In 1937, when local beer baron Emil Sick stepped in, the Seattle Indians were a struggling minor-league baseball team teetering on collapse. Moved to mix baseball and beer by his good friend and fellow brewer, New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, Sick built a new stadium and turned the team into a civic treasure. The Rainiers (newly named after the beer) set attendance records and won Pacific Coast League titles in 1939, '40, '41, '51, and '55. The story of the Rainiers spans the end of the Great Depression, World War II, the rise of the airline industry, and the incursion of Major League Baseball into the West Coast (which ultimately spelled doom for the club). It features well-known personalities such as Babe Ruth, who made an unsuccessful bid to manage the team; Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby, who did manage the Rainiers; and Ron Santo, a batboy who went on to a storied career with the Chicago Cubs. Mixing traditional baseball lore with tales of mischief, "Pitchers of Beer" relates the twenty-seven-year history of the Rainiers, a history that captures the timeless appeal of baseball, along with the local moments and minutiae that bring the game home to each and every one of us. "Pitchers of Beer" showcases fifty-two photographs of players and memorabilia from noted Northwest baseball collector David Eskenazi.

We may not always be World Cup standard on the field, but on the page we are the best. This anthology brings together heroes, favourite grounds and historic moments from Welsh soccer as Cardiff's Dannie Abse lines up alongside the Rhondda's Ron Berry, John Toshack pens a poem on the immortal John Charles, and the great Trevor Ford writes about himself. This is a new-look Welsh XI that shows that our football is world class.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing many of these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

In 1937, when local beer baron Emil Sick stepped in, the Seattle Indians were a struggling minor-league baseball team teetering on collapse. Moved to mix baseball and beer by his good friend and fellow brewer, New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, Sick built a new stadium and turned the team into a civic treasure. The Rainiers (newly named after the beer) set attendance records and won Pacific Coast League titles in 1939, '40, '41, '51, and '55. The story of the Rainiers spans the end of the Great Depression, World War II, the rise of the airline industry, and the incursion of Major League Baseball into the West Coast (which ultimately spelled doom for the club). It features well-known personalities such as Babe Ruth, who made an unsuccessful bid to manage the team; Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby, who did manage the Rainiers; and Ron Santo, a batboy who went on to a storied career with the Chicago Cubs. Mixing traditional baseball lore with tales of mischief, "Pitchers of Beer" relates the twenty-seven-year history of the Rainiers, a history that captures the timeless appeal of baseball, along with the local moments and minutiae that bring the game home to each and every one of us. "Pitchers of Beer" showcases fifty-two photographs of players and memorabilia from noted Northwest baseball collector David Eskenazi.

The Giro d'Italia is one of the world's most important and popular bicycle races, yet there is almost no information in English about this magical Italian race's rich past. With "The Story of the Giro d'Italia," the fabulous history of Italy's national tour is at last available. Volume One takes the story of the Giro from its origin as a desperate promotional gamble by a nearly broke newspaper to Eddy Merckx's convincing 1970 victory.

The Butler Bulldogs advanced to the NCAA National Championship basketball game against Duke University upon defeating Michigan State on April 3, 2010. With only 4,500 students, Butler was the smallest school to play for a national championship since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. Coached by Brad Stevens just three years into his position as head basketball coach the undefeated Bulldogs were a hometown team, playing before a hometown crowd on the national stage. Two days later, Butler lost narrowly to Duke, 61 59, but their run for the championship had become a national phenomenon. From her vantage point as a Butler professor, acclaimed writer Susan Neville observed (and participated in) Hoosier Hysteria firsthand. In Butler's Big Dance, she intertwines her recollections of the events with interviews, anecdotes, and photographs to bring readers a taste of the on-campus and courtside excitement of the Bulldogs David-and-Goliath bid for the national title."

Two childhood friends grow up on opposite sides of the two rival soccer teams in this memoir of friendship and loyalty. As they approached their teenage years a new youth phenomenon which had already began to appear on the soccer scene in Britain--the Casual movement. Instead of becoming bitter rivals and sworn enemies they stood side by side in the one and only group in the city which defended both their teams. This is the true, honest, and very unique story of the Dundee Utility thugs.

This book looks back at the last 17 seasons of Premiership football. Featuring in-depth profiles of the club's chairmen and manager and 23 of the best players to don the red shirt, this is an essential guide to England's pre-eminent club. There are also in-depth statistical analyses of every Premiership season, all cup results since 1992 and every result in the Manchester Derby since 1894.

""Nobody ever beats Wales at rugby. They just score more points." --Graham Mourie, former New Zealand captain"
In the 1970s, an age long before World Cups, rugby union to the British public meant Bill McLaren, rude songs, and, most of all, Wales. Between 1969 and 1979, the men in red shirts won or shared eight Five Nations Championships, including three Grand Slams and six Triple Crowns. But the mere facts resonate less than the enduring images of the precision of Gareth Edwards, the sublime touch of Barry John, the sidesteps of Gerald Davies and Phil Bennett, the courage and extravagant sideburns of J.P.R. Williams, and the forward power of the Pontypool Front Row and "Merv the Swerve" Davies. To the land of their fathers, these Welsh heroes represented pride and conquest at a time when the decline of the province's traditional coal and steel industries was sending thousands to the dole queue and threatening the fabric of local communities. Yet the achievements of those players transcended their homeland and extended beyond mere rugby fans. With the help of comedian Max Boyce, the culture of Welsh rugby and valley life permeated Britain's living rooms at the height of prime time, reinforcing the sporting brilliance that lit up winter Saturday afternoons. In "Nobody Beats Us," David Tossell, who spent the 1970s as a schoolboy scrum-half trying to perfect the Gareth Edwards reverse pass, interviews many of the key figures of a golden age of Welsh rugby and vividly recreates an unforgettable sporting era.

With "Final Innings" Dean Sullivan concludes his four-volume documentary history of baseball, whose three earlier volumes have been called "a broad array of illuminating and often unexpected materials" ("Sports Collectors Digest"), "an invaluable reference tool" ("Newark Star-Ledger"), and a "fascinating collection" ("Washington Post"), in which "ancient myths are shattered and new facts are uncovered" ("USA Today Baseball Weekly"). Culling the most pertinent, newsworthy, and just plain curious stories from newspapers and periodicals, and putting each into context, Sullivan constructs an informative and entertaining account of Major League baseball from 1972 through 2008. The 105 essays cover key topics such as George Steinbrenner's purchase of the Yankees, the first free-agent draft, the coming of lights to Wrigley Field, the cancellation of the World Series in 1994, and the BALCO steroid probe. They also bring to light lesser-known gems like the rise of sabermetrics and the federal injunction against team owners in 1995. Offering a you-are-there view of the events that made baseball into the game we know today, this book gives readers a chance to go back and experience baseball's recent history as it happened and was reported by many of the game's finest writers and most prominent voices.

At the dawn of the roaring twenties, baseball was struggling to overcome two of its darkest moments: the death of a player during a Major League game and the revelations of the 1919 Black Sox scandal. At this critical juncture for baseball, two teams emerged to fight for the future of the game. They were also battling for the hearts and minds of New Yorkers as the city rose in dramatic fashion to the pinnacle of the baseball world. "1921" captures this crucial moment in the history of baseball, telling the story of a season that pitted the New York Yankees against their Polo Grounds landlords and hated rivals, John McGraw's Giants, in the first all-New York Series and resulted in the first American League pennant for the now-storied Yankees' franchise. Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg recreate the drama that featured the charismatic Babe Ruth in his assault on baseball records in the face of McGraw's disdain for the American League and the Ruth-led slugging style. Their work evokes the early 1920s with the words of renowned sportswriters such as Damon Runyon, Grantland Rice, and Heywood Broun. With more than fifty photographs, the book offers a remarkably vivid picture of the colorful characters, the crosstown rivalry, and the incomparable performances that made this season a classic.

To err is human. To really screw up requires team effort. Everyone cheers the clubs that win pennants, but what about the doormats who made their triumphs possible? It's time to give baseball's lousiest teams their due. Here they are: The 1904 Washington Senators, whose only good player, a thirty-five-year-old star hitter, took a dive (fatally, into Niagara Falls); the 1935 Boston Braves, who set the National League standard for losing percentage despite featuring three Hall of Famers--including Yankee exile Babe Ruth; the 1952 Pittsburgh Pirates, Joe Garagiola's cellar-dwelling team that was so bad, he quipped, "they wouldn't put our pictures on bubble gum cards"; and the 1962 New York Mets, maybe not the worst team ever but definitely the funniest in modern baseball history. You'll get the stats, the scores, the scandals, and the secrets in this no-holds-barred account. When the survivors of these diamond trainwrecks include such legends as Marv Throneberry, Ralph Kiner, Cal Ripken Jr., Roger Craig, and Joe Garagiola, you can be sure that the book (unlike its subjects) is a winner.

From the introduction of the reserve clause in 1879 to the lockout and new basic agreement of 1990, baseball players have been engaged in one of the longest and most colorful labor struggles in our nation's history. "The Imperfect Diamond" tells the stories of the players and their opponents, the powerful owners: how John Montgomery Ward led the Players League Rebellion of 1890; the rise and fall of David Fultz and the Baseball Players Fraternity (1912-18); the iron-fisted regime of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis; the case of "Danny Gardella vs. Happy Chandler" and the blacklisting of the players who jumped to the Mexican League; the founding of the Baseball Players Association in 1953 and the tempestuous but triumphant reign of Marvin Miller; the struggles of Curt Flood, Andy Messersmith, and Dave McNally, and how they brought about the demise of the reserve clause; the unprecedented midseason strike of 1981 and the collusion cases of the late 1980s. In the epilogue for this Bison Books edition, Lee Lowenfish guides the reader through the turbulent 1990s and first decade of the twenty-first century, covering expansion teams, the monumental 1994 strike, and performance-enhancing drugs. Listed by the Society of American Baseball Research as one of the fifty essential baseball books, "The Imperfect Diamond" will stand for years to come as the source for the real story behind America's national pastime.

Buffaloes and Beatniks is a historical, nostalgic narrative of the efforts of a group of young boys who set aside their quest for individual glory to conduct a superb effort to achieve team glory and became the first team in 50 years of Waycross High School football to be State Champs. It's the true stories woven together about what really happened when a new coaching staff employed "out of the box" techniques to inform, instruct, inspire and motivate a bunch of boys, who came from all over the City of Waycross to the Georgia AA State Championship. The story explains how the name of Buffaloes and Beatniks came to be applied due to the offensive speed, power and size along with defensive toughness, rebelliousness and pride. Together they were the "Unstoppable Force and the Immovable Object." The story comes straight from the "Buffalos' mouth. It tells how young men exposed to a pursuit of athletic excellence, become champions for their entire life. These ordinary young men learned how to do extraordinary things that were "taught on the practice field and learned in life." The story tells of "How to get a suntan and learn how to swim"; "How the State Championship was won two weeks before the first game was ever played"; what is "Thinking about the game"; why you will have "To live with them the rest of your life"; "Pay the price for failure"; "Vitamin shots"; and "it's a long way to go just to say hello." You will learn of the Promise that was made and the Promise that was kept. The story is relevant today. When the principles the 1960 Bulldogs who drilled, practiced and rehearsed, are applied today to your life, you too will be a Champion.

In the informative, entertaining, and generously illustrated Spartak Moscow, a book that will be cheered by soccer fans worldwide, Robert Edelman finds in the stands and on the pitch keys to understanding everyday life under Stalin, Khrushchev, and their successors. Millions attended matches and obsessed about their favorite club, and their rowdiness on game day stood out as a moment of relative freedom in a society that championed conformity. This was particularly the case for the supporters of Spartak, which emerged from the rough proletarian Presnia district of Moscow and spent much of its history in fierce rivalry with Dinamo, the team of the secret police. To cheer for Spartak, Edelman shows, was a small and safe way of saying "no" to the fears and absurdities of high Stalinism; to understand Spartak is to understand how soccer explains Soviet life.

Champions of the Soviet Elite League twelve times and eleven-time winner of the USSR Cup, Spartak was founded and led for seven decades by the four Starostin brothers, the most visible of whom were Nikolai and Andrei. Brilliant players turned skilled entrepreneurs, they were flexible enough to constantly change their business model to accommodate the dramatic shifts in Soviet policy. Whether because of their own financial wheeling and dealing or Spartak's too frequent success against state-sponsored teams, they were arrested in 1942 and spent twelve years in the gulag. Instead of facing hard labor and likely death, they were spared the harshness of their places of exile when they were asked by local camp commandants to coach the prisoners' football teams. Returning from the camps after Stalin's death, they took back the reins of a club whose mystique as the "people's team" was only enhanced by its status as a victim of Stalinist tyranny.

Edelman covers the team from its days on the wild fields of prerevolutionary Russia through the post-Soviet period. Given its history, it was hardly surprising that Spartak adjusted quickly to the new, capitalist world of postsocialist Russia, going on to win the championship of the Russian Premier League nine times, the Russian Cup three times, and the CIS Commonwealth of Independent States Cup six times. In addition to providing a fresh and authoritative history of Soviet society as seen through its obsession with the world's most popular sport, Edelman, a well-known sports commentator, also provides biographies of Spartak's leading players over the course of a century and riveting play-by-play accounts of Spartak's most important matches-including such highlights as the day in 1989 when Spartak last won the Soviet Elite League on a Valery Shmarov free kick at the ninety-second minute. Throughout, he palpably evokes what it was like to cheer for the "Red and White."

In the mid-1950s three unrecruited black basketball players, coached by a white former prison guard who had never before coached a college team, led a small Jesuit university in San Francisco to two national titles. "The Dandy Dons" describes for the first time how the unprecedented accomplishment of the Dons, led by coach Phil Woolpert and future hall-of-famers Bill Russell and K. C. Jones, paved the way for black talent in major college basketball and transformed the sport.
James W. Johnson traces the backgrounds of the coach and players, chronicles the heart-stopping games on the road to the championships, and details the Dons' novel techniques: a more vertical game, more central defense, and intimidation as part of game strategy. He also gives a textured picture of life on an integrated basketball team amid a culture of racism and Jim Crow in mid-twentieth-century America.

"Fifty Years by the Bay" is a literary documentary, covering all of the significant memories in San Francisco Giant history. This detailed account commences with the move West in 1958, through the 40 seasons at Candlestick Park, to a new beginning at Pacific Bell Park, into a new millennium, and onto the 2007 season. The work relives the key moments, teams, players and figures that made the franchise great. All of the memorable and celebrated moments are chronicled, including: . Through the years with the team, 1958 - 2007 . Top individual game feats . Significant seasonal performances . Successful career achievements . Features on all of the great San Francisco Giant players, including: ] Willie Mays

Dundee were the punch-drunk underdogs when they chased European Cup glory after winning the league in 1962. AC Milan, Benfica and Real Madrid were at the peak of their powers and Ipswich would represent England after winning the league under Alf Ramsey. Dundee were about to enter a new world of glamour. Expectations were so low that just ten Dundee fans put their names forward for a special flight to mark the club's first venture into the unknown. The Dark Blues were up for the fight though, and destroyed Cologne 8-1 in a blitzkrieg at Dens Park that left the German Embassy reeling. In the week they shared the same bill as boxing legends Sonny Liston and Sugar Ray Robinson, the British Army rescued Dundee from a mass riot with as many punches thrown in the return leg. As this remarkable Cinderella story unfolded, fans of city rivals Dundee United were soon hitch-hiking across the continent to watch Dundee as they came close to conquering Europe, before it all ended in brawls, bribes and broken dreams.

The Greatest Escape in the History of Huddersfield Town F.C.(synopsis) The Great Escape of the 1997-8 season for Huddersfield Town has been well documented. Without the enormous efforts from Peter Jackson and Terry Yorath the team would have faced certain relegation. However, now I am proud, pleased and relieved to be in a position to give an account of the Greatest Escape in the history of the club; a monumental milestone in the history of the Terriers. The Great Escape was made possible by efforts on the field, whereas in the Greatest Escape it was the massive contributions of the ones off it that made the vital difference to survival. Find out how close the club was to closure as thousands contributed to saving the Terriers not from relegation but from folding as a club forever; from being robbed of the joy, excitement and intensity that every match day brings.

In two years, Wales went from Home International wooden spoon holders four times running to 1976 European Football Championship quarter-finalists. The book provides the background to qualification, accounts of all matches, examination of the fallout from the campaign's controversial ending, and a 'Where are they now?' section. 30 images. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru

This book probably never would have been written without the owners' lockout which led to the cancelled 2004-05 season. Missing the fastest game in the world and my team, the Maple Leafs, I instead spent many cold and quiet winter nights last season wondering just who were the greatest Leaf players of all-time. What started out as a search for a method of ranking the players evolved into a need to justify the results by organizing all the biographical and statistical data into one place and this is what came out of the research. Interlacing many action segments with the facts, this is an attempt to make sports bios more entertaining and scintillating, as well as to illuminate the great moments in the history of the team. Dating back to 1927, Toronto's team has a rich history integral to that of the NHL and this epistle is a must for all hockey fans, not just fans of the Leafs. So come read about the legendary names of both the past and the present such as Johnny Bower, Busher Jackson, Dave Keon, The Big M, Ed Belfour, Bill Barilko and many, many more.

For Leeds United fans of a certain age, the 80s are the Dark Ages, the Wilderness Years between the collapse of the team that Don Revie built and the Rebirth brought to Elland Road by Howard Wilkinson in the 90s when Leeds United were for a time once again the best team in the country. That was before Wilkinson sold Eric Cantona to the hated Manchester United and then lost his way and his job. Success came too early and quickly for Wilkinson’s own good and when the Caspian Group bought out the club in 1996 they had eyes only for George Graham and gave him the chance to redeem himself from his ‘bung’ controversy. When George Graham high-tailed it off back to London, David O’Leary succeeded him and built a brand new and very exciting new team around his ‘Babies’. The 80s were grim and grey days when Margaret Thatcher held sway and Leeds imploded before Wilkinson came over the hill like a dour knight in shining armour to lead the club back to the Promised Land and a completely unexpected league championship triumph in 1992. And oh how we partied when Wilko delivered the holy grail. This is the tale of how Don Revie’s Paradise was lost, how Leeds collapsed into the Second Division, almost made it the FA Cup final and promotion in 1987 before Billy Bremner was sacked and chairman Leslie Silver recruited Howard Wilkinson from Sheffield Wednesday to develop a new legacy. These are the years when the First Division gave way to the Premiership, when money and television changed everything and football became a business rather than the People’s Game. This book covers the period from 1980 to 2000 when Leeds crashed and burned and rose from the ashes to become the last English First Division champions.

WINNER OF THE CRICKET SOCIETY AND MCC BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2016 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 'I doubt there will be a better book written about this period in West Indies cricket history.' Clive Lloyd Cricket had never been played like this. Cricket had never meant so much. The West Indies had always had brilliant cricketers; it hadn't always had brilliant cricket teams. But in 1974, a man called Clive Lloyd began to lead a side which would at last throw off the shackles that had hindered the region for centuries. Nowhere else had a game been so closely connected to a people's past and their future hopes; nowhere else did cricket liberate a people like it did in the Caribbean. For almost two decades, Clive Lloyd and then Vivian Richards led the batsmen and bowlers who changed the way cricket was played and changed the way a whole nation - which existed only on a cricket pitch - saw itself. With their pace like fire and their scorching batting, these sons of cane-cutters and fishermen brought pride to a people which had been stifled by 300 years of slavery, empire and colonialism. Their cricket roused the Caribbean and antagonised the game's traditionalists. Told by the men who made it happen and the people who watched it unfold, Fire in Babylon is the definitive story of the greatest team that sport has known.