• About the Book
• About the Authors
• Praise for Fenway: A Biography in Words and Pictures
• Spring Training 2003
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"In spring training there's a pure, unadulterated sense of just being able to play the game and have fun. Spring training is baseball the way it's supposed to be." — Cal Ripken, Jr., from the introduction

"This is big league ball without the moat . . . You might run into Ken Griffey, Jr., at the Winn Dixie in Sarasota, Florida. Find the Cubs team hotel in Mesa, and you might see Tom Gordon hanging around the pool after finishing his morning workout. Is that Tom Glavine up ahead at the miniature golf course? Ballplayers and fans share the sense that there is nowhere else to be and nothing else to do." — Dan Shaughnessy

Spring training is a hot ticket. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2002 spring training generated as much cash as the past two Super Bowls combined, and according to Major League Baseball figures, the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues drew 3.1 million fans last year — more than the average NFL team sees in five years. In Spring Training: Baseball's Early Season (Houghton Mifflin, February), Dan Shaughnessy and Stan Grossfeld celebrate baseball's time-honored rite of spring through words, pictures, and the recollections of some of the sport's greatest personalities.

"I still like to work out . . . in spring training. I get a little sore now and then, because I still think I'm twenty-five years old and I'm not. But that's what spring training does. It makes you believe you are young all over again." — Johnny Pesky

Fans around the nation look forward to spring training as the longed-for end of winter and beginning of the baseball season. It is a magical time when every player could be the next superstar and every team is poised for victory. Spring Training takes readers on a guided tour through the ballfields, around the locker rooms, and into the stands from Florida's Alligator Alley to Arizona's Cactus Way. The book is illustrated with Stan Grossfeld's stunning photographs and affectionately written with the liveliness and style that have made Dan Shaughnessy a favorite of baseball fans everywhere.

"The girls are pretty and the sun's out and the grass is green and it feels like real baseball, and at the same time it's baseball with the pressure off." — Stephen King

The last time author and Boston Globe columnist Shaughnessy and Pulitzer Prize – winning photographer Grossfeld teamed up for a book, the result was Fenway (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), the best-selling and beloved portrait of Boston's Fenway Park. With Spring Training, they again turn their attention to the national pastime, capturing for the first time the essence and excitement of baseball's early season. Chock full of memorable images and delightful anecdotes, and including an introduction by Cal Ripken, Jr., Spring Training is sure to be a favorite of baseball fans everywhere.

Dan Shaughnessy is a popular Boston Globe sports columnist and the author of the baseball classic The Curse of the Bambino and the best-selling Fenway: A Biography in Words and Pictures (with Stan Grossfeld), among others. He has been named Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year seven times, and seven times has been voted one of America's top ten sports columnists by Associated Press Sports Editors.

Stan Grossfeld has received the Pulitzer Prize twice for his photojournalism in Ethiopia, in Lebanon, and at the United States – Mexico border. He is also the author of numerous books, including Fenway (with Shaughnessy), Lost Futures: Our Forgotten Children, The Whisper of Stars: A Siberian Journey, and Two on the River (with Wil Haygood.)

"Straightforward and unsentimental . . . Grossfeld's images are sparkling and upbeat, evoking not the park's gloomy history but its charming eccentricities and ever-startling greenness — a place where it is always heaven to be miserable." — Charles McGrath, New York Times Book Review

"A loving tribute to the oldest standing ballpark in the majors . . . that home to the star-crossed Boston Red Sox." — Entertainment Weekly

"A must-read for the members of what Mr. Shaughnessy calls the Red Sox Nation . . . Frankly, I loved the book. Although I'm not a Sawx fan, I love the history and tradition Fenway represents." — Washington Times

""A well-done photographic tribute to one of the last classical ballparks." — Cincinnati Enquirer

"I love this book." — Boston Magazine

"The fans as much as the players are celebrated in this book." — Philadelphia Inquirer