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Books > Sport & Leisure > Sports & outdoor recreation > Ball games > Baseball
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.
Ernie Banks, the first-ballot Hall of Famer and All-Century Team
shortstop, played in fourteen All-Star Games, won two MVPs and a
Gold Glove Award, and twice led the Major Leagues in home runs and
runs batted in. His signature phrase, "Let's play two," has entered
the American lexicon and exemplifies an enthusiasm and optimism
that endeared him to fans everywhere. But Banks's public display of
good cheer was also a mask that hid a deeply conflicted and complex
man. He spent his entire career with the Chicago Cubs, who fielded
some of baseball's worst teams, and became one of the greatest
players never to reach the World Series. He endured poverty and
racism as a young man, and the scorn of Cubs manager Leo Durocher
as an aging superstar. Yet Banks smiled through it all, never
complaining and never saying a negative word about his
circumstances or the people around him. Based on numerous
conversations with Banks, and on more than a hundred interviews
with family, teammates, friends, and associates--as well as oral
histories, court records, and thousands of other documents and
sources--Let's Play Two tells Banks's story along with that of the
woebegone Cubs teams he played for. This fascinating chronicle
features Buck O'Neil, Philip K. Wrigley, the Bleacher Bums, the
doomed pennant race of 1969, and much more from a long lost
baseball era.
The 1994 Major League Baseball season promised to be memorable.
Long-standing batting and pitching standards were threatened,
including the revered single-season home run record. The Montreal
Expos and New York Yankees were delivering remarkable campaigns. In
August, acting commissioner Bud Selig called a halt to the season
amid the League's latest labor dispute. The shutdown led to a
lockout as well as cancellation of more than 900 regular season
games, the scheduled expanded rounds of playoffs, and that year's
World Series. Like all labor struggles, it was fundamentally about
control--of salaries, of players' ability to decide their own
fates, and of the game itself. This book chronicles Major League
Baseball's turbulent '94 season and its ripple effects. It
highlights earlier labor struggles and the roles performed by
individuals from John Montgomery Ward, David Fultz, and Robert
Murphy to Marvin Miller, Andy Messersmith, Jim "Catfish" Hunter,
and Donald Fehr. Also examined are the ballplayers' own
organizations, from the Players League of the early 1890s to the
still potent Major League Baseball Players Association doing battle
with team owners and their representatives.
A driving ambition linked Oakland and Kansas City in the 1960s.
Each city sought the national attention and civic glory that came
with being home to professional sports teams. Their successful
campaigns to lure pro franchises ignited mutual rivalries in
football and baseball that thrilled hometown fans. But even Super
Bowl victories and World Series triumphs proved to be no defense
against urban problems in the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s. Matthew
C. Ehrlich tells the fascinating history of these iconic sports
towns. From early American Football League battles to Oakland's
deft poaching of baseball's Kansas City Athletics, the cities
emerged as fierce opponents from Day One. Ehrlich weaves a saga of
athletic stars and folk heroes like Len Dawson, Al Davis, George
Brett, and Reggie Jackson with a chronicle of two cities forced to
confront the wrenching racial turmoil, labor conflict, and economic
crises that arise when soaring aspirations collide with harsh
realities.Colorful and thought-provoking, Kansas City vs. Oakland
breaks down who won and who lost when big-time sports came to town.
You may have seen Eight Men Out or Field of Dreams, but you won't
really know the full story of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Black
Sox scandal of 1919 without reading Tim Hornbaker's book. "Haunting
portrait of one of the game's most controversial and complex
figures"-David Nemec, author, Official Rules of Baseball Considered
by Ty Cobb as "the finest natural hitter in the history of the
game," "Shoeless Joe" Jackson is ranked with the greatest players
to ever step onto a baseball diamond. With a career batting average
of .356-which is still ranked third best all time-the man from
Pickens County, South Carolina, was on his way to becoming one of
the greatest players in the sport's history. That is, until the
"Black Sox" scandal of 1919, which shook baseball to its core.
While many have sympathized with Jackson's ban from baseball (even
though he hit .375 during the 1919 World Series), not much is truly
known about this quiet slugger. Whether he participated in the
throwing of the World Series or not, he is still considered one of
the game's best, and many have fought for his induction into the
National Baseball Hall of Fame. From the author of Turning the
Black Sox White (on Charles Comiskey) and War on the Basepaths (on
Ty Cobb), Fall from Grace tells the story of the incredible life of
Joseph Jefferson Jackson. From a mill boy to a baseball icon,
author Tim Hornbaker breaks down the rise and fall of "Shoeless
Joe," giving an inside look during baseball's Deadball Era,
including Jackson's personal point of view of the "Black Sox"
scandal, which has never been covered before in this.
Nineteen sixty-two-it's been called "the end of innocence," as
America witnessed the Cuban Missile Crisis and the following year
saw the Kennedy assassination and the early stirrings of Vietnam.
In baseball, 1962 was a thrilling season. Five years prior, the
Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants had migrated west to Los
Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, leaving New York to the
Yankees. In 1962, those same Giants and Dodgers faced off to see
who would advance to the World Series. Waiting to do battle were
the Yankees, who were also battling for allegiance in New York with
the Mets'debut. The old Subway Series had gone cross-country. Just
as it was the end of innocence, it was an end of an era for the
Yankees. Winners of eleven World Series titles in twenty years,
they would go fifteen years-a record for the modern-era Bombers at
the time-until their next championship. They appeared in the next
two World Series, but by the end of the decade it was those upstart
Mets' amazin' fans. The Dodgers would break through the following
year and again in 1965 while the Giants-convinced they'd be back
many times- have yet to win a title on the West Coast. Mickey
Mantle and Whitey Ford, Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, Sandy
Koufax and Don Drysdale, Casey Stengel. Steven Travers details
Hollywood's adoration of the Dodgers, San Francisco's battle
between inferiority and superiority, and New York, rulers of sport
and society, experiencing the beginnings of a changing of the
guard. Three cities, five teams, and one great year are all here in
"A Tale of Three Cities".
Grab a Zweigle's White Hot at Dwyer Stadium (built in 1939) and
cheer on the Batavia Muckdogs. Join C.T. the Tiger as he warms up
the crowd at Norwich's Dodd Stadium. Take in the view of Coney
Island from the upper deck of MCU Park, home of the Brooklyn
Cyclones. Watch from a box seat in Pawtucket as top Red Sox
prospects try to make it to the bigs. . . . It's all part of minor
league baseball in the Northeast. This book conveys the essence of
the sport--from the sublime (summer nights under the lights
cheering for a hometown team) to the ridiculous (racing bagels,
cowboy monkeys, garish "alternate" uniforms--by visiting 27 minor
league ballparks through the Northeast. It offers both a visitor's
guide and an appealing narrative, covering the particulars of each
venue--who plays there and when, how to get there, where to sit and
what to eat--and describing what makes each park, and each team and
town, special.
In 1937, the Great Depression was still lingering, but at baseball
parks across the country there was a sense of optimism. Major
League attendance was on a sharp rise. Tickets to an Indians game
at League Park on Lexington and East 66th were $1.60 for box seats,
$1.35 for reserve seats, and $.55 for the bleachers. Cleveland fans
were particularly upbeat--Bob Feller, the teenage phenomenon, was a
farm boy with a blistering fast ball. Night games were an exciting
development. Better days were ahead. But there were mounting issues
facing the Indians. For one thing, it was rumored that the team had
illegally signed Feller. Baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw
Mountain Landis was looking into that matter and one other. Issues
with an alcoholic catcher, dugout fights, bats thrown into stands,
injuries, and a player revolt kept things lively. In Bad Boys, Bad
Times: The Cleveland Indians and Baseball in the Prewar Years,
1937-1941--the follow-up to his No Money, No Beer, No Pennants: The
Cleveland Indians and Baseball in the Great Depression--baseball
historian Scott H. Longert writes about an exciting period for the
team, with details and anecdotes that will please fans all over.
As baseball was becoming the national pastime, Kansas was settling
into statehood, with hundreds of towns growing up with the game.
The early history of baseball in Kansas, chronicled in this book,
is the story of those towns and the ballparks they built, of the
local fans and teams playing out the drama of the American dream in
the heart of the country.
The flagship publication of the Society for American Baseball
Research (SABR), the Baseball Research Journal is an
interdisciplinary peer-reviewed publication presenting the best in
SABR member research on baseball. History, biography, economics,
physics, psychology, game theory, sociology and culture, records,
and many other disciplines are represented to expand our knowledge
of baseball as it is, was, and could be played.
This sensitive commentary on Jackie Robinson's life describes his
childhood in Pasadena, through his years as a sports hero, to his
later involvement in politics and the Civil Rights movement. Harvey
Frommer has drawn upon interviews with Robinson's family, friends,
and fellow ball players to tell the story of a courageous man who
triumphed over bigotry and personal tragedy to take his place in
the hearts of millions of Americans.
A visually stunning road trip through pro baseball's wacky,
wondrous, and revered ballpark attractions Exploding scoreboards,
treetop seats, and neon skylines are just three of the more than
100 ballpark design features, field eccentricities, historic
displays, traditions, concession items, and even super-fans and
mascots profiled in this armchair baseball journey. Combining
engaging storytelling with fun sidebars and beautiful color photos,
author Josh Pahigian captures the essence of each ballpark
treasure-from the retractable lighthouse at the Portland Sea Dogs'
Hadlock Field to the Sausage Race at the Brewers' Miller Park to
Fenway Park's Green Monster and even to the delicious biscuits
served by the aptly named Montgomery Biscuits. From the Rookie
Leagues to the Majors, there are more than 250 professional
baseball parks in the United States where fans partake in special
game-day rituals, eat unique foods, laugh along with the zany
mascot, marvel at the park's special features, and revel in a
communal experience that removes them for a few hours from life's
daily grind. The Amazing Baseball Adventure brings to life the very
best of these cherished ballpark features, the ones that motivate
fans to return again and again to baseball cathedrals large and
small.
A Booklist Top 10 Sports & Recreation Book Finalist for the
2022 CASEY Award Born and raised in rural Mississippi and the even
balmier climes of central Florida, Red Barber, at the age of
thirty-two, became one of New York City's most influential citizens
as the play-by-play announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers. When he
arrived in 1939, Barber brought the down-home drawl and idioms of
his southern roots to the borough, where residents said they could
walk down any street and never miss a pitch because his voice
wafted out of every window and every passing car. From his colorful
expressions like "rhubarb" and "sitting in the catbird seat" to his
vivid use of similes-a close game was "tighter than a new pair of
shoes on a rainy day"-Barber's influence on his contemporaries and
the many generations of broadcasters who followed him cannot be
overstated. But behind all the base hits, balls, and strikes lies a
compelling story that dramatizes the shifting expectations and
roles of a public figure-the sports broadcaster-as he adapted to
complex cultural changes throughout the course of twentieth-century
American life. Red Barber follows the trajectory of Barber's long
career from radio and television play-by-play man for the
Cincinnati Reds, Brooklyn Dodgers, and New York Yankees to his work
calling college and professional football games, his nine-year
tenure as director of sports for CBS Radio, and his second acts as
an Episcopal lay reader, sportswriter, and weekly guest with Bob
Edwards on NPR's Morning Edition. This talented public figure was
also a private man committed to rigorous self-examination and
willing to evolve and grow under the influence of changing times.
When the Dodgers first signed Jackie Robinson and smashed the color
barrier in Major League Baseball, Barber struggled to overcome the
racism he had absorbed from his culture as a child. But after
observing the vicious abuse Robinson endured from opposing fans,
Barber became an ardent supporter of him and the many Black players
who followed. Barber was also bothered deeply by the strains that
his single-minded careerism imposed on his family. He was
challenged to navigate longtime family tensions after his only
child, Sarah, came out as a lesbian. And his primary role during
the later years of his life was caretaking for his wife, Lylah,
during her decline from Alzheimer's disease, at a time when the
ailment was something many families concealed. Ultimately Red
Barber traces the career of a true radio and television pioneer who
was committed to the civic responsibility of mass media. Barber
firmly believed the most important role of a broadcaster was
telling the truth and promoting public well-being.
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