TIM O'BRIEN / Tim O’Brien
It's like deja vu all over again! Just in time for the 2016 Baseball Season!Baseball is a sport that naturally lends itself to oddities, rituals, superstitions, and unique happenings. It's a long season and a lot can happen!Here's a sampling of what you'll find in this unique book of obscure oddities:* A foul ball crashed into a fan's face. As she was being carried out on a stretcher, she was hit by another ball hit by the same batter!* One Major League player sleeps with his bats.* Hear about the error-prone outfielder who received a standing ovation for catching a hotdog wrapper on the fly.* No fans were allowed to attend a 2015 Major League game due to local safety concerns, and the game went on in front of 46,000 empty seats!* There was a four-day period when every American League game was rained out.* A player pitches a perfect game and goes home to find that his wife filed divorce papers while he was making baseball history.* The MLB team with the highest payroll pays out $57 million more than three of its league's teams - combined.* In a special 'Bat' section, we learn that each team orders 150 bats a year for each of its hitters. In all, this new volume of Baseball Oddities & Trivia presents more than 350 fun, all new, weird and strange Believe It or Nots! plus more than 50 illlustrations drawn by John Graziano, Ripley's official cartoonist.Tim O’Brien and Ripley’s take readers on another journey down the offbeat and bizarre, but 100% factual road through the world of baseball players, coaches, owners, teams, stadiums and fans! No one does the odd and trivial better than Ripley!Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Baseball Oddities & Trivia – Ball Two! is far from a conventional trivia book. It’s an oddities publication with the spirit of a traditional Ripley book throughout! With a whole lot of totally unbelievable and mind-boggling facts, this Believe It or Not! book stands out from the rest in sports publishing.While best known for his artistic endeavors and the coining of the popular Believe It or Not! phrase, Robert Ripley’s move to New York City in early 1914 marked his determination to play professional baseball. His career with the New York Giants in 1914 ended abruptly in his very first game when a hard-hit line drive smashed his pitching arm. With his baseball career apparently over, he landed an illustrators job at the New York Globe in the sports department where he was soon combining his passion for sports with his love for the odd and unusual.This entire book is dedicated to the bizarre, colorful and entertaining universe of baseball oddities and trivia. 3
