Download or read book The Making of Major League written by Jonathan Knight and published by Gray & Company, Publishers. This book was released on 2015-05-29 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A behind-the-scenes look at one of the greatest baseball movies ever. If you love watching "Major League," you’ll be fascinated by this inside story. Based on interviews with all major cast members plus crew and producers, it tells how writer/director David S. Ward battled the Hollywood system to turn his own love of the underdog Cleveland Indians into a classic screwball comedy. Learn how a tight-knit group of rising young stars (and a few wily veterans) had a blast pretending to play ball while creating several iconic characters. Filled with little-known facts and personal recollections about outtakes and inside jokes, batting practice and script changes, all-night location shoots, bar hopping and more, this is the ultimate guide to the film that reinvented the baseball movie and inspired a generation of belly laughs. Includes rare photos, storyboard illustrations, script excerpts, and more. With a foreword by Charlie Sheen.
Download or read book For the Good of the Game written by Bud Selig and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller Foreword by Doris Kearns Goodwin The longtime Commissioner of Major League Baseball provides an unprecedented look inside professional baseball today, focusing on how he helped bring the game into the modern age and revealing his interactions with players, managers, fellow owners, and fans nationwide. More than a century old, the game of baseball is resistant to change—owners, managers, players, and fans all hate it. Yet, now more than ever, baseball needs to evolve—to compete with other professional sports, stay relevant, and remain America’s Pastime it must adapt. Perhaps no one knows this better than Bud Selig who, as the head of MLB for more than twenty years, ushered in some of the most important, and controversial, changes in the game’s history—modernizing a sport that had remained unchanged since the 1960s. In this enlightening and surprising book, Selig goes inside the most difficult decisions and moments of his career, looking at how he worked to balance baseball’s storied history with the pressures of the twenty-first century to ensure its future. Part baseball story, part business saga, and part memoir, For the Good of the Game chronicles Selig’s career, takes fans inside locker rooms and board rooms, and offers an intimate, fascinating account of the frequently messy process involved in transforming an American institution. Featuring an all-star lineup of the biggest names from the last forty years of baseball, Selig recalls the vital games, private moments, and tense conversations he’s shared with Hall of Fame players and managers and the contentious calls he’s made. He also speaks candidly about hot-button issues the steroid scandal that threatened to destroy the game, telling his side of the story in full and for the first time. As he looks back and forward, Selig outlines the stakes for baseball’s continued transformation—and why the changes he helped usher in must only be the beginning. Illustrated with sixteen pages of photographs.
Download or read book The Game written by Jon Pessah and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The incredible inside story of power, money, and baseball's last twenty years. In the fall of 1992, America's National Pastime is in crisis and already on the path to the unthinkable: cancelling a World Series for the first time in history. The owners are at war with each other, their decades-long battle with the players has turned America against both sides, and the players' growing addiction to steroids will threaten the game's very foundation. It is a tipping point for baseball, a crucial moment in the game's history that catalyzes a struggle for power by three strong-willed men: Commissioner Bud Selig, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and union leader Don Fehr. It's their uneasy alliance at the end of decades of struggle that pulls the game back from the brink and turns it into a money-making powerhouse that enriches them all. This is the real story of baseball, played out against a tableau of stunning athletic feats, high-stakes public battles, and backroom political deals -- with a supporting cast that includes Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, Joe Torre and Derek Jeter, George Bush and George Mitchell, and many more. Drawing from hundreds of extensive, exclusive interviews throughout baseball, The Game is a stunning achievement: a rigorously reported book and the must-read, fly-on-the-wall, definitive account of how an enormous struggle for power turns disaster into baseball's Golden Age.
Download or read book Koppett s Concise History of Major League Baseball written by Leonard Koppett and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball's greatest asset is the richness of its lore, and Leonard Koppett has made the entire treasure of the game's history accessible in one enjoyable volume. In his lively narratives on the shape and significance of each season from baseball's nineteenth-century beginnings to the updated and expanded sections on the last decade, Koppett explains the changes in baseball-the-game and baseball-the-business that forged the major leagues we know today. Each chapter recounts trends, players, and events during different eras; offers succinct seasonal recaps, and summarizes how the consequences of that particular baseball era set the stage for the next. On the origins and evolution of on-the-field play—from the 1880s origin of pitching high and tight then low and away, to modern-day use of body armor at bat—plus statistics and record-breaking achievements, Koppett's got it covered. On business and organizational controversies, such as the introduction of night baseball, radio and TV broadcasting, free agency, strike actions, divisional play-offs, and the policies of owners and commissioners, Koppett's got it covered. One-stop reading for the most essential stories, statistics, and opinions on the major leagues, Koppett's Concise History of Major League Baseball is the most original baseball reference available.
Download or read book Major Leagues written by David Pietrusza and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2005-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New major leagues have sprung up throughout the history of baseball, both long-term successes (the American and National leagues) and the transitory, of which the Federal League (1914-15) and the Mexican League (1946) were two. Some leagues were born of noble motives (the Union Association, 1884, to abolish the reserve clause); others, farcical (the Global League, 1969). And many were stillborn, never playing that first inning (such as the Continental League, 1959-60). Here is their history and an analysis of the conditions that determined success or failure.
Download or read book Growing the Game written by Alan M. Klein and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-09-18 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sociologist and anthropologist scientifically examines the worldwide growth of MLB and America’s favorite pastime. Baseball fans understand the game has become increasingly international. Major league rosters include players from no fewer than fourteen countries, and more than one-fourth of all players are foreign born. Here, Alan Klein offers the first full-length study of a sport in the process of globalizing. Looking at the international activities of big-market and small-market baseball teams, as well as the Commissioner’s Office, he examines the ways in which Major League Baseball operates on a world stage that reaches from the Dominican Republic to South Africa to Japan. The origins of baseball’s efforts to globalize are complex, stemming as much from decreasing opportunities at home as from promise abroad. Klein chronicles attempts to develop the game outside the United States, the strategies that teams such as the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Kansas City Royals have devised to recruit international talent, and the ways baseball has been growing in other countries. He concludes with an assessment of the obstacles that may inhibit or promote baseball’s progress toward globalization, offering thoughtful proposals to ensure the health and growth of the game in the United States and abroad. “A superb inside look at how the national pastime has reinvented itself . . . Klein’s writing is engaging, and his research is top-notch.” —Tim Wendel, author of The New Face of Baseball: The One-Hundred-Year Rise and Triumph of Latinos in America’s Favorite Sport “A timely contribution to our understanding of baseball in our contemporary age.” —Michael L. Butterworth, Sociology of Sport Journal
Download or read book America s Game written by Bryan Soderholm-Difatte and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-06-08 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive survey of major league baseball looks at the national pastime’s legendary figures, major innovations, and pivotal moments, from the beginning of the twentieth century through World War II. In America's Game: A History of Major League Baseball through World War II, Bryan Soderholm-Difatte provides a comprehensive narrative of the major developments and key figures in Major League Baseball, during a time when the sport was still truly the national pastime. Soderholm-Difatte details pivotal moments—including the founding of the American League, the 1919 Black Sox scandal, and navigating the Great Depression and two World Wars—and concludes with a chapter examining the exclusion of black ballplayers from the major leagues. Central personalities covered in this book include baseball executives Judge Landis and Branch Rickey, managers John McGraw and Joe McCarthy, and iconic players such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. America’s Game isn’t simply about celebrating the exploits of great players and teams; it is just as much about the history of Major League Baseball as an institution and the evolution of the game itself. With significant changes taking place in baseball in recent times, this book will remind baseball fans young and old of the rich history of the game.
Download or read book Where Nobody Knows Your Name written by John Feinstein and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Minor league baseball is quintessentially American: small towns, small stadiums, $5 tickets, $2 hot dogs, the never-ending possibility of making it big. But looming above it all is always the real deal: Major League Baseball. John Feinstein takes the reader behind the curtain into the guarded world of the minor leagues, like no other writer can. Where Nobody Knows Your Name explores the trials and travails of the inhabitants of Triple-A, focusing on nine men, including players, managers and umpires, among many colorful characters, living on the cusp of the dream. The book tells the stories of former World Series hero Scott Podsednik, giving it one more shot; Durham Bulls manager Charlie Montoya, shepherding generations across the line; and designated hitter Jon Lindsey, a lifelong minor leaguer, waiting for his day to come. From Raleigh to Pawtucket, from Lehigh Valley to Indianapolis and beyond, this is an intimate and exciting look at life in the minor leagues, where you’re either waiting for the call or just passing through.
Download or read book God s Lineup written by Kevin Morrisey and published by Ambassador International. This book was released on 2012-01-06 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “God’s Lineup” is a collection of testimonies from Major League baseball players and how Christ has impacted their lives on and off the field. There are trying times in the sport of baseball and among Christians. This book is a breath of fresh air for both baseball fans and Christians. It illustrates how all people, including the top baseball players, face trying times and how being saved has changed them and the way they play the game. Each chapter focuses on one ball player and tells the story about how their life was before knowing Christ, how they came to know Him and how their life has changed.
Download or read book 100 Years of Major League Baseball written by David Nemec and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive, historical tribute to America's favorite pastime highlights baseball's compelling dramas, legendary heroes, its cultural impact throughout the years, and more. The game is chronicled decade-by-decade, with over 500 pages packed with: - Full-color photographs - At-a-glance, important facts on each playing season - Detailed information about legendary players, important records, and more. A remarkable and informative salute to America's favorite pastime. 650 4.
Download or read book Puerto Rico s Winter League written by Thomas E. Van Hyning and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2004-04-05 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its inception in 1938, the Liga de Beisbol Professional de Puerto Rico has launched the careers of numerous island players, including Ruben Gomez, Jerry Morales, Orlando Cepeda, Vic Power, Ruben Sierra and the greatest of all Puerto Rican stars, Roberto Clemente. For many "imports," the league has been a stepping stone to major league stardom. In its early years, many of the league's stars came from the Negro Leagues: Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Monte Irvin and Roy Campanella were just a few of the African American stars who graced the Puerto Rican diamonds in the 1940s and early 1950s. The Santurce outfield of 1954 featured one of the finest outfields in baseball history: Clemente, Willie Mays, and Puerto Rican star Bob Thurman. Through the mid-1980s, many major league teams sent their up-and-coming stars to Puerto Rico for a final bit of seasoning--Cal Ripken, Jr., Tony Gwynn, Johnny Bench, Rickey Henderson, Phil Niekro, Hank Aaron and Robin Yount were among them. They played for such future league big league managers as Frank Robinson, Jim Fregosi and Kevin Kennedy, while the balls and strikes were called by Nestor Chylak, Doug Harvey, Dale Ford and many other future major league umpires.
Download or read book Minor Moments Major Memories written by Mark Leinweaver and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball is pure and hope springs eternal.
Download or read book Closer written by Kevin Neary and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major leagues' most prominent relief pitchers, their role as closer, and how they cope with stress on the mound.
Download or read book The Negro Leagues are Major Leagues written by Bob Kendrick and published by . This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SABR and MLB recently concluded that the Negro Leagues were "major leagues." This volume tells how the lost history and statistical record of the Negro Leagues were rebuilt and serves as an introduction to Negro League history as a whole.
Download or read book Deaf Players in Major League Baseball written by R.A.R. Edwards and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-08-07 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first deaf baseball player joined the pro ranks in 1883. By 1901, four played in the major leagues, most notably outfielder William "Dummy" Hoy and pitcher Luther "Dummy" Taylor. Along the way, deaf players developed a distinctive approach, bringing visual acuity and sign language to the sport. They crossed paths with other pioneers, including Moses Fleetwood Walker and Jackie Robinson. This book recounts their great moments in the game, from the first all-deaf barnstorming team to the only meeting of a deaf batter and a deaf pitcher in a major league game. The true story--often dismissed as legend--of Hoy, together with umpire "Silk" O'Loughlin, bringing hand signals to baseball is told.
Download or read book Little League to the Major Leagues written by Rod Humphries and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2013-05 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is no question that the physical and mental demands of the sport of baseball are rigorous. Not only is it difficult to successfully hit a ninety-mile-per-hour fastball in front of a crowd of passionate spectators, but it is also challenging to navigate an often confusing system that leads players through youth leagues, high school, college, and for a lucky few, the Minor and Major Leagues. Rod Humphries, sports journalist, television writer, and former administrator of a worldwide professional tennis tour, shares his personal experiences and advice from experts in this complete insider's guide designed to help players, their parents, and baseball fans understand how Major Leaguers "pay their dues." Humphries, who closely studied the entire baseball assembly line when his son was drafted out of high school by the Houston Astros, offers valuable information on: - The professional baseball structure - Little League vs. select/travel ball - Player analysis and recruitment - Scholarships and coaching camps - Draft day decisions, salaries, and career chances Little League to the Major Leagues provides proven tips and time-tested advice for any family or player who dares to dream of journeying beyond youth baseball to high school, college, and the professional game.
Download or read book The Negro Leagues Were Major Leagues written by Todd Peterson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-12-11 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How good was Negro League Baseball (1920-1948)? Some experts maintain that the quality of play was equal to that of the American and National Leagues. Some believe the Negro Leagues should be part of Major League Baseball's official record and that more Negro League players should be in the Hall of Fame. Skeptics contend that while many players could be rated highly, NL organizations were minor league at best. Drawing on the most comprehensive data available, including stats from more than 2,000 interracial games, this study finds that black baseball was very good indeed. Negro leaguers beat the big leaguers more than half the time in head-to-head contests, demonstrated stronger metrics within their own leagues and excelled when finally allowed into the majors. The authors document the often duplicitous manner in which MLB has dealt with the legacy of the Negro Leagues, and an appendix includes the scores and statistics from every known contest between Negro League and Major League teams.
