Download or read book Barnstorming to Heaven written by Alan J. Pollock and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Indianapolis Clowns, sometimes referred to as the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball, they captured the affection of Americans of all ethnicities and classes
Download or read book Sisters of Heaven written by Patti Gully and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1930s, as the world moved closer to war, three vivacious Chinese women defied gender perceptions by becoming pilots. Driven by a fierce independent spirit, they realized their dream of flying, completed barnstorming goodwill missions across the Western Hemisphere, and captured the imagination of all those whose lives they touched. They were Hilda Yan, once China's representative at the League of Nations; Li Xiaqing, known as film actress Li Dandan before becoming China's "First Woman of the Air"; and Jessie Zheng, the only commissioned female officer in the Chinese Air Force. In a story almost forgotten to history, Patti Gully's exhaustive research delves into the personal lives of these women, uncovering their fascinating personalities, loves, passions, and above all their overwhelming sense of patriotism and duty. In a time when no Chinese woman could even drive a car, these aviatrixes used flight as a metaphor for their own freedom as well as a symbol of empowerment. Gully shows how, despite their success, their relationships with men were checkered and stormy, leaving behind the wreckage of broken marriages and the children they abandoned--the price they ultimately paid to realize their dream of flying. With an uncanny eye for detail and technical accuracy, Sisters of Heaven offers a rare look at a lost era in aviation history, gender studies, and the history of China and the West. Patti Gully is a graduate of the University of Winnipeg. She holds a BA in arts with an emphasis on English, religious studies, and classics. She also holds an MLIS from the University of British Columbia. She is an amateur pilot and aviation history scholar and lives in Vancouver.
Download or read book The Golem s Mighty Swing written by James Sturm and published by Drawn & Quarterly. This book was released on 2021-04-16 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new edition of the classic tale of a barnstorming Jewish baseball team during the Great Depression Before penning his acclaimed graphic novel Market Day and founding the Center for Cartoon Studies, James Sturm proved his worth as a master cartoonist with the eloquent graphic novel, The Golem’s Mighty Swing, one of the first breakout graphic novel hits of the twenty-first century. Sturm’s fascination with the invisible America has been the crux of his comics work, exploring the rarely-told or oft-forgotten bits of history that define a country. By reuniting America’s greatest pastime with its hidden history, the graphic novel tells the story of the Stars of David, a barnstorming Jewish baseball team of the depression era. Led by its manager and third baseman, the nomadic team travels from small town to small town providing the thrill of the sport while playing up their religious exoticism as a curio for people to gawk at, heckle, and taunt. When the team’s fortunes fall, the players are presented a plan to get people in the stands. But by placing their fortunes in the hands of a promoter, the Stars of David find themselves fanning the flames of ethnic tensions. Sturm’s nuanced composition is on full display as he deftly builds the climax of the game against the rising anti-semitic fervor of the crowd. Baseball, small towns, racial tensions, and the desperate grasp for the American Dream: The Golem’s Mighty Swing is a classic American novel.
Download or read book Cardinal Dreams written by Danny Spewak and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of one of the first Black players for the St. Louis Cardinals, who dreamed of leaving a lasting impact on Major League Baseball. Charlie Peete was poised for greatness. After a meteoric rise through the minor leagues, the rookie outfielder appeared in twenty-three games for the St. Louis Cardinals during the summer of 1956 and established himself as one of the best prospects in the organization—until a cruel twist of fate intervened. On his way to Venezuela to compete in a winter baseball league, Peete and his family died in a plane crash near Caracas. Nearly seven decades later, Cardinal Dreams revitalizes the legacy of Charlie Peete with the most comprehensive account to date of his remarkable life, including personal interviews with those who knew him and played with him. Raised under Jim Crow laws in southeastern Virginia, Peete broke into professional baseball in 1950 with the Negro American League’s Indianapolis Clowns, served his country admirably for two years in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, returned home to help integrate the Class B Piedmont League with the Portsmouth Merrimacs, and then climbed to the top of the St. Louis Cardinals organization at a time of rapid change under new ownership. Had Peete not lost his life in that plane crash, he likely would have become the first Black position player in franchise history to earn a permanent starting job. Charlie Peete’s death stunned the St. Louis Cardinals and left the baseball world to forever wonder what his career might have become. But, despite his premature and tragic ending, Peete changed the world for the better—and left a lasting impact on the sport he spent his life pursuing.
Download or read book Bill Veeck written by Paul Dickson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on primary sources and more than 100 interviews in a richly detailed portrait of the influential baseball team owner and promoter, providing coverage of such topics as his relationships with his Chicago Cubs president father, his struggles with formidable war injuries and his steadfast advocacy of integration. 40,000 first printing.
Download or read book Cuban Star written by Adrian Burgos and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shares the story of Negro League team owner Alex Pompez's founding of a notorious Harlem numbers racket as part of his efforts to finance the New York Cubans, describing his role in retaining the team throughout integration, transitioning players to the majors, and achieving a Negro League World Series Championship.
Download or read book The Set Up Men written by Sarah L. Trembanis and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-07-25 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an examination of cultural resistance to segregation in the world of black baseball through an analysis of editorial art, folktales, nicknames, "manhood" and the art of clowning. African Americans worked to dismantle Jim Crow through the creation of a cultural counter-narrative that centered on baseball and the Negro Leagues that celebrated black achievement and that highlighted the contradictions and fallacies of white supremacy in the first half of the twentieth century.
Download or read book A Game of Inches written by Peter Morris and published by Ivan R. Dee. This book was released on 2006-03-23 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating and charming encyclopedic collection of baseball firsts, describing how the innovations in the game—in rules, equipment, styles of play, strategies, etc.—occurred and developed from its origins to the present day. The book relies heavily on quotations from contemporary sources.
Download or read book J L Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs written by William A. Young and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-11-21 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball pioneer J. L. Wilkinson (1878-1964) was the owner and founder, in 1920, of the famed Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. The only white owner in the Negro National League (NNL), Wilkinson earned a reputation for treating players with fairness and respect. He began his career in Iowa as a player, later organizing a traveling women's team in 1908 and the multiracial All-Nations club in 1912. He led the Monarchs to two Negro Leagues World Series championships and numerous pennants in the NNL and the Negro American League. During the Depression he developed an ingenious portable lighting system for night games, credited with saving black baseball. He resurrected the career of legendary pitcher Satchel Paige in 1938 and in 1945 signed a rookie named Jackie Robinson to the Monarchs. Wilkinson was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006, joining 14 Monarchs players.
Download or read book The Winged Gospel written by Joseph J. Corn and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring these early years of aviation, Joseph Corn describes the fascinating, and often bizarre, plans for the future of manned flight and brings back to life the famous and lesser-known aviators who became American heroes.
Download or read book Almost Heaven written by Doc Fletcher and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2023-08-10 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: December 2055... a baseball-fanatic, 101-year-old man, dies and goes to heaven. Beyond blessed by being reunited with loved ones who have gone before, and meeting the two Guardian Angels who ushered him during his time on earth, he is embraced by The Other Side's peaceful, gentle, majestic, comforting, loving, and awe-inspiring beauty. As wonderful as it all is, including seeing Beethoven & Hendrix perform together on stage (John Prine the opening act), to paddle endless winding rivers with a back that never aches, play in baseball games that joyfully run for days yet never tire, it is the opportunity to be sent back to earth by Saint Peter for a decade-long (1911 through 1920) "human experience" that is most intriguing: with the opportunity to see, arguably, the greatest baseball player of them all, Ty Cobb, in action - viewed by a Tiger fan born 3 decades after Cobb retired. "Almost Heaven" takes you back to the 1910s, a decade that began with major league baseball teams constructing the first steel & concrete stadiums to replace their old wooden ballparks, and ends as the dead ball era of Detroit Tigers Ty Cobb & Wahoo Sam Crawford begins its metamorphosis into the live ball era of home run king Babe Ruth. The dead ball era (through 1919) was an era noted for its scientific / small ball approach, when teams played for one run at a time by out-thinking the foe, bunting, stealing bases, "hittin' 'em where they ain't", creating a mental hazard for the opposition by doing the unexpected – and Ty Cobb was its leading practitioner.
Download or read book Bushville Wins written by John Klima and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rip-roaring story of baseball's most unlikely champions, featuring interviews with Henry Aaron, Bob Uecker and other members of the Milwaukee Braves, Bushville Wins! takes you to a time and place baseball and the Heartland will never forget. "Bushville hits the sweet spot of my childhood, the year my family moved to Wisconsin and the Braves won the World Series against the Yankees, a team my Brooklyn-raised dad taught us to hate. Thanks to John Klima for bringing it all back to life with such vivid detail and energetic writing." -- David Maraniss, New York Times bestselling author of Clemente and When Pride Still Mattered In the early 1950s, the New York Yankees were the biggest bullies on the block. They were invincible: they led the New York City baseball dynasty, which for eight consecutive years held an iron grip on the World Series championship. Then the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953, becoming surprise revolutionaries. Led by visionary owner Lou Perini, the Braves formed a powerful relationship with the Miller Brewing Company and foreshadowed the Dodgers and Giants moving west, sparking continental expansion and the ballpark boom. But the rest of the country wasn't sold. Why would a major league team move to a minor league town? In big cities like New York, Milwaukee was thought to be a podunk train station stop-off where the fans were always drunk and wouldn't know a baseball from a beer. They called Milwaukee Bushville. The Braves were no bushers! Eddie Mathews was a handsome home run hitter with a rugged edge. Warren Spahn was the craftiest pitcher in the business. Lew Burdette was a sharky spitball artist. Taken together, the Braves reveled in the High Life and made Milwaukee famous, while Wisconsin fans showed the rest of the country how to crack a cold one and throw a tailgate party. And in 1954, a solemn and skinny slugger came from Mobile to Milwaukee. Henry Aaron began his march to history. With a cast of screwballs, sluggers and beer swiggers, the Braves proved the guys at the corner bar could do the impossible - topple Casey Stengel's New York baseball dynasty in a World Series for the ages.
Download or read book Of Monarchs and Black Barons written by James A. Riley and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first African American to play in baseball's recognized major leagues, William Edward White, appeared in 1879, followed by brothers Fleetwood and Welday Walker in 1884. The fourth African American, Jackie Robinson, did not make his major league debut until 1947. This sixty-three year gap has become known as the era of "black baseball"--a time when two generations of African American players were excluded from the existing major leagues. This anthology provides insights into black baseball during this extraordinary time, spotlighting players who characterized its special flavor and spirit. Based on 40 years of research and hundreds of interviews with surviving participants and observers, these essays preserve a crucial time ifn our country's history and provide a thoughtful perspective on the Negro Leagues.
Download or read book Satch Dizzy and Rapid Robert written by Timothy M. Gay and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball in 1947, black and white ballplayers had been playing against one another for decades—even, on rare occasions, playing with each other. Interracial contests took place during the off-season, when major leaguers and Negro Leaguers alike fattened their wallets by playing exhibitions in cities and towns across America. These barnstorming tours reached new heights, however, when Satchel Paige and other African- American stars took on white teams headlined by the irrepressible Dizzy Dean. Lippy and funny, a born showman, the native Arkansan saw no reason why he shouldn’t pitch against Negro Leaguers. Paige, who feared no one and chased a buck harder than any player alive, instantly recognized the box-office appeal of competing against Dizzy Dean’s "All-Stars." Paige and Dean both featured soaring leg kicks and loved to mimic each other’s style to amuse fans. Skin color aside, the dirt-poor Southern pitchers had much in common. Historian Timothy M. Gay has unearthed long-forgotten exhibitions where Paige and Dean dueled, and he tells the story of their pioneering escapades in this engaging book. Long before they ever heard of Robinson or Larry Doby, baseball fans from Brooklyn to Enid, Oklahoma, watched black and white players battle on the same diamond. With such Hall of Fame teammates as Josh Gibson, Turkey Stearnes, Mule Suttles, Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell, and Bullet Joe Rogan, Paige often had the upper hand against Diz. After arm troubles sidelined Dean, a new pitching phenom, Bob Feller—Rapid Robert—assembled his own teams to face Paige and other blackballers. By the time Paige became Feller’s teammate on the Cleveland Indians in 1948, a rookie at age forty-two, Satch and Feller had barnstormed against each other for more than a decade. These often obscure contests helped hasten the end of Jim Crow baseball, paving the way for the game’s integration. Satchel Paige, Dizzy Dean, and Bob Feller never set out to make social history—but that’s precisely what happened. Tim Gay has brought this era to vivid and colorful life in a book that every baseball fan will embrace.
Download or read book Taste of Marrow written by Sarah Gailey and published by Tordotcom. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Campbell finalist Sarah Gailey's hippo mayhem continues in Taste of Marrow, the sequel to rollicking adventure River of Teeth. A few months ago, Winslow Houndstooth put together the damnedest crew of outlaws, assassins, cons, and saboteurs on either side of the Harriet for a history-changing caper. Together they conspired to blow the dam that choked the Mississippi and funnel the hordes of feral hippos contained within downriver, to finally give America back its greatest waterway. Songs are sung of their exploits, many with a haunting refrain: "And not a soul escaped alive." In the aftermath of the Harriet catastrophe, that crew has scattered to the winds. Some hunt the missing lovers they refuse to believe have died. Others band together to protect a precious infant and a peaceful future. All of them struggle with who they've become after a long life of theft, murder, deception, and general disinterest in the strictures of the law. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Barnstorm written by Raphael Kadushin and published by Terrace Books. This book was released on 2005-02-28 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though the best American writers live everywhere now, a popular fiction persists: our strongest literary voices are strictly bi-coastal ones. Barnstorm sets out to disprove that cliché and to undermine another one as well: the sense of regional fiction as something quaint, slightly regressive, and full of local color. The stories in this collection capture our global reality with a ruthless, unaffected voice. Lorrie Moore's "The Jewish Hunter" is a dark romance that's by turns cynical and guileless. Mack Friedman catches the smoking feel of first love in his "Setting the Lawn on Fire," and Jesse Lee Kercheval's "Brazil" is a raucous, ultimately mournful road trip. For Jane Hamilton, Wisconsin is a gorgeous but bittersweet homecoming, and for Kelly Cherry, in her achingly elegiac "As It Is in Heaven," it's the hopeful new world, juxtaposed with a bleak, tweedy England. Dwight Allen's "The Green Suit" evokes the young man edging toward adulthood, in a New York that's as flamboyant as an opera, and Tenaya Darlington, in her "A Patch of Skin," constructs a pure horror story, because the horror of loneliness is something we all know. Together Barnstorm's eclectic voices suggest that every coast now, even the Great Lakes' shores, are at the very center of our best, and truest, national literature. Not for sale in the United Kingdom.
Download or read book Black Baseball Black Business written by Roberta J. Newman and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014-03-03 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2014 Robert W. Peterson Award for Excellence in Negro League Research from the Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference, sponsored by Negro Leagues Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research Roberta J. Newman and Joel Nathan Rosen have written an authoritative social history of the Negro Leagues. This book examines how the relationship between black baseball and black businesses functioned, particularly in urban areas with significant African American populations—Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, and more. Inextricably bound together by circumstance, these sports and business alliances faced destruction and upheaval. Once Jackie Robinson and a select handful of black baseball’s elite gained acceptance in Major League Baseball and financial stability in the mainstream economy, shock waves traveled throughout the black business world. Though the economic impact on Negro League baseball is perhaps obvious due to its demise, the impact on other black-owned businesses and on segregated neighborhoods is often undervalued if not outright ignored in current accounts. There have been many books written on great individual players who played in the Negro Leagues and/or integrated the Major Leagues. But Newman and Rosen move beyond hagiography to analyze what happens when a community has its economic footing undermined while simultaneously being called upon to celebrate a larger social progress. In this regard, Black Baseball, Black Business moves beyond the diamond to explore baseball’s desegregation narrative in a critical and wide-ranging fashion.
