Download or read book The Single Season Home Run Kings written by William F. McNeil and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-10-03 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Babe Ruth erased Buck Freeman's record in 1919, the new mark stood for 34 years before Maris bettered it, defying as he did an incredulous sporting public. And just as fans' anger grew old and Maris was grudgingly credited--or discredited--with an unrepeatable hot streak, along came Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, two goliaths who in 1998 and the years just after proved fans wrong again. But when in 2001, only three years after McGwire seemed to put the record beyond reach, Barry Bonds topped him by three. This time fans were staunch in their disbelief, and while many celebrated Bonds' achievement, others questioned its significance. This revised edition of Bill McNeil's Ruth, Maris, McGwire, and Sosa ("libraries especially will want this"--Library Journal) reviews the careers of each home run titan, with special attention to the record-breaking seasons. The cultural and social changes that may have affected both the players' season totals and fan reception are also considered.
Download or read book Roger Connor written by Roy Kerr and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known today as “the Babe Ruth of the 1880s,” Hall of Famer Roger Connor was the greatest of the nineteenth-century home run hitters, his career total (138) having stood as the major league record for nearly 24 years—until it was broken by Ruth himself. When he retired in 1897, he was also tops in triples (233), second in walks and total bases, third in hits, and fourth in doubles. But Connor did more than swing from his heels. He was an expert bunter who averaged more than twenty stolen bases a year (some credit him with inventing the “pop-up” slide) and led the league four times in fielding. Called “The Gentleman of the Diamond,” the slugger was never ejected from a game in seventeen major league seasons. This biography sheds new light on the life and five-decade baseball career of one of the games most admired and beloved players.
Download or read book Swing Kings written by Jared Diamond and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The best baseball book I’ve read in years." — Sam Walker • "An exhilarating story of innovation." — Ben Reiter • "Swing Kings feels like a spiritual successor to Moneyball." — Baseball Prospectus From the Wall Street Journal’s national baseball writer, the captivating story of the home run boom, following a group of players who rose from obscurity to stardom and the rogue swing coaches who helped them usher the game into a new age. We are in a historic era for the home run. The 2019 season saw the most homers ever, obliterating a record set just two years before. It is a shift that has transformed the way the game is played, contributing to more strikeouts, longer games, and what feels like the logical conclusion of the analytics era. In Swing Kings, Wall Street Journal national baseball writer Jared Diamond reveals that the secret behind this unprecedented shift isn’t steroids or the stitching of the baseballs, it’s the most elemental explanation of all: the swing. In this lively narrative romp, he tracks a group of baseball’s biggest stars—including Aaron Judge, J.D. Martinez, and Justin Turner—who remade their swings under the tutelage of a band of renegade coaches, and remade the game in the process. These coaches, many of them baseball washouts who have reinvented themselves as swing gurus, for years were one of the game’s best-kept secrets. Among their ranks are a swimming pool contractor, the owner of a billiards hall, and an ex-hippie whose swing insights draw from surfing and the technique of Japanese samurai. Now, as Diamond artfully charts, this motley cast has moved from the baseball margins to its center of power. They are changing the way hitting is taught to players of all ages, and major league clubs are scrambling for their services, hiring them in record numbers as coaches and consultants. And Diamond himself, whose baseball career ended in high school, enlists the tutelage of each swing coach he profiles, with an aim toward starring in the annual Boston-New York media game at Yankee Stadium. Swing Kings is both a rollicking history of baseball’s recent past and a deeply reported, character-driven account of a battle between opponents as old as time: old and new, change and stasis, the establishment and those who break from it. Jared Diamond has written a masterful chronicle of America’s pastime at the crossroads.
Download or read book Ruth Maris McGwire and Sosa written by William McNeil and published by McFarland. This book was released on 1999 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The magical 1998 baseball season made celebrities of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa as they chased the legendary single season major league home run record. Fittingly, their success also refocused the spotlight on the men they were chasing (and eventually overtook): Yankee sluggers Babe Ruth and Roger Maris. This work reviews the life and careers of these four record-breaking longballers, with special emphasis placed on each of their record-breaking seasons. Appropriate mention is made of the record challengers such as Mantle and Foxx in order that the analyses may be seen in context. The four combatants are also studied side by side, comparing the various cultural and social conditions and changes in the game that may have affected each player's home run totals. Numerous unique and interesting facts and statistics are included: e.g., Ruth set the single-season home run record not once but four times and held the record longer than Maris did (despite the common misconception); Sosa held the record for 45 minutes after hitting number 66; Ruth outhomered every other team in 1927, but in 1998 Big Mac didn't come close to outslugging even one team.
Download or read book Roger Maris written by Tom Clavin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tom Clavin and Danny Peary chronicle the life and career of baseball’s “natural home run king” in the first definitive biography of Roger Maris—including a brand-new chapter to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his record breaking season. Roger Maris may be the greatest ballplayer no one really knows. In 1961, the soft-spoken man from the frozen plains of North Dakota enjoyed one of the most amazing seasons in baseball history, when he outslugged his teammate Mickey Mantle to become the game’s natural home-run king. It was Mantle himself who said, "Roger was as good a man and as good a ballplayer as there ever was." Yet Maris was vilified by fans and the press and has never received his due from biographers—until now. Tom Clavin and Danny Peary trace the dramatic arc of Maris’s life, from his boyhood in Fargo through his early pro career in the Cleveland Indians farm program, to his World Series championship years in New York and beyond. At the center is the exciting story of the 1961 season and the ordeal Maris endured as an outsider in Yankee pinstripes, unloved by fans who compared him unfavorably to their heroes Ruth and Mantle, relentlessly attacked by an aggressive press corps who found him cold and inaccessible, and treated miserably by the organization. After the tremendous challenge of breaking Ruth’s record was behind him, Maris ultimately regained his love of baseball as a member of the world champion St. Louis Cardinals. And over time, he gained redemption in the eyes of the Yankee faithful. With research drawn from more than 130 interviews with Maris’s teammates, opponents, family, and friends, as well as 16 pages of photos, some of which have never before been seen, this timely and poignant biography sheds light on an iconic figure from baseball’s golden era—and establishes the importance of his role in the game’s history.
Download or read book Home Run written by Associated Press and published by Sports Publishing LLC. This book was released on 1998-12 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Home Run: The Year the Records Fell chronicles the record-setting home run chase of 1998 and features every home run by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. This attractive hardcover book is filled with interesting sidebars and loaded with color graphics and pictures. Some highlights include features on Ruth and Maris, McGwire's son Matt, Sosa's 20-homer month in June, statistics, notes, quotes, the All-Star Game home run contest, plus much more.
Download or read book Lipman Pike written by Richard Michelson and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles the life and baseball career of America's first home run king in the mid-1800s.
Download or read book Game of Shadows written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-03-23 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1998 two of baseball leading sluggers, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, embarked on a race to break Babe Ruth’s single season home run record. The nation was transfixed as Sosa went on to hit 66 home runs, and McGwire 70. Three years later, San Francisco Giants All-Star Barry Bonds surpassed McGwire by 3 home runs in the midst of what was perhaps the greatest offensive display in baseball history. Over the next three seasons, as Bonds regularly launched mammoth shots into the San Francisco Bay, baseball players across the country were hitting home runs at unprecedented rates. For years there had been rumors that perhaps some of these players owed their success to steroids. But crowd pleasing homers were big business, and sportswriters, fans, and officials alike simply turned a blind eye. Then, in December of 2004, after more than a year of investigation, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams broke the story that in a federal investigation of a nutritional supplement company called BALCO, Yankees slugger Jason Giambi had admitted taking steroids. Barry Bonds was also implicated. Immediately the issue of steroids became front page news. The revelations led to Congressional hearings on baseball’s drug problems and continued to drive the effort to purge the U.S. Olympic movement of drug cheats. Now Fainaru-Wada and Williams expose for the first time the secrets of the BALCO investigation that has turned the sports world upside down. Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroid Scandal That Rocked Professional by award-winning investigative journalists Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, is a riveting narrative about the biggest doping scandal in the history of sports, and how baseball’s home run king, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants, came to use steroids. Drawing on more than two years of reporting, including interviews with hundreds of people, and exclusive access to secret grand jury testimony, confidential documents, audio recordings, and more, the authors provide, for the first time, a definitive account of the shocking steroids scandal that made headlines across the country. The book traces the career of Victor Conte, founder of the BALCO laboratory, an egomaniacal former rock musician and self-proclaimed nutritionist, who set out to corrupt sports by providing athletes with “designer” steroids that would be undetectable on “state-of-the-art” doping tests. Conte gave the undetectable drugs to 28 of the world’s greatest athletes—Olympians, NFL players and baseball stars, Bonds chief among them. A separate narrative thread details the steroids use of Bonds, an immensely talented, moody player who turned to performance-enhancing drugs after Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals set a new home run record in 1998. Through his personal trainer, Bonds gained access to BALCO drugs. All of the great athletes who visited BALCO benefited tremendously—Bonds broke McGwire’s record—but many had their careers disrupted after federal investigators raided BALCO and indicted Conte. The authors trace the course of the probe, and the baffling decision of federal prosecutors to protect the elite athletes who were involved. Highlights of Game of Shadows include: Barry Bonds A look at how Bonds was driven to use performance-enhancing drugs in part by jealousy over Mark McGwire’s record-breaking 1998 season. It was shortly thereafter that Bonds—who had never used anything more performance enhancing than a protein shake from the health food store—first began using steroids. How Bonds’s weight trainer, steroid dealer Greg Anderson, arranged to meet Victor Conte before the 2001 baseball season with...
Download or read book All the Babe s Men written by Eldon L. Ham and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-03-31 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are Americans obsessed with the home run in sports, business, and even life? What made the steroid era inevitable? Revisiting the great home run seasons of Babe Ruth through those of Barry Bonds, All the Babe's Men answers these and other provocative questions. Baseball, and particularly the long ball itself, evolved via accident, necessity, and occasional subterfuge. During the dead-ball era, pitching ruled the game, and home run totals hovered in the single digits. Then a ban on the spitball and the compression of stadium dimensions set the stage for new sluggers to emerge, culminating in Ruth's historic sixty-homer season in 1927. The players, owners, and fans became hooked on the homer, but our addiction took us to excess. As the home run became the ultimate goal for hitters, players went to new lengths to increase their power and ability to swing for the fences. By the time Barry Bonds set a new single-season record in 2001, Americans had to face the fact that their national pastime had become corrupted from within. Through a play-by-play analysis of the game's historic long-ball seasons, its superstars, and the contemporary legal nightmares and tainted records, All the Babe's Men divulges how America evolved into a home run society where baseball is king.
Download or read book The 600 Home Run Club written by Mickey Strunak and published by America Star Books. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the 600 Home Run Club, an exclusive club of major league baseball players that reached 600 lifetime regular season home runs. Included in the book are HR leader-Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Ken Griffey, Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, and last years - new member-Jim Thome. The book discusses each player's career and accomplishments. Also, included are statistics of some players' fathers-Bobby Bonds and Ken Griffey, Sr. Also, Tommy Aaron's, Hank's brother - career stats are also, included. I also, showed a special player - Roger Connor, who was the baseball's home run king before Babe Ruth became a national icon. He played in the late 1880's. There is also a section on comparing the player's career statistics and a special formula for determining each player's true run scoring index, or indicator.
Download or read book Baseball s Top 10 Home Run Hitters written by Ken Rappoport and published by Enslow Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Babe Ruth started drawing big crowds with his big bat in the 1920s, the home run has meant more to baseball than just about any other individual achievement. What can be more exciting than the crack of the bat and the ball flying to the far reaches of a baseball stadium? From Ruth to Aaron to Bonds, Ken Rappoport examines the ten greatest sluggers to ever step up to the plate. The other players included are Lou Gehrig, Josh Gibson, Ken Griffey, Jr., Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Sadaharu Oh, and Alex Rodriguez.
Download or read book The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs written by Bill Jenkinson and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 2007-02-09 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an unprecedented look at Babe Ruth's amazing batting power, sure to inspire debate among baseball fans of every stripe, one of the country's most respected and trusted baseball historians reveals the amazing conclusions of more than twenty years of research. Jenkinson takes readers through Ruth's 1921 season, in which his pattern of battled balls would have accounted for more than 100 home runs in today's ballparks and under today's rules. Yet, 1921 is just tip of the iceberg, for Jenkinson's research reveals that during an era of mammoth field dimensions Ruth hit more 450-plus-feet shots than anybody in history, and the conclusions one can draw are mind boggling.
Download or read book The King of Swat written by William McNeil and published by McFarland. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who was the greatest home run hitter of all time? Babe Ruth? Henry Aaron? Willie Mays? Mickey Mantle? How about Negro Leaguers such as Josh Gibson or Norman Turkey Stearnes? Or minor league sluggers such as Joe Bauman who hit 72 four-baggers in 1954? And where does Sadaharu Oh and his 868 homers in the Japanese Central League fit in? Using statistical comparisons and accounting for the variances between players of different eras and levels of competition, this work provides the answer to the question of the greatest home run hitter of all time. The minors, Japanese, Negro and major leagues--both the deadball and lively ball eras--are fully analyzed. The home run hitting careers of the candidates in each league are first compared against other top sluggers in their own league, accounting for such differences as level of competition, size of ballparks, altitude in which the player played most of his games, night baseball and major league expansion. Players from different leagues are then compared to find the one player who stands out as the greatest home run hitter in the game's history. And the answer might surprise you.
Download or read book Kings of the Road written by Cameron Stracher and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2013 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fans of The Perfect Mile and Born to Run, a riveting, three-pronged narrative about the golden era of running in America--the 1970s--as seen through the fascinating lives and careers of running greats, Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, and Alberto Salazar.
Download or read book Mark McGwire written by Rob Kirkpatrick and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2000-12-15 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brief biography of the Cardinals' first baseman who broke Roger Maris's home run record by hitting 70 homers in 1998.
Download or read book Home Run Leaders written by Jonathan Bliss and published by Vero Beach, Fla. : Rourke Corporation. This book was released on 1991 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the historic achievements of baseball's heavy hitters, the home run sluggers, including the likes of Rogers Hornsby, Hank Greenberg, Micky Mantle, and of course Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron.
Download or read book The Founder s Dilemmas written by Noam Wasserman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-04 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Founder's Dilemmas examines how early decisions by entrepreneurs can make or break a startup and its team. Drawing on a decade of research, including quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders as well as inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them.
