About The Book

Winning a World Series is no easy feat. Just getting to the postseason requires surviving a six-month, 162-game regular season fraught with untold challenges. Throw in multiple rounds of hard-fought playoffs and baseball’s championship often takes on the feel of a war between two battle-tested squads. By the end of the Series, however, one team walks away with the ultimate prize: the right to call themselves world champions.

The highly anticipated sequel to Raising Stanley and Raising Lombardi, World Series Winners (Triumph Books, June 2012) explores what goes into winning the most sought-after moniker in professional baseball—and what separates the victors from those who come up short. Bestselling author Ross Bernstein interviews over 100 Major League players, managers and coaches, all of whom have experienced the pinnacle of professional baseball success. Sharing inspirational stories of determination, perseverance and victory in their own words are World Series champions of all eras, including: Ozzie Guillen, Al Kaline, Jack Morris, Randy Johnson, Tony La Russa, Tim Salmon, Joe Girardi, Kent Hrbek, and Albert Pujols. These players’ stories span over a half-century of baseball history, from the Miracle Mets’ 1969 World Series victory to the breaking of the Curse of the Bambino in 2004 all the way up to last year, when David Freese hit his game-winning home run.

Full of unheard stories, locker room anecdotes and clubhouse antics, World Series Winners are more than just recollections of the joy of winning. Superstars and utility players alike share the key ingredients to becoming champions—leadership, teamwork and overcoming adversity—that resonate both on and off the field. Chronicling the championship games from the 1954 New York Giants to the St. Louis Cardinals in 2011, and just in time for this years’ winner, World Series Winners is a must have for baseball fans who want to know what it takes to be a champion in all aspects of life.