Chicago Cubs Mittens

Shield your hands from the cold with these Chicago Cubs Tailgate Mittens. They're the perfect accessory for you to show off your game day spirit for your Cubbies.Features:* COLOR: Royal* 100% Acrylic* Machine washable* MLB licensed* By '47 Brand

White Sox fans were overcome with euphoria when their beloved team won after eighty-eight years of failure, and the long-suffering Red Sox Nation finally received their vindication in 2004. Now the Cubs are the only “cursed” team left: The team has repeatedly made the playoffs without ever winning the World Series for the last ninety-nine years, and yet thousands who bleed Cubbie blue pack Wrigley Field for every game. The reasons why ardent sports fans in Chicago and around the world buy expensive game tickets and memorabilia, fill stadiums, and live and die by their team’s fortunes is the subject of Your Brain on Cubs, an engaging study that delves into why sports engender such passionate emotions in us all.            A group of today’s leading science writers and neuroscientists explore here the ways that our brain functions when we participate in sports as fans, athletes, and coaches, taking baseball as the quintessential sport for all three perspectives. The contributors tackle such questions as: How does a player hit a ninety-mile-per-hour fastball when he barely has time to visually register it? Why do fans remain devotedly loyal year after year? And what allows them to believe in superstitions, such as a curse? Other topics investigated in the book include how a ballplayer’s brain changes as he gains experience and expertise, why there are a higher percentage of left-handers in the major leagues compared to the general population, and the ethical implications of neurological performance enhancement.            An expertly written and thought-provoking read, Your Brain on Cubs challenges us to reevaluate the nature of the sports fan and the athlete, revealing the scientific complexity underlying the seemingly black-and-white world of wins and losses.  (20080331)

The #1 Los Angeles Times bestseller from the host of NPR's Weekend Edition -- "absolutely spectacular-wise and intimate, often funny, always touching" (Scott Turow) -- now in paperback.In a beautifully written narrative that runs from childhood to adulthood through times of war and peace, Scott Simon movingly tracing his life as a fan -- of sports, theater, politics, and the people and things he holds dear.Sports Illustrated columnist Ron Fimrite says of Home and Away, "Rarely do you find in books of this genre a clearer look into mysteries and confusions of childhood . . . moving and often amusing portraits . . . insights into the complex and often corrupt world of Chicago politics, the city being this book's true protagonist. There are compelling scenes from Simon's years as a war correspondent, roving reporter, and political operative . . . There is also an emotional account of Michael Jordan's last championship season with the Bulls that is a book within a book . . ."The writing is uniformly superb. This is, in fact, a memoir of such breadth and reach it compares favorably with another book that is allegedly about the nature of sports allegiance, Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes. And that, believe me, is saying something."

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author captures baseball’s strategic and emotional essences through a point-blank account of one three-game series viewed through the keen eyes of legendary manager Tony La Russa. Drawing on unprecedented access to a manager and his team, Bissinger brings the same revelatory intimacy to major-league baseball that he did to high school football in his classic besteller, Friday Night Lights. Three Nights in August shows thrillingly that human nature -- not statistics -- can often dictate the outcome of a ballgame. We watch from the dugout as the St. Louis Cardinals battle their archrival Chicago Cubs for first place, and we uncover delicious surprises about the psychology of the clutch, the eccentricities of pitchers, the rise of video, and the complex art of retaliation when a batter is hit by a pitch. Through the lens of these games, Bissinger examines the dramatic changes that have overtaken baseball: from the decline of base stealing to the difficulty of motivating players to the rise of steroid use. More tellingly, he distills from these twenty-seven innings baseball's constants -- its tactical nuances, its emotional pull. During his twenty-six years of managing, La Russa won more games than any other current manager and ranks sixth all-time. He has been named Manager of the Year a record five times and is considered by many to be the shrewdest mind in the game today. For all his intellectual attainments, he’s also an antidote to the number-crunching mentality that has become so modish in baseball. As this book proves, he's built his success on the conviction that ballgames are won not only by the numbers but also by the hearts and minds of those who play.