have tried to be a good parent. If they learn to be responsible adults, pay their taxes, stay out of jail, hold a good job and do good work, be kind to their neighbors and clean their rooms and vote in local and national elections, but do not take their kids to the ballpark, I will have failed them somehow. . "In the end, I hope that they will remember some of these stories and add to them their own. I want them to remember the days when we sat in the sunshine, when we were young and strong, and the call to play ball was the best sound on earth." Bang the Drum Slowly Mark Harris/1956 Gist: The second of four novels centered on the ace left-hander of a fictional New York team, critics panned it for being sophomoric. But that was just a tear-jerk reaction. The lives of Henry Wiggen and the Mammoths are enriched by a teammate who is losing his. Glimpse: "And then it was like speaking to him always is, where all he can say is this one thing his mind might be on, like he might get up in the morning saying, 'I must write a postcard home,' and says it while dressing, and says it at breakfast, and says it maybe 3 or 4 times all morning, or he says, 'Arthur, I must have $20,' and says it again all the way to the park and all the time dressing and drilling, and then might say it in the middle of the ball game when you are trying to keep your mind on what you are doing until you finally give him his 20 and he stops saying it and becomes silent, and he said, 'You have got to come and see me.' "'What did you do?' I said. I still thought he was in jail. "'You have got to come and see me,' he said. 'I am in the hospital.' "'With what?' I said. "'You have got to come and see me,' he said." The Universal Baseball Association, Inc. Robert Coover/1968 Gist: Part Rod Serling, part George Orwell, the haunting story of a man who concocts a baseball board game and is gradually absorbed in it. At first, the line becomes blurred between game and reality; then, the two simply merge. Glimpse: "And now the Extraordinary Occurrences Chart came into play! Rain could end the game, a brawl could break out. But Henry could see only one line, 1-1-1: Batter struck fatally by bean ball. "He put the dice in the cup, shook it. Casey stretched for the pitch. The sun beat down, or MAYBE it was just the lamp. "He pitched the dice down on the table. He knew even before he looked: 1-1-1. Damon Rutherford was dead. "The dice were rolled. "The Proprietor of the Universal Baseball Association, brought utterly to grief, buried his face in the heap of papers on his kitchen table and cried for a long bad time." Eight Men Out Elit Asinof/1963 Gist: The authoritative, provocative narrative of baseball's darkest chapter, the 1919 "Black Sox" , parted for the court of public opinion with the fine-tooth comb of a crack attorney. Glimpse: "There was a growing mythology about this great team; the public had placed a stamp of invincibility on it. To Cincinnati fans who had never seen the White Sox play the image seemed frightening. These were the big-city boys coming down to show the small-towners how the game should be played. There was no other way for any real fan to see it. "There was, however, one incredible circumstance that would have a bearing on the outcome: eight members of the Chicago White Sox had agreed to throw the World Series." This story was not subject to the approval of or its clubs. A Course in Public Economics by John Leach PDF Download. Public Economics - Higher School of Economics | Coursera Public Economics. This course is a brief introduction into public economics theory. It covers main economic functions of government, including taxation, regulation Public Economics | Undergraduate Course | Course Undergraduate Course Public Economics. Public Economics is a wide-ranging discipline, being concerned with most aspects of economic policy. The course covers both Public Economics I | Economics | MIT OpenCourseWare The sequence continues in 14.472 Public Economics II. Course Collections. See related courses in the following collections: 14.471 Public Economics I, Fall 2012. Public Economics and Finance -New York University About the Course. Public finance (also known as public economics) analyzes the impact of public policy on the allocation of resources and the distribution of income EC426 Public Economics - London School of Economics A graduate course in (i) the principles of public economics and (ii) selected topics in public economics. Principles of public economics Welfare analysis; concepts of Syllabus | Public Economics I - MIT OpenCourseWare This section contains details about the logistics of the course. Subscribe to the OCW Newsletter: Syllabus Course Home 14.471 Public Economics I and 14.472 Public Economics | Graduate Course | Course Public Economics. Public Economics studies the economic activities of the state: The second part of the course is devoted to service delivery, A Course in Public Economics, Author: John Leach - StudyBlue StudyBlue; A Course in Public Economics; A Course in Public Economics Author: John Leach † † The material on this site is created by StudyBlue users. Public Economics | Department of Economics, University of Public Economics Courses. ECON 652: Graduate Public Economics I This course will cover externalities, public goods theory, and local public finance (with a focus on Public Economics - Free Course by Harvard University on Public Economics , Harvard University, Economics, iTunes U, This one-semester course covers basic issues in the optimal design of tax and social insurance. Aces: The Last Season on the Mound with the Oakland A's Big Three -- Tim Hudson Mark Mulder and Barry Zito by Mychael Urban. Andrea celebrates her fourth season as Astrologer on the A's post game radio show "Extra Innings" Robert Buan, host of "Extra Innings", 2004 Rookie of the Year shortstop , and Sports Astrologer Andrea Mallis, share insights at live taping at Field Irish Pub, Oakland Coliseum in April 2005 . Andrea with Robert Buan sharing some lively planetary revelations on the A's at Field Irish Pub Extra Innings radio show May 2005 . Sports Astrologer Andrea Mallis appeared on Channel 5 Game Day with host Dennis O'Donnell May 22, 2005 to discuss temperamental Leo Barry Bonds astrology chart. The 2005 season looks done for Bonds, due to Saturn, planet of karma and limitation. Andrea explains the details of Barry Bonds astrology chart as quizzical Sagittarius Dennis O'Donnell looks on . Andrea has appeared on Channel 5 Game Day several times and always enjoys sharing her sports astrology with the Bay Area . Dennis and Andrea at Oakland A's Root Beer Float Day. Detailed Virgo David Feldman, Fantasy Baseball Expert, Andrea and Marty Lurie, host of "Baseball Saturday Night" radio show at Fenton's Creamery live taping in Oakland to exchange timely baseball information. Mychael Urban, MLB.Com reporter and A's beat writer with Andrea at his book signing of "Aces" chronicling the Last Season on the Mound with the Oakland A's Big Three, Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito. Intriguing read! Robert, Andrea and A's Ron Washington for the "Weekly Wash" show on Extra Innings post game radio show. Andrea and Mike Krupicka, Director of Remote Operations of Extra Innings. Balancing sports with the sacred feminine, Andrea and her woman's spirituality teacher Vicki Noble at Belladonna Healing Sanctuary, Berkeley, CA. Oakland A's Outfielder Aquarius , Sagittarius Pitcher and Leo Pitcher , with host Robert Buan at Extra Innings live radio taping at Pyramid Brewery in Berkeley, CA June 2005 . A's friendly Sagittarius pitcher Joe Blanton and Andrea at Pyramid Brewery Extra Innings. Andrea and radiant Leo A's pitcher Huston Street at Extra Innings show. Andrea and A's gregarious Aquarius outfielder Nick Swisher at Extra Innings radio show.