New release 4/1: take me out to the ball game!

Sportswriter Mike Shropshire brings to life 1970's major league baseball in Seasons in Hell, out today in eBook edition!

You think your team is bad?  In this landmark work on one of the most tortured franchises in baseball, one reporter discovers that nine innings can feel like an eternity.

In early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire agreed to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, not realizing that the Rangers were arguably the worst team in baseball history. Seasons in Hell is a riotous, candid, irreverent behind-the-scenes account in the tradition of The Bronx Zoo and Ball Four, following the Texas Rangers from Whitey Herzog’s reign in 1973 through Billy Martin’s tumultuous tenure. Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique (and likely never-to-be-seen-again) baseball personalities, Seasons in Hell recounts some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game and brings to life the no-holds-barred culture of major league baseball in the mid-seventies. 

Download your copy of Seasons in Hell on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the iBookstore. 



Also available today exclusively on Uni Watch for a limited time: The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is now available as an eBook, specially priced at $2.99.

The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is a thought-provoking, entertaining, and seminal guide to a vital part of the national pastime, written by one of its most groundbreaking iconoclasts.

Newsweek once called him "The guru of baseball," and Bill James, for nearly forty years, has led the vanguard of how we measure the game.  From Sabermetrics to his Baseball Abstracts, James has influenced even the casual fan all the way up to the top brass. Somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, however, is the manager, and Bill James has penned a guide on some of the most innovative and renowned men to ever hold that position. 

Some of the game's greatest managers have been Hall-of-Fame players who put down a bat and picked up a lineup card: Frank Robinson, Mel Ott, Joe Cronin, Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby.  Others have achieved greatness from their ability to assemble legendary teams: Billy Martin, Tommy Lasorda, Connie Mack, Joe McCarthy, Dick Williams, Leo Durocher.  Here, Bill James explores the history of the manager, and its evolution from 1870-1990, in a decade-by-decade chronicle, examining the successes, the failures, and what baseball fans can learn from both.