Ballplayers all want to start, to make All-Star teams, to please their coaches, parents, scouts. But first, you have to please yourself, feel good about the effort, have the confidence that if given the opportunity you will perform well.

So, work and learn to believe in yourself, even if you don't get that precious college scholarship. Get a job. Try out. Find some way to play ball, if that's what's important to you.

If scouts are in the stands, forget them. Keep your mind on the game and concentrate on doing the little things right, being sound fundamentally. Use two hands during warm-ups. Hustle. Give off a glow that says "I love this game."

And be careful how you dress. When I played, I was a neatnik - my uni was clean at all times. If yours gets dirty - clean it! Even if you are a Charlie Hustle headfirst slide down and dirty kind of player, you can still look tidy. But don't look sloppy. No shirt tails hanging out. No silly hats during pregame warm-ups. Scouts have a sixth sense about this attitude, so clean or dirty, play like you mean it.

This is not a good idea. The players should say no to this request. Some fans like the DH. Some do not. So, it's probably a good idea to leave things the way they are: the American League can keep the DH. The NL can remain without one.

It is our view at TJN that the DH should be used during all World Series games, every All-Star Game, and (if it should come about) all inter-league games. These changes would end the silly spectacle of pitchers who haven't hit since high school trying to hit big-league pitching.

This is a "...crackerjack novel...as authentic as a photograph. If it's not the truth behind the Black Sox scandal, then it ought to be," said Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times.

Hoopla is a brilliant mix of fact and fantasy. It's always interesting, always action filled, a wry commentary on the naivete of a country searching for sports heroes. And that's Bill Veeck's opinion, one of baseball's all-time great thinkers!

Need a book for a book report? Have some fun. Read Hoopla.

If you want to be part of a successful baseball program, encourage your players/teammates/sons/daughters to pay attention to details during the pre-season. The benefits will come - if one has prepared well. Just ask Noah!

Here is a fascinating excerpt from this unforgettable book:

Branch Rickey [the general manager for the Brooklyn Dodgers] had heard about Jackie Robinson and thought he might be the man he was looking for. He sent one of his scouts to talk to Robinson.

When I was a boy, I read every sports magazine I could get my hands on. In one of them I read something by Don Hutson, a great pass receiver. Don said, "For every pass I caught in a game, I caught a thousand passes in practice."

When you get right down to it, there's no other way to learn. Physical condition, speed, timing, and co-ordination - none of these mean anything without practice. Spring training for major leaguers isn't a vacation in a warm place when everybody up north is freezing. It's held so the players can sharpen up...

Here is a small slice of author Mark Harris' classic:

Him and his father and Mike were in the clubhouse when we hit Chicago, and the boys all went wild to see him, not phony wild, neither, but the real thing, admiring him, and he stood up and said, "Howdy, boys," and they pumped his hand and told him how they missed him, and he got dressed, and he was white and thin, and he was cold, always cold, and he sat on the bench all wrapped in jackets, geting up off the bench every so often and going back an laying down awhile, and then coming back out.

We whipped Chicago twice. Nothing in the world could stop us now. Winning makes winning like money makes money, and we had power and pitching and speed, so much of it that if anybody done anything wrong nobody ever noticed. There was too much we were dong right. It was a club, like it should of been all year but never was but all of a sudden become, and we clinched it the first night in Cleveland, Blondie Biggs working, and we voted the shares, 30 full shares and a lot of tiny ones, $1,500 to Mike and the same to Red, and $1,250 to Piney for playing the guitar, and $1,000 to Diego Roberto for talking Spanish to George, and little slices to battboys, big hands and big hearts like you have when you win, not stopping rolling then but rolling still and winning though we did not need to win but could of relaxed and played out the string, yet hating to relax either because we were playing ball at last like it ws meant to be played.

He went with us all the way. He dressed every day, and then he sat, no stronger than ever, thin and white and his cheeks all hollow, but his spirit high. Sometimes he picked up a bat and swung it a couple times and sat down again.

The Series opened in New York on a Wednesday, and I pitched and won, and Van Gundy Thursday, and after the Thursday game Bruce went home. "It is practically copped," he said. "I see no sense in trucking all the way out there and back."

"No," said the boys. "Come along for the ride."

"No," he said, "I will see you in the spring. I will be back in shape by spring," and we said he would, saying, "See you in the spring, Bruce. See you in Aqua Clara."

"See you," said he, and I went with him and his father and put them on the plane. He could barely carry his bags. "Arthur," he said, "send me the scorecard from Detroit," and I said I would.

But then I never sent it. We wrapped the Series up on Sunday, my win again, and I took a scorecard home with me and tossed it on the shelf and left it lay.

I am just like the rest. Wouldn't it been simple instead of writing a page on my book to shoved it in the mail? How long would it of took? Could I not afford the stamps?

This is the book true fans - advanced fans - have been waiting for, a book that tells you the way it really is on the field, written by a former superstar regarded by peers, fans, and sportswriters alike as unmatched in his insights into every nuance of the national pastime.

The book focuses on just two games. Hernandez narrates each game pitch by pitch. He takes you inside the thinking of the pitchers, the batters, the fielders, and the managers.

It's great when Hernandez identifies and analyzes the key decisions on and off the field, and his canny explanations are often quite different from what a casual fan might assume.

Here's a brief example of Mr. Hernandez's expertise:

...the bottom line with Rob Deer, from the pitcher's perspective, is that reasonably good pitchers will get him out most of the time. Facing him is the opposite of facing, for example, Wade Boggs. Absolutely the opposite. In Deer's case, you're probably watching the pitcher dissect the hitter. In Bogg's case, you're probably watching the hitter dissect the pitcher.

Every coach in America tells his players, "swing only at strikes." They shouldn't.

Why? Because the most important aspect of hitting is not what you swing at, but how you swing.

Too many young batters are so intent on hitting only strikes that they become defensive hitters and they rarely swing at all. When you tell a younster "only swing at strikes," he starts thinking, "If the ball isn't a strike, and I swing, the coach is going to be mad at me."

When that happens, he stops being an aggressive hitter and starts worrying more about whether the coach is going to second-guess him. He loses his aggressiveness and becomes a defensive hitter.

I'd rather have a kid take three healthy cuts at bad pitches than have him look for a base on balls or wait for a meatball pitch. Don't ever teach a young hitter anything that destroys his aggressiveness.

When I was in the minors, I swung at a lot of bad pitches. And I always hit for a high average. Now aggressive does not mean over-anxious. An aggressive hitter swings hard at a pitch he feels he can handle; an over-anxious hitter swings at just about anything.

Of course, you will be better off in the long run if you can be aggressive and also lay off bad pitches. That will come with time.

For a young hitter, the best advice is to see the baseball and swing away, hard, without having to worry about being second-guessed.

So who hits more first pitches than anybody else in baseball? You guessed it: Pucket. Twenty-five percent of his at-bats area over after one pitch.

...Jack Norworth wrote the lyrics to the famous baseball song "Take Me out to the Ball Game," but his wish didn't come true for more than 30 years? (It took him that long to finally get to a stadium and watch his first big-league game!)

Soon, MLB will have 30 teams, probably two 15-team leagues. And, owners have asked the players if they would like the idea of inter-league play. (Which probably means the AL East teams will play three or four games a year vs. NL East teams, and Central vs. Central and West vs. West.)

If you are a relief pitcher, that means you will have the chance to pitch against 19 other teams. What an opportunity! You will rarely see the same hitters more than three or four times a season. This is a huge advantage. (If you are not now a reliever - think about becoming one. It could be your ticket to the Big Leagues!)

A Milwaukee Brewer manager of recent years sent up a pinch-hitter in the sixth inning, then changed his mind when the player got into the batter's box, and replaced him with another pinch-hitter. Later in the game he sent up to the plate the pinch-hitter he had replaced to substitute -- swing again. Could he do that?

Answer: No, he couldn't. Even if the initial pinch-hitter was not announced the first time, he was considered to be in the game when he took his position in the batter's box. Rule 3.08 [a.2].