K; A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches

New York: Doubleday, 2019. First Edition [Stated], Fifth Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Erik Broder (author photograph). xiv, [2], 302, [2] pages. Illustrations (some in color). Bibliography. Index. DJ has small crease on rear flap. John Tyler Kepner (born 1975) is an American author and sports journalist who is currently the national baseball columnist for The New York Times. He is known for authoring the book K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches. While in college, Kepner interned for The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. He was hired by The Press-Enterprise as Angels beat writer in September 1997. He joined the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as Mariners beat writer in September 1998 and began writing for The New York Times in 2000. After two years as a Mets beat writer and eight as a Yankees beat writer, he became the newspaper's national baseball writer in 2010. In 2019, he published his debut book K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches. The book received mostly positive reviews from critics, and was praised for its writing style and informativeness. Paul Dickson of The Washington Post called it "well-written, anecdote rich and filled with seldom-shared insights by players." Kirkus Reviews wrote that it "belongs in the first ranks of books on America's most written-about sport." Kepner published his second book, The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series, in 2022. The book chronicles the history of the World Series and received critical praise. Olive Fellows, writing for Christian Science Monitor, called it "quirky and engrossing." Richard Crepeau, in a review for the New York Journal of Books, praised the book for its nuanced overview of history. From the New York Times baseball columnist, an enchanting, enthralling history of the national pastime as told through the craft of pitching, based on years of archival research and interviews with more than three hundred people from Hall of Famers to the stars of today.
The baseball is an amazing plaything. We can grip it and hold it so many different ways, and even the slightest calibration can turn an ordinary pitch into a weapon to thwart the greatest hitters in the world. Each pitch has its own history, evolving through the decades as the masters pass it down to the next generation. From the earliest days of the game, when Candy Cummings dreamed up the curveball while flinging clamshells on a Brooklyn beach, pitchers have never stopped innovating. In K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, Tyler Kepner traces the colorful stories and fascinating folklore behind the ten major pitches. Each chapter highlights a different pitch, from the blazing fastball to the fluttering knuckleball to the slippery spitball. Infusing every page with infectious passion for the game, Kepner brings readers inside the minds of combatants sixty feet, six inches apart. Filled with priceless insights from many of the best pitchers in baseball history including twenty-two Hall of Famers--from Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan to Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Clayton Kershaw--K will be the definitive book on pitching and join such works as The Glory of Their Times and Moneyball as a classic of the genre.