Sports & Recreation

25001 books

Baseball Without Borders: The International Pastime - Paperback

$19.95

by George Gmelch (Editor)A televised baseball game from Puerto Rico, Japan, or even Cuba might look a lot like the North American game. Beneath the outward similarities, however-the uniforms and equipment and basic rules-there is usually a very different history and culture influencing the nuances of the sport. These differences are what interest the authors of Baseball without Borders, a book about America's national pastime going global and undergoing instructive, entertaining, and sometime...

Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit - Paperback

$22.95

by Neil Demause (Author), Joanna Cagan (Author)Field of Schemes is a play-by-play account of how the drive for new sports stadiums and arenas drains $2 billion a year from public treasuries for the sake of private profit. While the millionaires who own sports franchises have seen the value of their assets soar under this scheme, taxpayers, urban residents, and sports fans have all come out losers, forced to pay both higher taxes and higher ticket prices for seats that, thanks to the layers of...

In the Ballpark: The Working Lives of Baseball People - Paperback

$21.55

by George Gmelch (Author), J. J. Weiner (Author)In the Ballpark is a collection of interviews with twenty-one people who work in all parts of Major and Minor League Baseball: usher and broadcaster, beer vendor and sportswriter, clubhouse attendant and field manager, ticket seller and owner, scout and general manager, mascot and player. Organized by setting-the stands, the field, the press box, and the front office-the accounts yield a wealth of insight into little-known aspects of the game. T...

Inside Pitch: Life in Professional Baseball - Paperback

$21.55

by George Gmelch (Author)From the spark of ambition to play baseball professionally to the necessity of reinventing life after baseball, the anthropologist and former Minor Leaguer George Gmelch describes the lives of the men who work at America's national game. Twenty-four years after his own final road trip as a minor leaguer, Gmelch went back on the road with ballplayers, this time with a pen and pad to record the details of life around the diamond. Drawing on more than one hundred intervi...

Double No-Hit: Johnny Vander Meer's Historic Night Under the Lights - Paperback

$18.95

by James W. Johnson (Author)The average pitcher has about a .000645 chance of throwing a no-hitter. In the spring of 1938, Cincinnati Reds rookie pitcher Johnny Vander Meer pitched two, back to back. The feat has never been duplicated, which comes as no surprise to sports professionals and aficionados alike. Decade after decade, in one poll after another (from Sport magazine, Sports Illustrated, and ESPN), Vander Meer's consecutive no-hitters turn up as one of baseball's greatest and most unt...

$24.95

by Tom Osborne (Author)The back-to-back championships in 1994 and 1995 prompted more fans and media to take notice of the football program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For Tom Osborne, then head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, the added scrutiny was at times flattering and at other times problematic. On Solid Ground was written for the fan seeking greater insight into the Nebraska football program behind the scenes during the 1990s. Osborne presents not only an accurate portrayal...

The American Indian Integration of Baseball - Paperback

$32.33

by Jeffrey Powers-Beck (Author), Joseph B. Oxendine (Foreword by)For many the entry of Jackie Robinson into Major League Baseball in 1947 marked the beginning of integration in professional baseball, but the entry of American Indians into the game during the previous half-century and the persistent racism directed toward them is not as well known. From the time that Louis Sockalexis stepped onto a Major League Baseball field in 1897, American Indians have had a presence in professional baseba...

Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives - Paperback

$48.60

by Randolph Feezell (Author)There's more to sports than the ethos of competition, entertainment, and commercialism expressed in popular media and discourse. Sport, Philosophy, and Good Lives discusses sport in the context of several traditional philosophical questions, including: What is a good human life and how does sport factor into it? To whom do we look for ethical guidance? What makes human activities or projects meaningful? Randolph Feezell examines these questions along with other rel...

Body Politic: The Great American Sports Machine - Paperback

$19.95

by David Shields (Author), Robert Lipsyte (Introduction by)In Body Politic, David Shields looks at contemporary America and its mythology through the lens of professional and college sports. The result is an unusually insightful and provocative book about an empire in denial. Shields relentlessly examines the way we tell our sports stories (both fictional and nonfictional), considers the kinds of athletes we choose as heroes, and delineates the lessons and values we glean from sports. He expl...

Team That Forever Changed Baseball and America: The 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers - Paperback

$39.95

by Lyle Spatz (Editor), Mark Langill (Foreword by), Maurice Bouchard (Editor)Of all the teams in the annals of baseball, only a select few can lay claim to historic significance. One of those teams is the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, the first racially integrated Major League team of the twentieth century. The addition of Jackie Robinson to its roster changed not only baseball but also the nation. Yet Robinson was just one member of that memorable club, which included Carl Furillo, Gil Hodges, Pee ...

Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers: The 1970 Baltimore Orioles - Paperback

$26.95

by Mark L. Armour (Editor), Malcolm Allen (Editor), Sabr (Author) For the Baltimore Orioles, the glory days stretched to decades. Through the 1960s and 1970s, the team arguably had the best players, the best manager, the best Minor League teams, the best scouts and front office--and, unarguably, the best record in the American League. But the best of all, and one of baseball's greatest teams ever, was the Orioles team of 1970. Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers documents that paradoxical...

Poetics of Golf: Meditations on the Meaning and Beauty of a Game - Paperback

$19.95

by Andy Brumer (Author)Many golfers would agree with Andy Brumer that there is poetry in the game of golf. And Brumer is not the first to insist that there is more to the game than the superstars, swing gurus, and high-tech equipment that dominate talk of the game today. In this series of essays, Brumer, one of the most insightful writers on golf, considers the game from unexpected and often surprising angles. At once contemplative and compelling, The Poetics of Golf explores the links betwee...

The Gambler and the Bug Boy: 1939 Los Angeles and the Untold Story of a Horse Racing Fix - Paperback

$23.95

by John Christgau (Author)"Scandal on the Turf!" the Los Angeles Times proclaimed. It was October 1940, a mere few months after Seabiscuit had won the Santa Anita Derby, and now this bombshell: "Six Jockeys Admit Horse Races Fixed." The Gambler and the Bug Boy recounts this dark chapter in horse racing history. At its center is Bernard "Big" Mooney, a flashy L.A. bookmaker who began his seedy career by threatening young jockeys with death if they didn't "pull" their horses. His unwilling part...

Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball - Paperback

$32.95

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 fourteen, ...

Shelby's Folly: Jack Dempsey, Doc Kearns, and the Shakedown of a Montana Boomtown - Paperback

$16.95

by Jason Kelly (Author)In 1923, not long after oil had started gushing from northern Montana fields, declining real-estate sales in nearby Shelby were dimming the little town's prospects of becoming the "Tulsa of the West." Then the mayor's son dreamed up a marketing ploy: offer to host heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey's next fight. What began as a publicity stunt soon spiraled into a civic drama unlike any Montana had ever seen. Shelby's Folly tells this story in full for the first time. Ag...

Wins, Losses, and Empty Seats: How Baseball Outlasted the Great Depression - Paperback

$48.60

by David George Surdam (Author)Organized baseball has survived its share of difficult times, and never was the state of the game more imperiled than during the Great Depression. Or was it? Remarkably, during the economic upheavals of the Depression none of the sixteen Major League Baseball teams folded or moved. In this economist's look at the sport as a business between 1929 and 1941, David George Surdam argues that although it was a very tough decade for baseball, the downturn didn't happen...

Football Revolution: The Rise of the Spread Offense and How It Transformed College Football - Paperback

$21.95

by Bart Wright (Author)For the last twenty-five years, the most dominant offensive strategy in college football has been the spread offense, which relies on empty backfields, lots of receivers and passing, and no huddles between plays. Where the spread offense started, why it took so long to take hold, and the evolution of its many variations are the much-debated mysteries that Bart Wright sets about solving in this book.Football Revolution recovers a key, overlooked, part of the story. The b...

I Grew Up with Basketball: Twenty Years of Barnstorming with Cage Greats of Yesterday - Paperback

$18.95

by Frank J. Basloe (Author), D. Gordon Rohman (Author), Michael A. Antonucci (Introduction by) Frank J. Basloe grew up in Herkimer, New York, where YMCA director Lambert Will developed the game of basketball. Basloe's classic memoir, I Grew Up with Basketball, offers an eyewitness account of the humble roots of the imposing enterprise that is professional basketball today. At age sixteen, Basloe began his career as a promoter and managed several teams that regularly toured New York, New Engla...

A Game of Brawl: The Orioles, the Beaneaters, and the Battle for the 1897 Pennant - Paperback

$24.95

by Bill Felber (Author), Edward M. Kennedy (Foreword by)Not only was it probably the most cutthroat pennant race in baseball history, it was also a struggle to define how baseball would be played. Game of Brawl re-creates the rowdy, season-long 1897 battle between the Baltimore Orioles and the Boston Beaneaters. The Orioles had acquired a reputation as the dirtiest team in baseball. Future Hall of Famers John McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler, and "Foxy" Ned Hanlon were proven winners-but their nasty...

Miracle Collapse: The 1969 Chicago Cubs - Paperback

$19.95

by Doug Feldmann (Author), Don Kessinger (Foreword by) Civil unrest at home, war abroad, and political uncertainty gripped the nation as the 1970s approached. In the summer of 1969, as a tumultuous decade of American history neared its end, Major League Baseball presented sports fans with a thrilling distraction: a pennant race that pitted the Chicago Cubs, those much-loved perennial also-rans, against the defending National League champs, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the upstart New York Me...

Home Team: The Turbulent History of the San Francisco Giants - Hardcover

$29.95

by Robert F. Garratt (Author) In 1957 Horace Stoneham took his Giants of New York baseball team and headed west, starting a gold rush with bats and balls rather than pans and mines. But San Francisco already had a team, the Seals of the Pacific Coast League, and West Coast fans did not immediately embrace the newcomers. Starting with the franchise's earliest days and following the team up to recent World Series glory, Home Team chronicles the story of the Giants and their often topsy-turvy r...

$23.71

by Red Barber (Author), Robert W. Creamer (With), Bob Edwards (Afterword by)For more than fifty years Red Barber was the voice of baseball. The game was broadcast sporadically until the late 1930s, when Barber burst into prominence by bringing it home to radio listeners, play by play. More than half a century later, he could still be heard, broadcasting over National Public Radio from his retirement home in Tallahassee. Announcing for the Brooklyn Dodgers and later for the New York Yankees, h...

$19.95

by Leroy Paige (Author), David Lipman (Afterword by), John B. Holway (Introduction by)"Not only was Satchel Paige an amazing athlete, he was one of the great American humorists in the tradition of Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and Yogi Berra. The most famous Black player of his era shines through the pages of this remarkable autobiography."--John B. HolwaySatchel Paige was forty-two years old in 1948 when he became the first Black pitcher in the American League. Although the oldest rookie around, ...

Pitchers of Beer: The Story of the Seattle Rainiers - Paperback

$24.95

by Dan Raley (Author)In 1937, when local beer baron Emil Sick stepped in, the Seattle Indians were a struggling minor-league baseball team teetering on collapse. Moved to mix baseball and beer by his good friend and fellow brewer, New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, Sick built a new stadium and turned the team into a civic treasure. The Rainiers (newly named after the beer) set attendance records and won Pacific Coast League titles in 1939, '40, '41, '51, and '55. The story of the Rainiers ...

Bridging Two Dynasties: The 1947 New York Yankees - Paperback

$29.95

by Lyle Spatz (Author), Society for American Baseball Research (Author)Of all the New York Yankees championship teams, the 1947 club seemed the least likely. Bridging the gap between the dynasties of Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel, the team, managed by Bucky Harris, was coming off three non-pennant-winning seasons and given little chance to unseat the defending American League champion Boston Red Sox. And yet, led by Joe DiMaggio, this un-Yankees-like squad of rookies, retreads, and a few sol...

Rockne: The Coach, the Man, the Legend - Paperback

$21.55

by Jerry Brondfield (Author), Jay Atkinson (Introduction by) On April 1, 1931, newspapers in all parts of the country announced in giant headlines that Knute Rockne had died in a plane crash in Kansas. Who was Rockne, age forty-three, to receive all this attention? As head coach of the Notre Dame football team, he was a celebrity whose face and voice were familiar to millions through magazines, newspapers, and radio. At Notre Dame, he himself had been a great football player. After graduatio...

The Best of All Seasons: Fifty Years as a Montana Hunter - Paperback

$21.55

by Dan Aadland (Author)Since first learning to handle a Winchester .22 as a kid, Dan Aadland has exulted in hunting-not as a sport but as a calling. In this book he takes readers to Montana's prairies and mountains in search of antelope, whitetail deer, moose, and the occasional upland bird as he vividly describes the rituals and camaraderie of hunting culture. In fifteen essays recounting a lifetime of adventures, Aadland spins tales of a hunter whose years have been enriched by pursuing gam...

Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years - Paperback

$16.95

by Robert W. Peterson (Author)Basketball is now over a century old. Cages to Jump Shots offers an unforgettable glimpse of its exciting and eccentric early years, beginning in 1891 when James Naismith drew up the first rules, through decades of growing popularity and professionalism, and culminating with its fundamental transformation in the 1950s, when the twenty-four-second shot clock and team foul limit were instituted. Along the way we learn about all those who were drawn to the game-play...

$19.95

by Mark Harris (Author), Mark Harris (Introduction by)Henry Wiggen, hero of The Southpaw and the best-known fictional baseball player in America, is back again, throwing a baseball "with his arm and his brain and his memory and his bluff for the sake of his pocket and his family." More than a novel about baseball, Bang the Drum Slowly is about the friendship and the lives of a group of men as they each learn that a teammate is dying of cancer. Bang the Drum Slowly was chosen as one of the top...

The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House - Hardcover

$39.95

by Curt Smith (Author)The Presidents and the Pastime draws on Curt Smith's extensive background as a former White House presidential speechwriter to chronicle the historic relationship between baseball, the "most American" sport, and the U.S. presidency. Smith, who USA TODAY calls "America's voice of authority on baseball broadcasting," starts before America's birth, when would-be presidents played baseball antecedents. He charts how baseball cemented its reputation as America's pastime in t...

The California Golden Seals: A Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the Nhl's Most Outlandish Teams - Hardcover

$39.95

by Steve Currier (Author)Hockey has had its share of bizarre tales over the years, but none compares to the fascinating story of the California Golden Seals, a team that remains the benchmark for how not to run a sports franchise. From 1967 to 1978, a revolving door of players, apathetic owners, and ridiculous marketing decisions turned the Seals, originally based in Oakland, into hockey's traveling circus. The team lost tons of money and games, cheated death more often than Evel Knievel, and...

Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime, and Complicity - Paperback

$19.95

by Ken Armstrong (Author), Nick Perry (Author)The adjectives associated with the University of Washington's 2000 football season-mystical, magical, miraculous-changed when Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry's four-part exposé of the 2000 Huskies hit the newspaper stands: "explosive . . . chilling" (Sports Illustrated), "blistering" (Baltimore Sun), "shocking . . . appalling" (Tacoma News Tribune), "astounding" (ESPN), "jaw-dropping" (Orlando Sentinel). Now, in Scoreboard, Baby, Armstrong and Perry ...