A GREAT MAN On June 21, 1954, Brooks Lawrence, a minor league baseball player, got word that he was to play in the major leagues. Though elated, he still recalled his lifelong quest to reach that goal and capture his dream. His story, of his family and his youth, college years, and service during World War II, features his ongoing love of the game of baseball. The difficulties and adversities he confronted as an African-American in both the minor and major leagues and how he overcame them make his ultimate triumph as a Hall of Famer an inspiring story. Brooks was a remarkable man with a remarkable story.

"The View from the Stands" is both the story of one fan's love of the game and an examination of the effect baseball has had on fans everywhere throughout its history. A collection of stories and insights compiled during the summer of 2002 in each of MLB's thirty parks, "The View from the Stands" provides us with the fans' perspective on every team and stadium in the league, and on the most important issues currently affecting the game. It gives a voice to the masses of people who fill our stadiums, and it explains how a child's game became the business it is today.

This book examines the entire experience of live baseball, from the uncomfortable seats to the misplaced marketing ventures to the incredible feeling of seeing Bonds circle the bases. Baseball touches our lives in so many unexpected ways. By introducing us to the little boys who rush to the edge of the stands in Wrigley, the recovering alcoholic who found a new family at the Metrodome, and many others from all walks of life, "The View from the Stands" tells the story of our love of the game--what draws us in and what keeps us coming back for more.

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After an injury-plagued stint in the minor leagues in his twenties, Jim Morris hung up his cleats and his dreams to start a new life as a father, high school physics teacher, and baseball coach. Jim's athletes knew that his dream was still alive — he threw the ball so hard they could barely hit it - and made a bet with him: if they won the league championship, he would have to try out for a major league ball club. They did — and he did, and during that tryout threw the ball faster than he ever had, faster than anyone there, nearly faster than anyone playing in the Bigs. He was immediately drafted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and three months later made his major league debut, striking out All-Star Royce Clayton.

Major League Baseball, alone among industries of its size in the United States, operates as an unregulated monopoly. This 20th-century regulatory anomaly has become known as the baseball anomaly. Major League Baseball developed into a major commercial enterprise without being subject to antitrust liability. Long after the interstate commercial character of baseball had been established and even recognized by the Supreme Court, baseball's monopoly remained free from federal regulation. Duquette explains the baseball anomaly by connecting baseball's regulatory status to the larger political environment, tracing the game's fate through four different regulatory regimes. The constellation of institutional, ideological, and political factors within each regulatory regime provides the context for the survival of the baseball anomaly.

Duquette shows baseball's unregulated monopoly persists because of the confluence of institutional, ideological, and political factors which have prevented the repeal of baseball's antitrust exemption to date. However, both the institutional and ideological factors are fading fast. Baseball's owners can no longer claim special cultural significance in defense of their exemption. Nor can they credibly claim that the commissioner system approximates government regulation effectively. Both of these strategies have been discredited by the labor unrest of the 1980s and 1990s. Duquette provides a unique perspective on American regulatory politics, and by explaining a complicated story in comprehensive prose, he has given researchers, policy makers, and fans a fascinating look at the business of baseball.

The '27 Yankees is the story of the most legendary and revered team in the annals of baseball: the 1927 New York Yankees, whose magical name even today evokes the standard of excellence in America s most treasured sport. The book is the definitive historical account of the men and their accomplishments from Spring Training through the World Series. Through the detailed and carefully crafted recreations of each game and events off the diamond, the reader follows the exciting day-to day exploits of Yankee legends Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Earle Combs, Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock, and teammates. Action coverage of all American and National League games and pennant races are also chronicled plus much more.

On New Year's Eve 1972, following eighteen magnificent seasons in the major leagues, Roberto Clemente died a hero's death, killed in a plane crash as he attempted to deliver food and medical supplies to Nicaragua after a devastating earthquake. David Maraniss now brings the great baseball player brilliantly back to life in "Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, " a book destined to become a modern classic. Much like his acclaimed biography of Vince Lombardi, "When Pride Still Mattered, " Maraniss uses his narrative sweep and meticulous detail to capture the myth and a real man.

Anyone who saw Clemente, as he played with a beautiful fury, will never forget him. He was a work of art in a game too often defined by statistics. During his career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he won four batting titles and led his team to championships in 1960 and 1971, getting a hit in all fourteen World Series games in which he played. His career ended with three-thousand hits, the magical three-thousandth coming in his final at-bat, and he and the immortal Lou Gehrig are the only players to have the five-year waiting period waived so they could be enshrined in the Hall of Fame immediately after their deaths.

There is delightful baseball here, including thrilling accounts of the two World Series victories of Clemente's underdog Pittsburgh Pirates, but this is far more than just another baseball book. Roberto Clemente was that rare athlete who rose above sports to become a symbol of larger themes. Born near the canebrakes of rural Carolina, Puerto Rico, on August 18, 1934, at a time when there were no blacks or Puerto Ricans playing organized ball in the United States, Clemente went on to become the greatest Latino player in the major leagues. He was, in a sense, the Jackie Robinson of the Spanish-speaking world, a ballplayer of determination, grace, and dignity who paved the way and set the highest standard for waves of Latino players who followed in later generations and who now dominate the game.

The Clemente that Maraniss evokes was an idiosyncratic character who, unlike so many modern athletes, insisted that his responsibilities extended beyond the playing field. In his final years, his motto was that if you have a chance to help others and fail to do so, you are wasting your time on this earth. Here, in the final chapters, after capturing Clemente's life and times, Maraniss retraces his final days, from the earthquake to the accident, using newly uncovered documents to reveal the corruption and negligence that led the unwitting hero on a mission of mercy toward his untimely death as an uninspected, overloaded plane plunged into the sea.