A moving and lyrical memoir about life, love and loss, from a true giant of Gaelic games. In a frenetic seven-year spell at the outset of his senior managerial career, Mickey Harte led Tyrone to four Ulster Championships and three All-Irelands. It was a run that shifted football's balance of power, changed the way the game would be played for over a generation, and cemented his reputation as one of the most transformative figures in GAA history. Then, in January 2011, the visitation of a shocking tragedy changed everything: Mickey's daughter Michaela was murdered while on honeymoon in Mauritius, and the Harte family, grief-stricken, awoke to find themselves at the centre of an international news story. Devotion, the product of a collaboration between Mickey and author Brendan Coffey, is many things. The story of a family's decade-long struggle to come to terms with an almost unimaginable loss. A meditation on the ways in which faith, community, and sport can sustain us in our most difficult moments. And, finally, a portrait of one of Irish sport's true icons, as he brings one legendary era to a close and steels himself for a final assault on the history books

Controversial, confrontational, and driven, Coach Geno Auriemma is a force to be reckoned with -- and the most accomplished male coach in women's basketball today. In his relentless quest for excellence at the University of Connecticut, he has led the Huskies to five national championships. Yet his soul never rests. For Auriemma, life affords only the briefest moments of happiness -- a good round of golf, forty minutes of great basketball, a day at the beach with his family, a nice glass of wine -- while disaster is seemingly always waiting to strike. It's a fatalistic philosophy, a remnant of his hardscrabble early years, but it's an outlook that has driven him to unparalleled success. In this deeply personal memoir, Geno Auriemma reveals for the first time the man behind the legend. He talks candidly about his coaching style, famed for being one of the most demanding in all the sports world. He spills the beans about his stormy dealings with other coaches such as his archrival, Pat Summitt, of the University of Tennessee. And with warmth and a genuine love for his champions, he writes openly about Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Nykesha Sales, Rebecca Lobo, Swin Cash, and all of his other UConn stars who have gone on to stellar WNBA careers. You get a courtside seat to all of the action -- including an epilogue on the 2004-05 season, as well as interviews with the team's most celebrated players.A rare look inside the soul of a true competitor, GENO is the story of how one passionate man overcame his own fears to achieve an extraordinary record of success.

Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played stood for decades until Cal Ripken Jr. broke it in 1995. Most people remember Gehrig for this record, or for the disease that claimed his life (and now bears his name). But what many forget is how prolific a hitter he was. The son of German immigrants, Gehrig rose from inauspicious beginnings to become a scholar-athlete at Columbia University, and then moved to Major League Baseball, where he knocked in almost 2,000 runs and helped his team win six world championships. William Kashatus recounts the perserverance and poise of a life which ended tragically, yet heroically. Written in cooperation with George Pollack, the lawyer for the Gehrig estate, this biography provides a valuable addition to the study of an enduring American sports legend. The final chapters analyze the creation of the player's legend through literature and film and also update the reader on the on-going fight against ALS.

Focusing on a number of contemporary research themes and placing them within the context of palpable changes that have occurred within football in recent years, this timely collection brings together essays about football, crime and fan behaviour from leading experts in the fields of criminology, law, sociology, psychology and cultural studies.

This book explores how recent football fiction has negotiated the decisive political developments in English football after the 1989/90 publication of the 'Taylor Report'. A direct response to the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster and growing concerns of hooliganism, the 'Taylor Report' suggested a number of measures for stricter regulation of fan crowds. In consequence, stadiums in the top divisions were turned into all-seated venues and were put under CCTV surveillance. The implementation of these measures reduced violent incidents drastically, but it also led to an unparalleled increase in ticket prices, which in turn significantly altered the demographics of the crowd. This development, which also enabled football's entry into other mainstream cultural forms, changed the game decisively. Piskurek traces patterns across prose and film to detect how these fictions have responded to the changed circumstances of post-Taylor football. Lending a cultural lens to these political changes, this book is pioneering in its analysis of football fiction as a whole, offering a fresh perspective to a range of scholars and students interested in cultural studies, sociology, leisure and politics.

The New York Giants joined the National Football League back in 1925, and have since been one of the league's flagship franchises. The Giants have appeared in nineteen NFL championship games-more than any other team-and have won eight league championships. Iconic figures such as Eli Manning, Phil Simms, Harry Carson, Michael Strahan, and Frank Gifford have all played for the Giants. Twenty-five players who spent at least one full season with the Giants have been inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame, and fifteen of those men spent the majority of their careers playing for the team. This book carefully measures the careers of those players who made the greatest impact on the team. The ranking was determined by such factors as the extent to which each player added to the Giants' legacy, the degree to which he impacted the fortunes of his team, and the level of dominance he attained while wearing the Big Blue uniform. Features of The 50 Greatest Players in New York Giants Football History include: *Each player's notable achievements *Recaps of the player's most memorable performances *Summaries of each player's best season *Quotes from former teammates and opposing players Football fans will find The 50 Greatest Players in New York Giants Football History a fascinating collection of bios, stats, recaps, quotes, and more. And with such iconic figures as Lawrence Taylor, Emlen Tunnell, Roosevelt Brown, and Mel Hein leading the list, this book is sure to inspire debate and controversy among true Giants supporters.

C.T.Studd - Cricketer and Pioneer By Norman P. Grubb. Originally published in 1933. A fascinating biography of an english country gentleman and cricketer who becomes a devoted missionary. Contents Include Foreword by Alfred B.Buxton Author's preface A visit to a theatre and it's consequences Three Etonians get a shock An all England cricketer The crisis A revival breaks out among students C.T. becomes a Chinaman He gives away a fortune An Irish girl and a dream United to fight for Jesus Perils and hardships in inland China On the American campus Six years in India A mans's man The greatest venture of all Through cannibal tribes The very heart of Africa C.T. among the natives Forward ever Backward never! The God of wonders When the holy ghost came Bwana's house and daily life Hallelujah! God enabling us We go on! Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Those fortunate fans who attended Opening Day on August 18, 1910 could not have had the slightest inkling that their brand new stadium would one day be the oldest active professional ballpark in America. Nor could they have possibly imagined how dramatically baseball would transform itself over the course of a century. Back then there were no high-powered agents, no steroids dominating the sports headlines, no gleaming, billion-dollar stadiums with corporate sky boxes that lit up the neon sky. There was only the wood and the raw hide, the mitt and the cap, and the game as it was played a few miles from downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Allen Barra has journeyed to his native Alabama to capture the glories of a century of baseball lore. In chronicling Rickwood Field's history, he also tells of segregated baseball and the legendary Negro Leagues while summoning the ghosts of the players themselves -Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Ted Willians, and Willie Mays - who still haunt baseball's oldest Cathedral. But Rickwood Field, a place where the Ku Klux Klan once held rallies, has now become a symbol of hope and triumph, a stadium that reflects the evolution of a city where baseball was, for decades, virtually the sole connecting point between blacks and whites. While other fabled stadiums have yielded to the wrecker's ball, baseball's Garden of Eden seems increasingly invulnerable to the ravages of time. Indeed, the manually operated scoreboard still uses numbers painted on metal sheets, and on the right field wall, the Burma Shave sign hangs just as it did when the legendary Black Barons called the stadium their own. Not surprisingly, there is no slick or artificial turf here, only grass - and it's been trodden by the cleats of greats from Shoeless Joe Jackson to Reggie Jackson. Drawing on extensive interviews, best-selling author Barra evokes a southern city once rife with racial tension where a tattered ballpark was, and resplendently still is, a rare beacon of hope. Both a relic of America's past and a guidepost for baseball's future, Rickwood Field follows the evolution of a nation and its pastime through our country's oldest active ballpark.

The game of tennis raises many questions that are of interest to a statistician. Is it true that beginning to serve in a set gives an advantage? Are new balls an advantage? Is the seventh game in a set particularly important? Are top players more stable than other players? Do real champions win the big points? These and many other questions are formulated as "hypotheses" and tested statistically. Analyzing Wimbledon also discusses how the outcome of a match can be predicted (even while the match is in progress), which points are important and which are not, how to choose an optimal service strategy, and whether "winning mood" actually exists in tennis. Aimed at readers with some knowledge of mathematics and statistics, the book uses tennis (Wimbledon in particular) as a vehicle to illustrate the power and beauty of statistical reasoning.

This comprehensive guide, covering the entire spectrum of tennis subjects, lists and evaluates more than 950 English-language books and over 150 tennis films and videotapes. Among the subjects treated are rules and techniques of play; histories of the game; biographies and autobiographies of champion players; psychological approaches to improving one's game; advice on matters of fitness, physicial conditioning, and rehabilitation of tennis-related injuries; the construction and maintenance of tennis courts; tennis in schools and recreational settings; the administration of tournaments; tennis equipment; the traveling tennis player; tennis humor; and tennis films and videotapes.

More than 6 years after his death David Halberstam remains one of this country's most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for his ground-breaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them bestsellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves.
The New York Times bestseller, now with a new introduction "The Breaks of the Game" focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions.
The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed. It's about the influence of big media, the fans and the hype they subsist on, the clash of ethics, the terrible physical demands of modern sports (from drugs to body size), the unreal salaries, the conflicts of race and class, and the consequences of sport converted into mass entertainment and athletes transformed into superstars--all presented in a way that puts the reader in the room and on the court, and "The Breaks of the Game" in a league of its own.

The Bowdens are the First Family of college football. Bobby, the father, built the winningest program of the decade at Florida State. Son Terry took over an Auburn team on probation and led it back into the top tier of the sport. Son Tommy is Auburn's offensive coordinator and will likely get his own program in the next few seasons. Son Jeff, now coaching Florida State receivers, will earn his own head coaching opportunity one day. So will the boys' brother-in-law Jack Hines - who played for Bobby, married his oldest daughter, Robyn, and now coaches with Terry at Auburn. Reading this book is like accepting an exclusive invitation to a Bowden family gathering, where discussions range from informal debates about the best winning strategy to disarmingly candid appraisals of the racial undercurrents of college athletics. Listen to inside stories of key moments in Games of the Century, of the recruiting and coaching of famous athletes such as Deion Sanders and Charlie Ward. Hear how it feels to be trapped inside a locker room with angry fans pounding on the door, to be the son of a coach hanged in effigy, to have to choose between the interests of a troubled young athlete and the image of a football program. Learn, with the Bowdens, the lessons of careers measured in clock ticks and place-kicks.