At age seventeen Joe Pepitone signed with the New York Yankees, and soon experts were predicting that he would be the team’s next superstar. He could run, throw, and field, and he had a sweet home run swing. But during his twelve years in the major leagues Pepitone devoted most of his energy to swinging off the field. He blew his career, destroyed two marriages, lost custody of three children, and came very close to a nervous breakdown. At the age of thirty-three he quit baseball for good and finally admitted that for most of his life, he’d been living a lie. He’d been acting the carefree clown in order to cover up immense inner pain. In Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud, first published in 1975, Pepitone reveals what was behind his wild behavior. He does so in the most devastatingly honest terms, holding back none of the embarrassment, anguish, and guilt that perpetually haunted him. He tells of the father he loved so much, “Willie Pep” Pepitone, the toughest man in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood. Obsessed with making Joe a baseball star, Willie beat his son when he failed to meet expectations. One night, enraged at his father, Joe said, “Mom—I wish he’d die!” Willie died the next day. Along with pain, the book has plenty of humor. Pepitone tells of partying with Frank Sinatra and Mickey Mantle, carousing with groupies and hookers, and “living the life” of a famous ballplayer in the sixties and seventies. One of the most moving, honest, and hilarious books ever written by an athlete, Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud was selected by Esquire magazine as one of the “20 best baseball books ever.” Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

The ghost of Lou Gehrig is given the assignment of trying to show Joe Pepitone the error of his ways and get him to take responsibility for his actions, instead of blaming others. Will Gehrig's ghost be able to get Joe to repent?

Former Yankee Bobby Richardson played alongside Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, Joe Pepitone, and Yogi Berra during one of the most prolific dynasties in baseball history, and he remains to this day the only player from the losing team ever to be named World Series MVP. In Impact Player, Bobby shares his life story, including never-before-told tales from the Yankee clubhouse during the historic ’55-’65 pennant runs and World Series appearances. The book also features the unlikely friendship Richardson, a devout and outspoken Christian, shared with Yankee legend and renowned drinker and womanizer Mickey Mantle. The perfect combination of faith and baseball, Impact Player offers a rare glimpse into one of the most celebrated dynasties in the history of the game, and it paints a fascinating portrait of a life well-lived and the lasting rewards that come from knowing and loving God.

This is the life story of Joe DiMaggio, including his first game with the New York Yankees in the 1930s, his marriage to Marilyn Monroe & his rise to hero status. Richard Ben Cramer tells of the ways in which fame can both build & destroy.

Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade, shares the epic inside story of how a working-class kid from the Nebraska prairie took on Wall Street’s clubby brokerage business, busted it open, and walked away a billionaire. Joe Ricketts always had the gift of seeing what others missed. The son of a house builder, he started life as a part-time janitor, but by the age of thirty-three he saw the chance to challenge the big brokerage firms by offering Americans an inexpensive way to take control of their own stock trading. Nowadays, we take for granted that Main Street is playing right there on Wall Street, but Ricketts made that happen. His company, begun with $12,500 borrowed from friends and family, took off like a rocket thanks to an early embrace of digital technology and irreverent marketing. But Ameritrade also faced a series of near-disasters: the SEC almost shut him down; his partners tried to force him out because of his relentless risk-taking; penny brokers swindled the company; the crash of 1989 nearly cost him everything; and he was almost shut down again when a customer committed massive fraud. By the time of the dot-com bust, he had proven that his strategy based on frontier values could survive just about anything. The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get offers a view inside Joe Ricketts’ mind, giving readers a visceral understanding of how entrepreneurs think and act differently from the rest of us—how they see the horizon where we just see a spreadsheet. As unvarnished as the prairie he comes from, Ricketts also talks honestly about his shortcomings as a manager, the career sacrifices his wife made for his business, the complexity of being a father, and the pain of splitting with his mentor and of his brother’s death from AIDS. Overcoming these and other challenges, he built a company now worth $30 billion. A must-read for anyone who’s ever dreamed of starting their own business, The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get is the ultimate only-in-America story.

A biography emphasizing the childhood of the baseball legend.

Voted one of the 10 Best Sports Books of 1993 by The Sporting News, this riveting biography of Joe Don Looney, the phenomenal athlete who in the '60s was considered the most promising football player in America, tells the story of a hope-filled life that took a tragic turn. 16-page photo insert.