Sports

Mike and Mike's Rules for Sports and Life

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Every morning more than three million listeners tune in to Mike and Mike in the Morning on ESPN Radio—mostly to hear the Mikes’ (Golic and Greenberg) riotous back-and-forth on everything from why baseball managers should dress like real people to how to lose a fight with the wife with dignity. In Mike and Mike’s Rules for Sports and Life, the beloved mic jockeys put their unique stamp on, well, the rules for sports and life. In years on the road, in the studio, and at home, Greeny and Golic have learned that it’s all about the big stuff: separating order from chaos, ensuring our survival as a species, and keeping peace. For instance:
 
• The Fourth of July should be eliminated and replaced with an Independence Day that falls on the first Thursday of the month, creating a four-day weekend like Thanksgiving, which, by the way, could do without the Detroit Lions.
• “The Human Element” in sports officiating and weather forecasting sucks.
• The top pick in the NBA draft lottery should go to the team that came closest to making the playoffs—not to the team that rips off fans by mailing it in after the All-Star break. 
• When someone says, “I’m being completely honest,” they might as well be claiming that they go to Hooters just for the wings.
• Kids do not get to eat french fries for breakfast. Ever. And who cares what the kids at the next table are ordering.
• No more designated hitter!
 
If you’re one of Golic and Greeny’s legions of followers, you probably can’t get enough of this sort of provocative, hilarious, and occasionally obsessive stuff. And if you’re one of those fans who live by the rule “There oughta be a rule,” then Mike and Mike’s Rules for Sports and Life is the book for you.
 

Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance

Super Bowl–winning coach and #1 New York Times best selling author Tony Dungy has had an unusual opportunity to reflect on what it takes to achieve significance. He is looked to by many as the epitome of the success and significance that is highly valued in our culture. He also works every day with young men who are trying to achieve significance through football and all that goes with a professional athletic career—such as money, power, and celebrity. Coach Dungy has had all that, but he passionately believes that there is a different path to significance, a path characterized by attitudes, ambitions, and allegiances that are all too rare but uncommonly rewarding. Uncommon reveals lessons on achieving significance that the coach has learned from his remarkable parents, his athletic and coaching career, his mentors, and his journey with God. A particular focus of the book: what it means to be a man of significance in a culture that is offering young men few positive role models.

Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog

Encyclopedia of Immaturity (Klutz)Volume 1

The ultimate how-not-to-grow-up guide. The Encyclopedia of Immaturity contains more than 300 entries: How to Skip a Stone, How to Do a Wheelie, How to Hang a Spoon from Your Nose, How to Really Annoy Your Older Sibling... all painstakingly explicated and illuminated with full-color photographs, illustrations, diagrams, and the occasional footnote.

The Runner's Rule Book: Everything a Runner Needs to Know--And Then Some

Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life

"[Lewis] has such a gift for storytelling."--New York Times There was a turning point in Michael Lewis's life, in a baseball game when he was fourteen years old. The irascible and often terrifying Coach Fitz put the ball in his hand with the game on the line and managed to convey such confident trust in Lewis's ability that the boy had no choice but to live up to it. "I didn't have words for it then, but I do now: I am about to show the world, and myself, what I can do."

The coach's message was not simply about winning, but about self-respect, sacrifice, courage, and endurance. In some ways, and even now, thirty years later, Lewis still finds himself trying to measure up to what Coach Fitz expected of him. .

Why My Wife Thinks I'm an Idiot: The Life and Times of a Sportscaster Dad

Meet Mike Greenberg, the popular host of ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike in the Morning, the highest-rated drive-time sports talk show on the dial. To his three-million-plus listeners, Greeny is the guy who’s equally as comfortable dissecting zone defenses as he is discussing cashmere sweaters. He’s been to Super Bowls and World Series, All-Star Games and Final Fours. He’s interviewed Michael Jordan, Joe Montana, and Wayne Gretzky. He gets paid to enthuse about sports, which means he’s the envy of most men in America.
This is the hilarious, sometimes touching, and endlessly entertaining debut of one of America’s fastest-rising sportscasters, a wry and revealing look at one man’s good-hearted but mistake-prone attempt to grow up before his children do. Marriage, fatherhood, manhood, fame, athletes, crazed aunts with gambling problems, the true significance of sports, the worst possible thing to say in a room full of pregnant women–no topic is beyond his reach. But don’t take our word on it, read what Greeny has to say about:
• Dating: “People who reminisce fondly about dating are blocking out all the disasters and focusing only on the few great nights. If that is all you choose to remember, fine. But be aware that no experience is without good moments. I’m sure during the sacking of Rome there were a few decent nights; maybe they put on a play.”
• Life on the road:
“Wife + television = no sleep.”
“No wife + no television = no sleep.”
“Wife + no television = sleep.”
“No wife + television = porn.”
• Keeping things in perspective: “Never assume you know more than the guy in the camouflage tux.”
• And, of course, marriage: “All of us are married to women who think we’re idiots.”
Whether he’s talking trash on the radio or talking dirty diapers over a fancy dinner, Greeny’s determined to reconcile two halves of a whole. So if your enthusiasm has ever been curbed, or you’re feeling remote without the remote, or you’re just wondering what exactly goes on in a guy’s brain, Why My Wife Thinks I’m an Idiot will be a source of comfort and unadulterated laughter.


From the Hardcover edition.

Harvey Penick's Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf

Harvey Penick's Little Red Golf BookEvery time he found something about the swing stance or the mental approach that proved to be consistently successful Harvey Penick made notes in his notebook. He gathered notes for 60 years and let no one read them except his son Tinsley until the publishing of this bookAuthor: Harvey Penick

Before titanium drivers, before oversized heads and bubble shafts, before electronic systems to tell you how far you are from the pin, golf was much the same game it is today. The lessons Harvey Penick taught in the pre-gadget days still stand. The golf swing is basically the same, and Penick could teach it better than anybody. For most of his life, he never intended to publish his Little Red Book, a notebook of golf wisdom and anecdotes that he compiled with the idea that he'd pass it on to his son. But, for the sake of history, it's a good thing that he changed his mind. Contained in its 175 pages is just about all you need to know about golf from a technical standpoint, along with Penick's priceless memories of working with famous pros, teaching absolute nobodies to get the ball in the air, and finding a horde of bat guano and hauling it across town in a pickup truck to fertilize his golf course. This book makes you feel good about playing golf, that you're part of something steeped in ritual and mystery and tradition, and that the game was played perfectly well before perimeter-weighted, graphite-shafted irons came along.

Goofy Mad Libs

Be your own comedy writer! From the creators of the Original Mad Libs®, Goofy Mad Libs® will help keep you in touch with the funny side of life.

The idea is simple. Someone asks for a part of speech: a verb, a noun, an adjective, or an adverb. We've included definitions and examples of the parts of speech in case you've forgotten. Players call out their ideas to fill in the blanks and in the end, you have a story reeling from one silly sentence to another until nothing makes sense. That's what you call a Mad Lib®, the world's greatest word game. Players have been howling with friends or laughing all to themselves for over 35 years!

The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 Facts About the World's Greatest Human

The lowdown on the toughest, sexiest, and beardiest man to ever stalk the earth

Since its emergence from the bowels of the internet, the Chuck Norris Fact has roundhouse kicked its way into the world’s consciousness with all the vim and verve of its namesake. Singing the praises of his unequaled toughness, his mighty kicking feet, his indestructible beard, his frightening virility, and his ability to stop time by thinking about pineapples, The Truth About Chuck Norris is the one book brave enough to go behind the beard and reveal the real Chuck.

Ian Spector, webmaster of the site which started the meme and survivor of a real-life encounter with Chuck himself, has selected the 400 most kick-ass facts from his library of thousands, as well as illustrations as awesome as the man himself. This death-defying volume includes such awe-inspiring observations as:
• A cobra once bit Chuck Norris’s leg. After five days of excruciating pain, the cobra died.
• Chuck Norris can charge a cell phone by rubbing it against his beard.
• When an episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger” aired in France, the French surrendered to Chuck Norris just to be on the safe side.

• Chuck Norris was the first person to tame a dinosaur.
• Chuck Norris once visited The Virgin Islands. Afterward, they were renamed The Islands.
• Every piece of furniture in Chuck Norris’s house is a Total Gym.

A must-have paean to the archetypical American male and a bible of all things Chuck, The Truth About Chuck Norris is easily the most important book of all time.