Collection:
Sports & Recreation
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by Bob Kuska (Author) For most of the twentieth century, West Virginia was a college basketball hotbed. Its major programs were a success, but perhaps even more successful was the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, composed of fifteen schools that rarely earned headlines but set many records and became an identifiable part of small town culture and a source of state pride. This ethos exists today in small town Kentucky and Indiana but struggles to survive in West Virginia. Par...
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by Tom Swift (Author)The greatest American Indian baseball player of all time, Charles Albert Bender was, according to a contemporary, "the coolest pitcher in the game." Using a trademark delivery, an impressive assortment of pitches that may have included the game's first slider, and an apparently unflappable demeanor, he earned a reputation as baseball's great clutch pitcher during tight Deadball Era pennant races and in front of boisterous World Series crowds. More remarkably yet, "Chief" ...
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by Milton H. Jamail (Author) Though Venezuela is sandwiched between two soccer-mad countries--Brazil and Colombia--baseball is its national pastime and passion. Yet until the late 1980s few professional teams actively scouted and developed players there. This book is about the man who changed all that and brought Venezuela into Major League Baseball in a major way.While other teams were looking to the Dominican Republic for new talent, Houston Astros' scout Andrés Reiner saw an untapped niche...
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by John Christgau (Author)In February 1948 the brand-new, all-white Minneapolis Lakers were arguably the greatest basketball team in America, favored to win the World Professional Basketball Tournament later that year. Meanwhile the Harlem Globetrotters, at the center of black basketball, were riding their own incredible 103-game winning streak. Best known to white audiences for their clowning and comedy, the Globetrotters were not even thought to be in the same league with the mighty Lakers....
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by John Lardner (Author), John Schulian (Editor), Dan Jenkins (Foreword by) This collection marks the return to print of John Lardner, one of America's press box giants, a classic stylist whose wry humor and tireless reporting helped elevate sportswriting to art. The brilliant W. C. Heinz called Lardner "the best of us." This book shows why.Lardner applied his singular touch not only to his era's icons--Joe Louis, Ted Williams, Satchel Paige--but to the scamps, eccentrics, hustlers, and con m...
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by Christine A. Baker (Author), Becky Hammon (Foreword by)Why does she play basketball? Since the enactment of Title IX in 1972, that question has come to be asked of more girls and women-and answered in more ways-than ever before. Christine A. Baker, herself an avid player and an assistant coach, pursues an answer through the ranks of the sport from youth basketball to the WNBA. Baker sets the stage with a quick look at current statistics and trends in women's basketball nationwide, noting t...
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by Todd Boyd (Author)In Young, Black, Rich, and Famous, Todd Boyd chronicles how basketball and hip hop have gone from being reviled by the American mainstream in the 1970s to being embraced and imitated globally today. For young black men, he argues, they represent a new version of the American dream, one embodying the hopes and desires of those excluded from the original version. Shedding light on both perception and reality, Boyd shows that the NBA has been at the forefront of recognizing ...
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by Norman L. Macht (Author), Connie Mack III (Foreword by) Connie Mack (1862-1956) was the Grand Old Man of baseball and one of the game's first true celebrities. This book, spanning the first fifty-two years of Mack's life, through 1914, covers his experiences as player, manager, and club owner and will stand as the definitive biography of baseball's most legendary and beloved figure. Norman L. Macht chronicles Mack's little-known beginnings. He tells how Mack, a school dropout at fourtee...
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by Lee Lowenfish (Author), Robert W. Creamer (Foreword by), Lee Lowenfish (Introduction by)From the introduction of the reserve clause in 1879 to the lockout and new basic agreement of 1990, baseball players have been engaged in one of the longest and most colorful labor struggles in our nation's history. The Imperfect Diamond tells the stories of the players and their opponents, the powerful owners: how John Montgomery Ward led the Players League Rebellion of 1890; the rise and fall of David...
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by James W. Johnson (Author)In the mid-1950s three unrecruited black basketball players, coached by a white former prison guard who had never before coached a college team, led a small Jesuit university in San Francisco to two national titles. The Dandy Dons describes for the first time how the unprecedented accomplishment of the Dons, led by coach Phil Woolpert and future hall-of-famers Bill Russell and K. C. Jones, paved the way for black talent in major college basketball and transformed t...
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by Steve Marantz (Author), Susie Buffett (Foreword by)In the spring of 1968, the Omaha Central High School basketball team made history with its first all-black starting lineup. Their nickname, the Rhythm Boys, captured who they were and what they did on the court. Led by star center Dwaine Dillard, the Rhythm Boys were a shoo-in to win the state championship. But something happened on their way to glory. In early March, segregationist George Wallace, in a third-party presidential bid, made ...
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by Cindy Thomson (Author), Scott Brown (Author), Ferguson Jenkins (Foreword by)On October 8, 1908, Mordecai Brown clutched a half-dozen notes inside his coat pocket. The message of each was clear: we'll kill you if you pitch and beat the Giants. A black handprint marked each note, the signature of the Italian Mafia. Mordecai Brown-dubbed "Three Finger" because of a childhood farm injury-was the dominant pitcher for the great Chicago Cubs team of the early twentieth century. Brown's handicap e...
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by Amy Whorf McGuiggan (Author), Mike Veeck (Foreword by) For anyone who has ever sung "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch and wondered why we sing it when we are already at the ball game, this entertaining book supplies the answers. And why did this song become the sport's anthem rather than one of hundreds of other baseball songs, such as George M. Cohan's "Take Your Girl to the Ball Game," written the same month? This story, told here in full for the first time...
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by Brett Perkins (Author)When Francis Schmidt, a bow tie-wearing law school graduate with a bombastic personality, got started as a volunteer high school coach, football still followed Victorian tenets of caution and simplicity and often employed fewer than fifty plays. By the time "Frantic Francis" had risen through the ranks of small colleges on the plains to one of the top coaching jobs in America--head coach at Ohio State University in the 1930s--football was a wild, wide-open game, large...
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by Oscar Robertson (Author)Perhaps the greatest all-around player in basketball history, Oscar Robertson revolutionized basketball as a member of the Cincinnati Royals and won a championship with the Milwaukee Bucks. When he was twenty-three, in 1962, he accomplished one of basketball's most impressive feats: averaging the triple-double in a single season-a feat never matched since. Cocaptain of the Olympic gold medal team of 1960; named the player of the century by the National Association o...
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by Timothy F. Grainey (Author), Brittany Timko (Foreword by) Though it burst into public consciousness only with the 1999 World Cup, women's soccer has been around almost as long as its male counterpart, flourishing in England during and after World War I. From the rise of women's soccer following Title IX legislation in the early seventies to the watershed 1999 World Cup performance that turned the American team into instant celebrities, soccer is now the most popular sport for girls and wom...
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by Bill Felber (Author) Babe Ruth, in his first season with the Yankees in 1920, was on pace to break the single-season home run record. In August Indians shortstop Ray Chapman was beaned by a pitch thrown by the Yankees' Carl Mays during a game in New York and died the next day. In September a grand jury convened in Chicago, and four White Sox players were called to testify about fixing the 1919 World Series.Focusing on the Cleveland Indians, the Chicago White Sox, and the New York Yankees, ...
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by Norman L. Macht (Author)The Philadelphia Athletics dominated the first fourteen years of the American League, winning six pennants through 1914 under the leadership of their founder and manager, Connie Mack. But beginning in 1915, where volume 2 in Norman L. Macht's biography picks up the story, Mack's teams fell from pennant winners to last place and, in an unprecedented reversal of fortunes, stayed there for seven years. World War I robbed baseball of young players, and Mack's rebuilding...
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by Caroline Seebohm (Author) Born into a poor family in Ecuador, Pancho Segura was an undersized and undernourished kid working as a ball boy at an exclusive tennis club when he first picked up a racket. Little Pancho is the story of how this improbable athlete, with his bandy legs, infectious smile, and unorthodox two-handed style of play, became one of the greatest and most beloved tennis players of all time. During his twenty years in pro tennis, general audiences appreciated his spirit as...
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by Jose Torres (Author), Leroy Neiman (Illustrator), Bert Randolph Sugar (With)Writers have long been attracted to boxing. Hemingway, Mailer, Algren, Plimpton, Oates, and many others have stepped into the ring-at least in spirit-to give voice to an otherwise wordless sport, to celebrate that "sweet science," and to bear witness to its romance and tragedy. In this acclaimed book, hailed by Norman Mailer as an "impressive event," we are brought for the first time into the ring for a close-up lo...
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by Pete Axthelm (Author), Rick Telander (Introduction by)Pete Axthelm follows the 1969-70 season of the New York Knicks and provides a parallel focus on basketball as it was then played in the black neighborhoods of New York City. Throughout, he writes clearly, intelligently, and passionately about the game, bringing alive the players' efforts, accomplishments, and failures. Pete Axthelm was an editor for Newsweek. Rick Telander is a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a writer for...
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by David W. Anderson (Author), Keith Olbermann (Foreword by)"I have done a report of some kind on the Fred Merkle story, whether in print, on radio, or on TV, on or about its anniversary, September 23, virtually every year since I was in college. The saga has always seemed to me to be a microcosm not just of baseball, nor of celebrity, but of life. The rules sometimes change while you're playing the game. Those you trust to tell you the changes often don't bother to. That for which history st...
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by Roger Angell (Author)"Page for page, The Summer Game contains not only the classiest but also the most resourceful baseball writing I have ever read."--New York Times Book ReviewThe Summer Game, Roger Angell's first book on the sport, changed baseball writing forever. Thoughtful, funny, appreciative of the elegance of the game and the passions invested by players and fans, it goes beyond the usual sports reporter's beat to examine baseball's complex place in our American psyche.Between the...
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by Roger Angell (Author)Five Seasons covers the baseball seasons from 1972 through 1976, described as the "most significant half decade in the history of the game." The era was notable for the remarkable individual feats of Hank Aaron, Lou Brock, and Nolan Ryan, among others. It also presented one of the best World Series of all time (1975), including still the greatest World Series game ever played (Game Six). Along with visiting other games and campaigns, Roger Angell meets a trio of Tigers...
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by Norman L. Macht (Author)In The Grand Old Man of Baseball, Norman L. Macht chronicles Connie Mack's tumultuous final two decades in baseball. After Mack had built one of baseball's greatest teams, the 1929-31 Philadelphia Athletics, the Depression that followed the stock market crash fundamentally reshaped Mack's legacy as his team struggled on the field and at the gate. Among the challenges Mack faced: a sharp drop in attendance that forced him to sell his star players; the rise of the far...
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by John Theodore (Author), Ira Berkow (Foreword by)Baseball's Natural is John Theodore's true account of the slick-fielding first baseman who played for the Cubs and the Phillies in the 1940s and became immortalized in baseball lore as the inspiration for Bernard Malamud's The Natural. Eddie Waitkus grew up in Boston and fought in the Pacific theater in World War II. Following the war, Waitkus became one of the most popular players of his era. In 1949, with his career on the rise, his life ch...
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by Tony Moss (Author)At a school where basketball is king, the Villanova football team battles opponents both on and off the field. Low on cash and recruiting power, the Division I-AA Wildcats must constantly justify their existence to a prestigious academic institution and the students and alumni who bemoan the team's "minor league" status. This story of Villanova's 2005 season is an inside account of a football program wading through the political mire to bring glory to a school largely ind...
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by Charley Rosen (Author), Charley Rosen (Afterword by)Players and Pretenders tells the story of the flip side of basketball's "March Madness," where the game is played by average players for love, not for money. At the end of the 1970s at Bard College, where there was no pretense of institutional support, Charley Rosen gathered his hoops hopefuls and put together a basketball season whose impact reached far beyond the court. Writing with a humorous touch, Rosen details the Running Red Devils...
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by Dean A. Sullivan (Editor)With Final Innings Dean Sullivan concludes his four-volume documentary history of baseball, whose three earlier volumes have been called "a broad array of illuminating and often unexpected materials" (Sports Collectors Digest), "an invaluable reference tool" (Newark Star-Ledger), and a "fascinating collection" (Washington Post), in which "ancient myths are shattered and new facts are uncovered" (USA Today Baseball Weekly). Culling the most pertinent, newsworthy, an...
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by Rob L. Ruck (Author), Maggie Jones Patterson (Author), Michael P. Weber (Author)Born to an Irish Catholic working-class family on the Northside of Pittsburgh, Art Rooney (1901-88) dabbled in semipro baseball and boxing before discovering that his real talent lay not in playing sports but in promoting them. Though he was at the center of boxing, baseball, and racing in Pittsburgh and beyond, Rooney is best remembered for his contribution to the NFL, in particular to the Pittsburgh Steelers,...
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by Roland Lazenby (Author)Mindgames follows the journey of Phil Jackson to the top of basketball's coaching hierarchy, a rise that took him from obscurity in the Continental Basketball Association to nine championship rings in the NBA. Along the way he turned multimillionaire players on to meditation, transformed the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls from a one-man show to a five-man team of domination, and after battling with Bulls management, ended one dynasty to start another on the West Co...
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by Rob Kirkpatrick (Author), Dave Kindred (Foreword by)A three-time All-Star, Cecil Travis (1913-2006) was well on his way to a Hall of Fame career when he was drafted for World War II in 1941. When he returned to the game in 1945, after three and a half years in the army, Travis was no longer the dominant player he had been. In the three seasons that followed-the last of his career-only once did Travis play in more than seventy-five games, and his offensive numbers plummeted. Yet his prewar ...
