Corked: Tales of Advantage in Competitive Sports - Softcover

“Corked” is an anthology of 26 short stories linked with the notion that factors outside of player talent can affect a team’s performance. Alternatively, one might also ask whether team selections, drafts, and trades are designed with the notion of acquiring the players with the best chance of superior performance with these factors in mind. This book contains stories that include the big 5 sports (football, baseball, hockey, basketball, and soccer) as well as track and field, yachting, tennis, golf, curling, and cricket among others. In some sports it’s easier to extract overachievement where there might be less standardization and more of a perceived home field advantage. This book includes offers perspective about how the fields, equipment, and other intangibles play into winning. It’s not simply about corked bats in baseball. The book is aimed at anyone who has a casual interest in sport. It is fun to sometimes think less about who is actually winning and losing and more about how the game is being played from a strategists or analysts level. The stories collected here in this book might empower the reader with more to talk about when parties devolve into a discussion about last night’s wins and losses for the home team.