• Damn Yankees all-star roster includes:

Nathaniel Rich • Steve Rushin • James Surowiecki • Rick Telander • Tom Verducci • Steve Wulf • Dan Barry • Roy Blount Jr. • Frank DeFord • Pete Dexter • Roger Director • Richard Hoffer • Bill James • Sally Jenkins • Jane Leavy • Will Leitch • Bruce McCall • Colum McCann • Leigh Montville • J. R. Moehringer • William Nack • Daniel Okrent • Michael Paternity • Charles P. Pierce

“Sometimes, when walking home from the subway, after being at Yankee Stadium, I have the feeling that a whole country has been knocked around inside me. I am an Irishman, but I am also an American father. . . . I cherish these moments.”—Colum McCann

“I love . . . just about everything about New York except the Yankees. It is like living in Vatican City and liking everything about the place but the Roman Catholics.”—Frank DeFord

Everyone has an opinion about the New York Yankees. Love them or hate them, the Bronx Bombers have been an American institution for nearly a century. With their rich history and colorful cast of characters, the Yankees never fail to inspire or provoke. In this exciting compendium, a Murderers’ Row of writers—including Pete Dexter, Colum McCann, Roy Blount Jr., Dan Barry, Jane Leavy, Charles P. Pierce, J. R. Moehringer, Daniel Okrent, Frank DeFord, Bill James, and many more—step up to the plate to take their cuts. The result is a collection of original essays as idiosyncratic and expansive as the team that has inspired them: ruminations on Babe Ruth’s gravestone, Derek Jeter’s swing, and the upper-deck vantage of the Oldest Living Yankee; dual allegiances; mortal rivalries; and every other subject that spans from the hilarious (the Yankee wife-swap of the ’70s) to the sublime (the grace of Catfish Hunter).

“If you are looking for a bottom, it probably came in June of 2000 when Chuck Knoblauch threw a ball to first base that hit the seventy-one-year-old mother of Keith Olbermann right between the eyes.”—Pete Dexter

“Derek Jeter in summer is like my tomato plants: I check every morning to see how he’s doing.”—Roy Blount, Jr..