Download or read book The Kansas City A s the Wrong Half of the Yankees written by Jeff Katz and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The strange relationship between the Yankees and the A's

Download or read book The Kansas City Athletics written by John E. Peterson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-09-17 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Athletics spent thirteen seasons in Kansas City before moving to Oakland--a colorful history despite one of the worst records in baseball history. Even so, many of the players who were part of the world championship teams in Oakland in the 1970s began their careers in Kansas City. This work presents the relatively short history of the Kansas City franchise from 1954, when Arnold Johnson purchased the Philadelphia Athletics and moved the team to Kansas City because of the financial benefits the city provided, to 1967, when Charles Finley moved the team to Oakland (after unsuccessful attempts to move it to Dallas, Atlanta, Louisville, Milwaukee and Seattle). In the 1950s, the team was called "a Yankee farm team" because of the numerous trades with the Yankees that favored the latter. The author re-evaluates these trades and concludes that they were not as one-sided as previously thought and really did benefit the team. The author also carefully considers Charles Finley's intentions to keep the team in Kansas City and his reasons for having to move them to Oakland.

Download or read book The Kansas City Monarchs written by Janet Bruce and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated study of the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the top teams in the Negro National League, which served as a training ground for Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, and over twenty other players who were eventually sent to the major leagues.

Download or read book Finley Ball written by Nancy Finley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of a losing baseball team that became a 1970s dynasty, thanks to the unorthodox strategies and stunts of two very colorful men. When Charlie Finley bought the A's in 1960, he was an outsider to the game—a insurance businessman with a larger-than-life personality. He brought his cousin Carl on as his right-hand man, moved the team from Kansas City to Oakland, and pioneered a new way to put together a winning team. With legendary players like Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Vida Blue, the Finleys' Oakland A's won three straight World Series and riveted the nation. Now Carl Finley's daughter Nancy reveals the whole story behind her family's winning legacy—how her father and uncle developed their scouting strategy, why they employed odd gimmicks like orange baseballs and "mustache bonuses," and how the success of the '70s Oakland A's changed the game of baseball.

Download or read book The A s written by David M. Jordan and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-02-10 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a straightforward history of the Athletics franchise, from its Connie Mack years in Philadelphia with teams featuring Eddie Collins, Chief Bender, Jimmy Foxx, Mickey Cochrane and Lefty Grove, through its 13 years in Kansas City, under Arnold Johnson and Charles O. Finley, and on to its great years in Oakland--with the three World Series wins featuring Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando and Vida Blue, and the conflicts with Finley--as well as the less successful seasons that followed, then the Series sweep in 1989, and ending up with the unusual operation of the club by Billy Beane.

Download or read book The Baseball 100 written by Joe Posnanski and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Winner of the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year “An instant sports classic.” —New York Post * “Stellar.” —The Wall Street Journal * “A true masterwork…880 pages of sheer baseball bliss.” —BookPage (starred review) * “This is a remarkable achievement.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A magnum opus from acclaimed baseball writer Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100 is an audacious, singular, and masterly book that took a lifetime to write. The entire story of baseball rings through a countdown of the 100 greatest players in history, with a foreword by George Will. Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,? The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski. In the book’s introduction, Pulitzer Prize–winning commentator George F. Will marvels, “Posnanski must already have lived more than two hundred years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?” Baseball’s legends come alive in these pages, which are not merely rankings but vibrant profiles of the game’s all-time greats. Posnanski dives into the biographies of iconic Hall of Famers, unfairly forgotten All-Stars, talents of today, and more. He doesn’t rely just on records and statistics—he lovingly retraces players’ origins, illuminates their characters, and places their accomplishments in the context of baseball’s past and present. Just how good a pitcher is Clayton Kershaw in the 21st-century game compared to Greg Maddux dueling with the juiced hitters of the nineties? How do the career and influence of Hank Aaron compare to Babe Ruth’s? Which player in the top ten most deserves to be resurrected from history? No compendium of baseball’s legendary geniuses could be complete without the players of the segregated Negro Leagues, men whose extraordinary careers were largely overlooked by sportswriters at the time and unjustly lost to history. Posnanski writes about the efforts of former Negro Leaguers to restore sidelined Black athletes to their due honor and draws upon the deep troves of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and extensive interviews with the likes of Buck O’Neil to illuminate the accomplishments of players such as pitchers Satchel Paige and Smokey Joe Williams; outfielders Oscar Charleston, Monte Irvin, and Cool Papa Bell; first baseman Buck Leonard; shortstop Pop Lloyd; catcher Josh Gibson; and many, many more. The Baseball 100 treats readers to the whole rich pageant of baseball history in a single volume. Engrossing, surprising, and heartfelt, it is a magisterial tribute to the game of baseball and the stars who have played it.

Download or read book Charlie Finley written by Roger D. Launius and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-07-11 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the "Bronx Zoo" of George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin, there were the Oakland Athletics of the early 1970s, one of the most successful, most colorful-and most chaotic-baseball teams of all time. They were all of those things because of Charlie Finley. Not only the A's owner, he was also the general manager, personally assembling his team, deciding his players' salaries, and making player moves during the season-a level of involvement no other owner, not even Steinbrenner, engaged in. Drawing on interviews with dozens of Finley's players, family members, and colleagues, G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius present "Baseball's Super Showman" (Time magazine's description of Finley on the cover of an August 1975 issue) in all his contradictions: generous yet vengeful, inventive yet destructive. The stories surrounding him are as colorful as the life he led, the chronicle of which fills an important gap in baseball's literature.

Download or read book Field of Schemes written by Neil deMause and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2015-03 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dynastic Bombastic Fantastic written by Jason Turbow and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An exciting and engrossing book. . . . will engage fans of Charlie O. Finley and the Oakland Athletics, along with anyone captivated by baseball history.” —Library Journal, starred review The Oakland A’s of the early 1970s: Never before had an entire organization so collectively traumatized baseball’s establishment with its outlandish behavior and business decisions. The high drama that played out on the field—five straight division titles and three straight championships—was exceeded only by the drama in the clubhouse and front office. Under the visionary leadership of owner Charles O. Finley, the team assembled such luminary figures as Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, and Vida Blue, and with garish uniforms and revolutionary facial hair, knocked baseball into the modern age. Finley’s need for control—he was his own general manager and dictated everything from the ballpark organist’s playlist to the menu for the media lounge—made him ill-suited for the advent of free agency. Within two years, his dynasty was lost. A history of one of the game’s most unforgettable teams, Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic is a paean to the sport’s most turbulent, magical team, during one of major league baseball’s most turbulent, magical times. “Masterfully recounts a thrilling period in Oakland A’s history.” —Billy Beane, executive vice president of baseball operations, Oakland A’s “Not to be believed, and yet 100 percent true.” —Steve Fainaru, senior writer for ESPN and author of League of Denial “A must-read for any fan of the sport.” —Chris Ballard, Sports Illustrated senior writer and author of One Shot at Forever “Carefully researched and often hilarious.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A chance to relive a period of outlandish moments in America’s pastime.” —Publishers Weekly

Download or read book The Kansas City Athletics written by Ernest Mehl and published by . This book was released on 1956 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Moneyball The Art of Winning an Unfair Game written by Michael Lewis and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-03-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

Download or read book History of Kansas City Illustrated in Three Decades written by William Griffith and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book 100 Things A s Fans Should Know Do Before They Die written by Susan Slusser and published by Triumph Books. This book was released on 2015-06-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With traditions, records, and team lore, this lively, detailed book explores the personalities, events, and facts every Athletics fan should know. This guide to all things A's covers the team's amazing history including the Connie Mack and Charlie O. Finley dynasties, the "Earthquake Series," and all of their World Series titles. Author Susan Slusser has collected every essential piece of A's knowledge and trivia, including Billy Beane and Moneyball, Catfish Hunter, Stomper, and the "Bash Brothers," as well as must-do activities, and ranks them from 1 to 100, providing an entertaining and easy-to-follow checklist for fans of all ages.

Download or read book Leading in the Unknown written by Dr Brandon E Martin and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading in the Unknown: A New Paradigm for Leaders in Intercollegiate Athletics presents a new vision of leadership for practitioners, scholars, and leaders within higher education. This book is situated within the unprecedented confluence of the global Covid-19 pandemic, societal injustice, and severe economic depression for which intercollegiate athletics was not immune. Dr. Brandon E. Martin is uniquely positioned within the landscape of intercollegiate athletics as a former Division I Athlete, Vice Chancellor/Athletics Director at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Respected Scholar, and Co-Chair of the Black Athletic Director Alliance. This work represents the unique collection of experiences that inform Dr. Martin's approach to leadership that acknowledges current cultural realities and the necessity to reimagine how to engage with athletic programs, institutions, and student-athletes. Traditional leadership strategies and maxims are infused with culturally relevant principles that address current and future challenges facing the world of intercollegiate athletics. In this book, Dr. Martin invites current leadership voices in intercollegiate athletics to illustrate principles of leadership. The following leadership principles are discussed across the first six chapters: 1) Multidimensional Contexts 2) Cultural Agility 3) Catalytic Leadership 4) Dynamic Flexibility 5) Mindful Leadership 6) Cultural Safety Each of these chapters end with practical takeaways that provide an initial "game plan" for leaders seeking immediate guidance on how to approach challenges in their respective institutions. In a final chapter, additional intercollegiate athletics leaders are featured to continue the conversation with leaders facing crises on multiple fronts. This book is designed to give current and future leaders new language, practices, and approaches to leadership that can elevate equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice efforts across all levels of intercollegiate athletics.

Download or read book Billy Ball written by Dale Tafoya and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 1970s, the Oakland Athletics became only the second team in major-league baseball history to win three consecutive World Series championships. But as the decade came to a close, the A's were in free fall, having lost 108 games in 1979 while drawing just 307,000 fans. Free agency had decimated the A’s, and the team’s colorful owner, Charlie Finley, was looking for a buyer. First, though, he had to bring fans back to the Oakland Coliseum. Enter Billy Martin, the hometown boy from West Berkeley. In Billy Ball, sportswriter Dale Tafoya describes what, at the time, seemed like a match made in baseball heaven. The A’s needed a fiery leader to re-ignite interest in the team. Martin needed a job after his second stint as manager of the New York Yankees came to an abrupt end. Based largely on interviews with former players, team executives, and journalists, Billy Ball captures Martin’s homecoming to the Bay area in 1980, his immediate embrace by Oakland fans, and the A’s return to playoff baseball. Tafoya describes the reputation that had preceded Martin—one that he fully lived up to—as the brawling, hard-drinking baseball savant with a knack for turning bad teams around. In Oakland, his aggressive style of play came to be known as Billy Ball. A’s fans and the media loved it. But, in life and in baseball, all good things must come to an end. Tafoya chronicles Martin’s clash with the new A’s management and the siren song of the Yankees that lured the manager back to New York in 1983. Still, as the book makes clear, the magical turnaround of the A’s has never been forgotten in Oakland. Neither have Billy Martin and Billy Ball. During a time of economic uncertainty and waning baseball interest in Oakland, Billy Ball filled the stands, rejuvenated fans, and saved professional baseball in the city.

Download or read book Billy Martin written by Bill Pennington and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2015 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an award-winning New York Times sports columnist, the definitive biography of one of baseball's most celebrated, mercurial, and misunderstood figures--legendary manager and baseball genius, Billy Martin

Download or read book To Every Thing a Season written by Bruce Kuklick and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shibe Park was demolished in 1976, and today its site is surrounded by the devastation of North Philadelphia. Kuklick, however, vividly evokes the feelings people had about the home of the Philadelphia Athletics and later the Phillies.