Download or read book The Veracruz Blues written by Mark Winegardner and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1997-02 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on actual events during the turbulent, postwar baseball days of 1946, this captivating, darkly comic novel tells of a group of American players who, frustrated by their treatment at the hands of the major league owners, begin defecting to a Mexican baseball league.

Download or read book The Veracruz Blues written by Mark Winegardner and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 1996 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When big-league ballplayers return from the war, unhappy with the contracts the club owners offer them, the wealthy Pasquel brothers pay unheard-of salaries to lure disaffected players - Sal Maglie, Vern Stephens, Danny Gardella, Max Lanier among them - to Mexico. When they get there, they see that the league already has major-league-caliber players - Negro Leaguers and Latinos - banned from the majors by the color line or shunned by subtler forms of racism. What follows is the first fully integrated season in the history of baseball." "In a cast that includes Ernest Hemingway, Babe Ruth, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo, at the center of this novel are Theolic "Fireball" Smith, Negro League star with dreams of being the one who breaks the color line in the U.S.; Danny Gardella, clown-prince wartime outfielder, whose mythic quest almost brings free agency to the majors in the 1940s; and Frank Bullinger, novelist-cum-journalist, "the youngest and most lost member of the Lost Generation," whose oral history this novel purports to be."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Download or read book Crooked River Burning written by Mark Winegardner and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1948 Cleveland was America's sixth largest city; by 1969 it was the twelfth. For Easterners, Cleveland is where the Midwest begins; for Westerners, it is where the East begins. In the summer of 1948, fourteen-year-old David Zielinsky can look forward to a job at the docks. Anne O'Connor, at twelve, is the apple of her political boss father's eye. David and Anne will meet-and fall in love-four years later, and for the next twenty years this pair will be reluctant star-crossed lovers in a troubled and turbulent country. A natural-born storyteller, Mark Winegardner spins an epic tale of those twenty years, artfully weaving such real-life Clevelanders as Eliot Ness, Alan Freed, and Carl Stokes into the tapestry. His narrative gifts may bring the fiction of E. L. Doctorow to some readers' minds, but Winegardner is very much his own man, and his observations of Cleveland are laced with a loving skepticism. His masterful saga of this conflicted city is a novel that speaks a memorable truth.

Download or read book The Rise of the Latin American Baseball Leagues 1947 1961 written by Lou Hernández and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-10-10 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major League Baseball today would be unrecognizable without the large number of Latin American players and managers filling its ranks. Their strong influence on the sport can trace its beginnings to professional leagues established south of the border and in the Caribbean nations in the 1940s. This narrative history of Latin American baseball leagues during the 1940s and 1950s provides an in-depth, year-by-year chronicle of seasonal leagues in the seven primary baseball-playing areas in the region: Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. The success of these leagues, and their often acrimonious competition with U.S. Organized Baseball, eventually ushered in a new era of contract concessions from owners and general labor advancements for players that forever changed the game.

Download or read book Invisible Ball of Dreams written by Emily Ruth Rutter and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2018 John Coates Next Generation Award from the Negro Leagues Research Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research Although many Americans think of Jackie Robinson when considering the story of segregation in baseball, a long history of tragedies and triumphs precede Robinson’s momentous debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. From the pioneering Cuban Giants (1885-1915) to the Negro Leagues (1920-1960), Black baseball was a long-standing staple of African American communities. While many of its artifacts and statistics are lost, Black baseball figured vibrantly in films, novels, plays, and poems. In Invisible Ball of Dreams: Literary Representations of Baseball behind the Color Line, author Emily Ruth Rutter examines wide-ranging representations of this history by William Brashler, Jerome Charyn, August Wilson, Gloria Naylor, Harmony Holiday, Kevin King, Kadir Nelson, and Denzel Washington, among others. Reading representations across the literary color line, Rutter opens a propitious space for exploring Black cultural pride and residual frustrations with racial hypocrisies on the one hand and the benefits and limitations of white empathy on the other. Exploring these topics is necessary to the project of enriching the archives of segregated baseball in particular and African American cultural history more generally.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Contemporary Writers and Their Work written by Geoff Hamilton and published by Infobase Learning. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 1386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an alphabetical reference guide detailing the lives and works of authors associated with the English-language fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Download or read book That s True of Everybody written by Mark Winegardner and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proprietor of a bowling alley whose artist daughter paints only phalluses. A ninth-grade girl who marries in haste only to be faced with her husband's impotence. A libidinous poet who learns the meaning of harassment. The life and loves of a professional lawn-mower. These are just a few of the distinctive stories that make up Mark Winegardner's remarkable debut short-story collection. Winegardner, whose rich and epic novel Crooked River Burning gave the much-maligned city of Cleveland a fresh and vibrant aspect, now returns to the Midwest that he knows so intimately and casts a piercingly compassionate eye on its denizens. The result is a kaleidoscopic picture of a people who are arrogant and humble, faithful and disloyal, driven and floundering-a people who are finally, America itself.

Download or read book The Book Of Lists written by David Wallechinsky and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2009-08-06 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first and best compendium of facts weirder than fiction, of intriguing information and must-talk-about trivia has spawned many imitators – but none as addictive or successful. For nearly three decades the editors researched curious facts, unusual statistics and the incredible stories behind them. The most entertaining and informative of these have been brought together in this edition.

Download or read book The Big Book of Jewish Baseball written by Peter S. Horvitz and published by SP Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive, encyclopaedic work devoted exclusively to every Jewish contributor, large and small, to Major League Baseball. Its packed with: Rare photographs of players on and off the field; Full player statistics; Rare memorabilia; Exclusive original interviews. Jews who impacted upon the Great American Pastime extend far beyond the record strikeouts and round trippers of the legendary Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg. And there are scores of ballplayers like Lipman Pike, Shawn Green, Cal Abrams and Eddie Zosky whose little-known Baseball stories will touch or amuse readers of any background. Beyond life-time batting averages, there are intriguing players like catcher Moe Berg who served his country as a secret agent during WWII. While the tragic life of Bruce Gardner may bring tears to readers eyes, the exploits of 'Clown Princes' Al Schact and Max Patkin will have fans rolling with laughter. Nowhere else will one read tributes to great Jewish baseball executives and owners whose vision built some of historys most successful teams. Al Rosen may have gone from the All-Star team to the front-office Hall of Fame, but some of the most famous self-made success stories of this century honed their competitive spirit on the stickball courts of Jewish ghettos. This one-of-a-kind book will be much-in-demand by both baseball and Judaica book buyers.

Download or read book Celebrating Ourselves written by Daryl Russell Grigsby and published by Dog Ear Publishing. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrating Ourselves demonstrates how baseball is intricately woven in the fabric ofAfrican-American family, social and political life. Beyond the significant accomplishments on the diamond, well-recounted here, baseball knitted generations, taught perseverance, demonstrated economic independence and been a forum for civil rights and equality. From Moses FleetwoodWalker in 1884 to the founding of the Negro National League in 1920; from Jackie Robinson in 1947 to today's Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities (RBI); the game is connected with personal achievement, community advancement, economic independence and social equality. This book discusses baseball from three perspectives; from the player, the fan and the family.Alongside statistics and accomplishments on the field, we read of the perseverance and dedication of the African-American baseball fan.Much has been made of the decline in baseball's popularity among black Americans. When observers ask, 'Where is the African- American fan?' this book boldly responds, 'Right here '

Download or read book Baseball on the Border written by Alan M. Klein and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-22 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1985 to 1994 there existed a significant but unheralded experiment in professional baseball. For ten seasons, the Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos (The Owls of the Two Laredos) were the only team in professional sports to represent two nations. Playing in the storied Mexican League (an AAA affiliate of major league baseball), the "Tecos" had home parks on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, in Laredo, Texas and in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. In true border fashion, Mexican and American national anthems were played before each game, and the Tecos were operated by interests in both cities. Baseball on the Border is the story of the rise and unexpected demise of this surprising team. For Alan Klein, a cultural anthropologist specializing in sport, "the border" is almost a nation of its own. Having formed teams of players from both sides of the Rio Grande for almost a century, organizers and followers of the "Border Birds" often join forces but just as frequently squabble with each other in a chronic border tension. Throughout the book, Klein includes firsthand observations of the team and descriptions of its players. Readers will meet Dan Firova, the Tecos' beleaguered manager, a border-region native who nevertheless finds himself a target of the Mexican media. The "Ugly American," Willie Waite, is a young pitcher whose stunning success does nothing to diminish the disdain he has for his Mexican teammates. Ernesto Barraza, "The Trickster," once threw a no-hitter on only seventy-three pitches (on April Fool's Day, appropriately enough), but occasionally shows up at the park missing part of his uniform. And then there is Andres Mora, an aged slugger who, despite three seasons in major league baseball and a life of personal excesses, came within a few home runs of setting the all-time Mexican League record. This is just part of the roster of the Tecos and only a fraction of the lineup of Baseball on the Border. Anyone with an interest in baseball will be enlightened and entertained by this informative book.

Download or read book The Writer s Idea Book 10th Anniversary Edition written by Jack Heffron and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-01-15 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where do you get your ideas? It’s a question that plagues every writer. And once you’ve got an idea, what then? Ideas without a plan, without a purpose, are no more than pleasant thoughts. So how do you come up with those ideas, and how do you turn them into writing that will engage your reader? The Writer’s Idea Book is here to help you find the answers. Utilizing more than 400 prompts and exercises, you’ll generate intriguing ideas and plumb their possibilities to turn them into something amazing. This indispensable guide will help you: • Develop good writing habits that foster creativity • Explore your own life for writing material • Draw inspiration from the world around you • Find form for your ideas, develop them into a piece of writing, and make them better Let The Writer’s Idea Book give you the insight and self-awareness to create and refine ideas that demand to be transformed into greater works, the kind of compelling, absorbing writing that will have other writers asking "where do you get your ideas?"

Download or read book Willie Wells written by Bob Luke and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first complete biography of an important Negro League baseball player from Austin, Texas. Willie Wells was arguably the best shortstop of his generation. As Monte Irvin, a teammate and fellow Hall of Fame player, writes in his foreword, “Wells really could do it all. He was one of the slickest fielding shortstops ever to come along. He had speed on the bases. He hit with power and consistency. He was among the most durable players I’ve ever known.” Yet few people have heard of the feisty ballplayer nicknamed “El Diablo.” Willie Wells was black, and he played long before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. Bob Luke has sifted through the spotty statistics, interviewed Negro League players and historians, and combed the yellowed letters and newspaper accounts of Wells’s life to draw the most complete portrait yet of an important baseball player. Wells’s baseball career lasted thirty years and included seasons in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Canada. He played against white all-stars as well as Negro League greats Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Buck O’Neill, among others. He was beaned so many times that he became the first modern player to wear a batting helmet. As an older player and coach, he mentored some of the first black major leaguers, including Jackie Robinson and Don Newcombe. Willie Wells truly deserved his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but Bob Luke details how the lingering effects of segregation hindered black players, including those better known than Wells, long after the policy officially ended. Fortunately, Willie Wells had the talent and tenacity to take on anything—from segregation to inside fastballs—life threw at him. No wonder he needed a helmet. “Willie Wells: “El Diablo” of the Negro Leagues is well researched and well written, so the average baseball fan should find it to be an entertaining read.” —Dale Petroskey, president, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum “The story of Willie Wells opens another window on the conditions and constraints of Jim Crow America, and how painfully difficult it can be, even now, to remedy the persistent effects of discrimination. Every baseball fan will love this story. Every American should read it.” —Ira Glasser, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union, 1978-2001 “Reconstructing, indeed resurrecting, the career of a peripatetic Negro League baseball player is a daunting task. Negro and Major League great Monte Irvin tells us that his fellow Hall of Famer, shortstop Willie Wells, belongs on the same baseball page as Gibson, DiMaggio, Paige, and Feller. This fine biography by Bob Luke does a wonderful job in telling us why and how that is the case. We have here a Hall of Fame telling of the story of a true Hall of Famer.” —Lawrence Hogan, author of Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African American Baseball

Download or read book Campy written by Neil Lanctot and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neil Lanctot’s biography of Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella—filled with surprises—is the first life of the Dodger great in decades and the most authoritative ever published. Born to a father of Italian descent and an African- American mother, Campanella wanted to be a ballplayer from childhood but was barred by color from the major leagues. He dropped out of school to play professional ball with the Negro Leagues’ Washington (later Baltimore) Elite Giants, where he honed his skills under Hall of Fame catcher Biz Mackey. Campy played eight years in the Negro Leagues until the major leagues integrated. Ironically, he and not Jackie Robinson might have been the player to integrate baseball, as Lanctot reveals. An early recruit to Branch Rickey’s “Great Experiment” with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Campy became the first African-American catcher in the twentieth century in the major leagues. As Lanctot discloses, Campanella and Robinson, pioneers of integration, had a contentious relationship, largely as a result of a dispute over postseason barnstorming. Campanella was a mainstay of the great Dodger teams that consistently contended for pennants in the late 1940s and 1950s. He was a three-time MVP, an outstanding defensive catcher, and a powerful offensive threat. But on a rainy January night in 1958, all that changed. On his way home from his liquor store in Harlem, Campy lost control of his car, hit a utility pole, and was paralyzed below the neck. Lanctot reveals how Campanella’s complicated personal life (he would marry three times) played a role in the accident. Campanella would now become another sort of pioneer, learning new techniques of physical therapy under the celebrated Dr. Howard Rusk at his Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. As he gradually recovered some limited motion, Campanella inspired other athletes and physically handicapped people everywhere. Based on interviews with dozens of people who knew Roy Campanella and diligent research into contemporary sources, Campy offers a three-dimensional portrait of this gifted athlete and remarkable man whose second life after baseball would prove as illustrious and courageous as his first.

Download or read book South of the Color Barrier written by John Virtue and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2007-10-10 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of how Mexican multimillionaire businessman Jorge Pasquel and the Mexican League hastened the integration of major league baseball. During the decade that preceded Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier, almost 150 players from the Negro League played in Mexico, most of them recruited by Pasquel.

Download or read book Sport and the Law written by Samuel O. Regalado and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2014-12-31 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new collection examines not only how athletes looked to the nation’s judicial system to solve conflicts but also how their cases trans¬formed the interpretation of laws. These essays examine a vast array of social and legal controversies including Heywood v. NBA (1971), which allowed any player to enter the draft; Flood v. Kuhn (1972), which considered baseball’s antitrust status; the Danny Gardella lower level 1948 case regarding free agency and baseball; Muhammad Ali’s celebrated stance against the U.S. draft; Renée Richards’s 1976 lawsuit against the U.S. Tennis Association and its due process ramifications; and human rights violations in international law with respect to the increased recruitment of underage Latin baseball players in the Caribbean region are a few examples of the vast array of stories included. Sport and the Law links these cases to other cases and topics, giving the reader the opportunity to see the threads weaving law and sport together in American society.

Download or read book Agustin Lara written by Andrew Grant Wood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-13 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few Mexican musicians in the twentieth century achieved as much notoriety or had such an international impact as the popular singer and songwriter Agustín Lara (1897-1970). Widely known as "el flaco de oro" ("the Golden Skinny"), this remarkably thin fellow was prolific across the genres of bolero, ballad, and folk. His most beloved "Granada", a song so enduring that it has been covered by the likes of Mario Lanza, Frank Sinatra, and Placido Domingo, is today a standard in the vocal repertory. However, there exists very little biographical literature on Lara in English. In Agustín Lara: A Cultural Biography, author Andrew Wood's informed and informative placement of Lara's work in a broader cultural context presents a rich and comprehensive reading of the life of this significant musical figure. Lara's career as a media celebrity as well as musician provides an excellent window on Mexican society in the mid-twentieth century and on popular culture in Latin America. Wood also delves into Lara's music itself, bringing to light how the composer's work unites a number of important currents in Latin music of his day, particularly the bolero. With close musicological focus and in-depth cultural analysis riding alongside the biographical narrative, Agustin Lara: A Cultural Biography is a welcome read to aficionados and performers of Latin American musics, as well as a valuable addition to the study of modern Mexican music and Latin American popular culture as a whole.