Download or read book The Greatest Summer in Baseball History written by John Rosengren and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2023-04-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The vivid story of a young Reggie Jackson on Charlie Finley's A's and the veteran Willie Mays on Yogi's Mets, both destined for the '73 series." —Library Journal A rousing chronicle of one of the most defining years in baseball history that changed the sport forever. In 1973, baseball was in crisis. The first strike in pro sports had soured fans, American League attendance had fallen, and America's team—the Yankees—had lost more games and money than ever. Yet that season, five of the game's greatest figures rescued the national pastime. Hank Aaron riveted the nation with his pursuit of Babe Ruth's landmark home run record in the face of racist threats. George Steinbrenner purchased the Yankees at a bargain basement price and began buying back their faded glory. The American League broke ranks with the National League and introduced the designated hitter, extending the careers of aging stars such as Orlando Cepeda. An elderly and ailing Willie Mays—the icon of an earlier generation—nearly helped the Mets pull off a miracle with the final hit of his career. Reggie Jackson, the MVP of a tense World Series, became the prototype of the modern superstar. The season itself provided plenty of drama served up by a colorful cast of characters, including the Mets rise from last place to win the division under Yogi Berra's leadership, Pete Rose edging out Willie Stargell as the MVP in a controversial vote, Hank Aaron chasing Babe Ruth's landmark record in the face of racial threats, Reggie Jackson solidifying his reputation as Mr. October, Willie Mays hitting the final home run of his career, and future Hall of Famers Dave Winfield and George Brett playing in their first major league games. That one memorable summer changed baseball forever. Originally published as Hammerin' Hank, George Almighty and the Say Hey Kid. "It's a season-ticket to one of the greatest years in baseball history. John Rosengren has given us one of the most enjoyable baseball books to come along in years." –Jonathan Eig, author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season

Download or read book Greatest Summer in Baseball History written by John Rosengren and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1973, baseball was in crisis. The first strike in pro sports had soured fans, game attendance had fallen, and America's team the Yankees had lost more games and money than ever. Baseball was facing a bust. Yet, five of baseball's greatest figures saved the sport and returned it to its pedestal as America's pastime. Powerhouse Hank Aaron surprised the nation by beating Babe Ruth's home run record in the face of racist threats. George Steinbrenner purchased the Yankees at a bargain and bought back their faded glory. The introduction of the designated hitter divided the American League and the National leagued but extended the careers of senior players such as Orlando Cepeda. An elderly and ailing Willie Mays nearly helped the Mets pulls off a miracle with the final swing of his career. And, Reggie Jackson, the MVP of a tense World Series game, became the prototype for the modern superstar. They changed baseball forever"--

Download or read book Summer of 68 written by Tim Wendel and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a year shaped by national tragedy, baseball was shaped by amazing pitching--culminating in a victory by a Detroit Tigers team that faced off against Bob Gibson's St. Louis Cardinals, the 1967 World Series defending champions.

Download or read book Memories of Summer written by Roger Kahn and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed baseball writer Roger Kahn gives us a memoir of his Brooklyn childhood, a recollection of a life in journalism, and a record of personal acquaintance with the greatest ballplayers of several eras. His father had a passion for the Dodgers; his mother?s passion was for poetry. Somehow, young Roger managed to blend both loves in a career that encompassed writing about sports for the New York Herald Tribune, Sports Illustrated, the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and Time. Kahn recalls the great personalities of a golden era?Leo Durocher, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Red Smith, Dick Young, and many more?and recollects the wittiest lines from forty years in dugouts, press boxes, and newsrooms. Often hilarious, always precise about action on the field and off, Memories of Summer is an enduring classic about how baseball met literature to the benefit of both.

Download or read book Baseball Dynasties written by Rob Neyer and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2000 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assesses the top fifteen baseball teams of the twentieth century, including such legendary squads as the 1927 Yankees and the 1970 Orioles, to determine which team was the greatest of the modern era.

Download or read book The Boys of Summer written by Roger Kahn and published by Aurum. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the colour barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is a book about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory days were behind them. In short, it is a book fathers and sons and about the making of modern America. 'At a point in life when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams.' Sentimental because it holds such promise, and bittersweet because that promise is past, the first sentence of this masterpiece of sporting literature, first published in the early '70s, sets its tone. The team is the mid-20th-century Brooklyn Dodgers, the team of Robinson and Snyder and Hodges and Reese, a team of great triumph and historical import composed of men whose fragile lives were filled with dignity and pathos. Roger Kahn, who covered that team for the New York Herald Tribune, makes understandable humans of his heroes as he chronicles the dreams and exploits of their young lives, beautifully intertwining them with his own, then recounts how so many of those sweet dreams curdled as the body of these once shining stars grew rusty with age and battered by experience.

Download or read book Voices of Summer written by Curt Smith and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author compiles a list of the top 101 sports announcers, focusing on their coverage of the greatest moments in the game, from the Bobby Thompson "Shot Heard 'Round the World" to the 1988 World Series, covering Dick Enberg, Harry Caray, Mel Allen, and Ernie Harwell, among other announcers. Original.

Download or read book Crazy 08 written by Cait N. Murphy and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crazy ’08 is simply a delight, required reading for all fans of baseball in Chicago. — --Chicago Tribune “If you are any kind of fan, you ought to relish and revel in this wonderful book” — --Washington Times A penetrating look at the dead-ball era, when the game truly was the national pastime. A- — --Entertainment Weekly “picturesque details are what make...Crazy ‘08 such a fun and revealing journey through the early days of baseball.” — --Sports Illustrated “Entertaining and meticulously researched.” — Wall Street Journal “Beguiling” — Raleigh News & Observer “[A] rollicking tour... will fascinate students of baseball... cause today’s Cub fans to experience an unaccustomed feeling---pride...” — New York Times Book Review “[W]orthy to stand alongside The Glory of Their Times..., out in front.” — Raleigh News & Observer

Download or read book Seasons in Hell written by Mike Shropshire and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A funny, revealing, Ball Four–like romp through mid-seventies baseball” from the longtime sports columnist and author of The Last Real Season (Booklist). You think your team is bad? In this “disastrously hilarious” work on one of the most tortured franchises in baseball, one reporter discovers that nine innings can feel like an eternity (USA Today). In early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire agreed to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, not realizing that the Rangers were arguably the worst team in baseball history. Seasons in Hell is a riotous, candid, irreverent behind-the-scenes account in the tradition of The Bronx Zoo and Ball Four, following the Texas Rangers from Whitey Herzog’s reign in 1973 through Billy Martin’s tumultuous tenure. Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique (and likely never-to-be-seen-again) baseball personalities, Seasons in Hell recounts some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game and brings to life the no-holds-barred culture of major league baseball in the mid-seventies. “The single funniest sports book I have ever read.”—Don Imus “The locker-room shenanigans of a lousy team of the 1970s.”—Publishers Weekly

Download or read book Breaking the Slump written by Charles C. Alexander and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breaking the Slump is the story of baseball during the 1930s when the National Pastime came of age as a business, an entertainment, and a passion, and when the teams of the American and National Leagues fielded perhaps the greatest rosters in the history of the game. Whether as rookies, stars in their prime, or legends on the wane, Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Dizzy Dean, Ted Williams, and Joe DiMaggio all left their mark on the game and on the American imagination in the decade before America's entry into World War II. In one remarkable year, 1934, the entire starting lineup of the American League All-Stars consisted of future Hall of Famers. This surfeit of talent provided much-needed entertainment to a nation struggling through economic hardship on an enormous scale.

Download or read book Swinging 73 written by Matthew Silverman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest and attendance were dropping, and football was ascending. Stuck in a rut, baseball was dying. Then Steinbrenner bought the Yankees, a second-division club with wife-swapping pitchers, leaving the House That Ruth Built not with a slam but a simper. He vowed not to interfere—before soon changing his mind. Across town, Tom Seaver led the Mets’ stellar pitching line-up, and iconic outfielder Willie Mays was preparing to say goodbye. For months, the Mets, under Yogi Berra, couldn’t get it right. Meanwhile, the A’s were breaking a ban on facial hair while maverick owner Charlie Finley was fighting to keep them underpaid. But beneath the muttonchops and mayhem, lay another world. Elvis commanded a larger audience than the Apollo landings. A Dodge Dart cost $2,800, gas was a quarter per gallon. A fiscal crisis loomed; Vietnam had ended, the vice president resigned, and Watergate had taken over. It was one of the most exciting years in the game’s history, the first with the designated hitter and the last before arbitration and free agency. The two World Series opponents went head-to-head above the baby steps of a dynasty that soon dwarfed both league champions. It was a turbulent time for the country and the game, neither of which would ever be the same again.

Download or read book Baseball written by George Vecsey and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the great bards of America's Grand Old Game gives a rousing account ofbaseball, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day.

Download or read book The Baseball Whisperer written by Michael Tackett and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2016-07-05 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Field of Dreams was only superficially about baseball. It was really about life. So is The Baseball Whisperer . . . with the added advantage of being all true.” —MLB.com From an award-winning journalist, this is the story of a legendary coach and the professional-caliber baseball program he built in America's heartland, where boys would come summer after summer to be molded into ballplayers—and men. Clarinda, Iowa, population 5,000, sits two hours from anything. There, between the cornfields and hog yards, is a ball field with a bronze bust of a man named Merl Eberly, who specialized in second chances and lost causes. The statue was a gift from one of Merl’s original long-shot projects, a skinny kid from the Los Angeles ghetto who would one day become a beloved Hall-of-Fame shortstop: Ozzie Smith. The Baseball Whisperer traces the “deeply engrossing” story (Booklist, starred review) of Merl Eberly and his Clarinda A’s baseball team, which he tended over the course of five decades, transforming them from a town team to a collegiate summer league powerhouse. Along with Ozzie Smith, future manager Bud Black, and star player Von Hayes, Merl developed scores of major league players. In the process, he taught them to be men, insisting on hard work, integrity, and responsibility. More than a book about ballplayers in the nation’s agricultural heartland, The Baseball Whisperer is the story of a coach who put character and dedication first, reminding us of the best, purest form of baseball excellence. “Mike Tackett, talented journalist and baseball lover, has hit the sweet spot of the bat with his first book. The Baseball Whisperer takes one coach and one small Iowa town and illuminates both a sport and the human spirit.” —David Maraniss, New York Times-bestselling author of Clemente and When Pride Still Mattered

Download or read book Summer of 98 written by Mike Lupica and published by Putnam Adult. This book was released on 1999 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tale of the season of competition between McGwire and Sosa to break the hitting record.

Download or read book Alone in the Trenches written by Esera Tuaolo and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-06-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is Esera Tuaolo's own searing story of terror and hope. A Samoan raised on a Hawaiian banana plantation, he had a natural talent, football. He went on to play for five NFL teams: the Green Bay Packers, the Minnesota Vikings, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Carolina Panthers, and the Atlanta Falcons in the 1999 Super Bowl. But for the nine years he played professional football he lived in terror that when his face flashed upon the TV screen, someone would divulge his darkest secret. Esera Tuaolo is gay. Alone in the Trenches takes you inside the homophobic world of professional football and describes fears that almost drove him to suicide. He evokes heartbreak--how his older brother, Tua, died of AIDS--and hope when, Esera, a deeply devout Christian fell in love and started a family. "Tuaolo emerges in these pages as a complex, intellectually curious and fascinating individual defined neither by his choice of career nor by his sexual orientation." --Booklist "Tough, tender and brutally honest." --Robert Lipsyte, former New York Times sports columnist "Even I was not prepared for his amazing life story." --Billy Bean, author of Going the Other Way

Download or read book A Clean Heart written by John Rosengren and published by Mango Media Inc.. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Novel of Redemption from Addiction and a Broken Family “A Clean Heart picks at the knot of addiction and recovery insistently and with a wholesomeness intriguingly at odds with its subject. I enjoyed this book.” –Thomas Beller, author of The Sleep-Over Artist Carter Kirchner struggles to stay sane and sober as a counselor at Six West, an adolescent drug treatment center run by Sister Mary Xavier, a hard-drinking nun with an MBA. The young Kirchner is caught between Sister Mary’s plan to rescue the center by reforming a hard-case kid and the dysfunctional staff’s clumsy plan to intervene on their boss’s drinking. Meanwhile, Carter’s mother?who never forgave him for giving up a promising hockey career to treat his own addiction?lands in the hospital with an advanced case of cirrhosis. Before Carter can help the young addict commissioned to his care or safely navigate the staff’s dysfunctional intervention effort, he must rescue himself from his family’s broken past. A Clean Heart is a novel by John Rosengren, a writer and recent nominee for a Pulitzer Prize who knows the territory of addiction. He went through treatment at age 17 and has been clean and sober since 1981. He also worked in adolescent treatment centers when he was younger. John Rosengren’s articles have appeared in more than 100 publications, including The Atlantic, New Yorker, Reader’s Digest, Sports Illustrated, and Utne Reader. If you are a fan of the 2018 films Ben is Back or David Sheff’s Beautiful Boy or have read addiction memoirs such as If You Love Me or We All Fall Down, you will love reading John Rosengren’s A Clean Heart.

Download or read book Shadows of Summer written by Donald Honig and published by Penguin Putnam. This book was released on 1994 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every baseball fan or collector will thrill to this oversized, magnificently produced volume. Beautiful and evocative full-color and duotone photographs of legendary parks, players, and moments bring to life the glorious past of the quintessential American game.