The Yankees and New York baseball entered a golden age between 1949 and 1964, a period during which the city was represented in all but one World Series. While the Yankees dominated, however, the years were not so golden for the rest of baseball.
In "The Postwar Yankees" David George Surdam deconstructs this idyllic period to show that while the Yankees piled on pennants and World Series titles through the 1950s, overall Major League Baseball attendance consistently declined and gate-revenue disparity widened through the mid-1950s. Contrary to popular belief, the era was already experiencing many problems that fans of today's game bemoan, including competitive imbalance and callous owners who ran the league like a cartel. Fans also found aging, decrepit stadiums ill equipped for the burgeoning automobile culture, while television and new forms of leisure competed for their attention.
Through an economist's lens, Surdam brings together historical documents and off-the-field numbers to reconstruct the period and analyze the roots of the age's enduring mythology, examining why the Yankees and other New York teams were consistently among baseball's elite and how economic and social forces set in motion during this golden age shaped the sport into its modern incarnation.

Rooting for the Home Team examines how various American communities create and maintain a sense of collective identity through sports. Looking at large cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, and Los Angeles as well as small rural towns, suburbs, and college towns, the contributors consider the idea that rooting for local athletes and home teams often symbolizes a community's preferred understanding of itself, and that doing so is an expression of connectedness, public pride and pleasure, and personal identity. Some of the wide-ranging essays point out that financial interests also play a significant role in encouraging fan bases, and modern media have made every seasonal sport into yearlong obsessions. Celebrities show up for big games, politicians throw out first pitches, and taxpayers pay plenty for new stadiums and arenas. The essays in Rooting for the Home Team cover a range of professional and amateur athletics, including teams in basketball, football, baseball, and even the phenomenon of no-glove softball. Contributors are Amy Bass, Susan Cahn, Mark Dyreson, Michael Ezra, Elliott J. Gorn, Christopher Lamberti, Allison Lauterbach, Catherine M. Lewis, Shelley Lucas, Daniel A. Nathan, Michael Oriard, Carlo Rotella, Jaime Schultz, Mike Tanier, David K. Wiggins, and David W. Zang.

On a rainy night in Gothenburg in May 1983 twelve young Scotsmen turned the footballing world on its head. Against all the odds, those players took on the might of Spanish giants Real Madrid, and beat them convincingly. Aberdeen were winners of the European Cup Winners Cup. The manager, Alex Ferguson, would go on to become one of the greats, his team Pittodrie legends. The tale of that season, the remarkable triumph in the Ullevi Stadium and of the men who made it possible has never fully been told - until now. "Glory In Gothenburg" goes behind the scenes, deep into the inner sanctum, and through a series of in-depth interviews with all the main characters reveals what made that side and those players so special and what drove them on to achieve unparalleled success. Thirty years later, the story remains one of the most astonishing in the history of Scottish football.

Of all winter sports, none is so widely watched and commented upon by the media as figure skating, which is often considered the Winter Olympics' centerpiece. This critical text examines the ways in which media attention has gradually altered and affected the sport, from the early appearances of Sonja Henie, to skating's gradual audience growth via television, and to the ramifications of the scandals in the 1994 and 2002 Olympics. The topic is illuminated by more than 30 interviews with commentators, skaters, producers, directors and others. In addition to numerous photos, illustrations show the compulsory figures for which "figure skating" got its name, as well as a sample of the charted-out "camera blocking" for TV directors. Appendices include collected anecdotes from early broadcasting experiences; a profile of broadcaster Jim McKay; and commentary from Carol Heiss on her 1961 musical Snow White and the Three Stooges.

The history of the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association's basketball team and the legends it spawned

The story of Scottish international football including contemporary and historic images of legends, key events, and matches. With individual diary entries for every day of the year, the book is full of heroes and villains, and tells the tales of the matches, characters, tournaments, and managers that have helped shape the story of Scottish international football. From the world's first international match against England in 1872 to Home Championship victories to World Cup heartaches and the tale of the Tartan Army, all the major football stories are covered.Scotland On This Day revisits all the most magical and memorable moments from the nation's footballing past, mixing in a maelstrom of quirky anecdotes and legendary characters to produce an irresistibly dippable dark blue-and-white history - with an entry for every day of the year. From that Partick afternoon in 1872 when Scotland drew with England in the first ever football international, right through to the SPL era, the Tartan Army have witnessed a host of successes in the British Championship, plus famous victories, heart-rending near misses and valiant defeats in World Cup and European Championships matches - as well as a few less defiant losses at Hampden. Timeless greats such as Denis Law, Jimmy McGrory and Ally McCoist, Joe Baxter, Kenny Dalglish and Dave Mackay all loom larger than life alongside the lesser-known heroes, one-cap wonders and managers who have helped shape the story of Scottish football.

Over the years, the mobs of Preston North End have fronted up to infamous football firms such as the Chelsea Headhunters, the Birmingham City Zulus and the Leeds Service Crew, to name just a few. Although the Preston lads were often lacking in big numbers, they were always prepared to stand their ground and have a go, knowing that it was quality, not quantity that would count when standing toe to toe with their rivals. In this brutally honest book, staunch PNE fan Bill Routledge recalls the days when the dawn of Saturdays signalled a rush of adrenalin and a wave of anticipation; a time for the lads to put aside the worries of the working week and experience the buzz of mayhem on the terraces. He describes a time when music and fashion were vital to the identity of the firms, as well as examining the history of violence at Preston North End, the roots of the different factions and how they got their names. Together with other faces from the PNE firms, he details hair-raising tales of violent clashes with other mobs, as well as the fans' misdemeanours on foreign soil. This fascinating insight into life on the frontline is as shocking as it is exciting - but it's not short of laughs either. It is a truthful account of the highs and lows of being a devoted, passionate football fan waiting for glory.

A comprehensive history of the oldest surviving rugby club in Bristol. Founded in 1872 by Masters and former pupils of Clifton College, its roots go back to Rugby School itself. This all started with www.cliftonrfchistory.co.uk which has now become the largest rugby club history website in the world.

This was the season when Sir Alex Ferguson's long-held wish to "knock Liverpool off their f**king perch' was made flesh. A season so successful that even European Cup Final defeat to Barcelona couldn't fully diminish the club's achievements. Justin Blundell tells the story of United's triumphs in a punchy, rabidly red-eyed review of every single match and goal. In the wake of the euphoria of Moscow it would have been excusable to regard what followed as an extended hangover. Yet the newly crowned European Champions became World Champions in December following their successful trip to the Far East and when they added the Carling Cup in March they held every honour possible excepting the FA Cup. All this despite a close season dominated by Cristiano Ronaldo's courtship by Real Madrid. This two month long tabloid extravaganza, coming just weeks after United's Moscow triumph, was only settled in mid-August. Then there was possibly the most unpredictable and sensational transfer deadline day in history -- if Manchester City's take-over by Arab billionaires beggared belief, their subsequent attempts to sign any and every player in Europe left the old order reeling. The attempts to de-rail Dimitar Berbatov's GBP30m move to United worried Sir Alex enough for him to pick the Bulgarian up from the tarmac of Manchester airport in his Audi A8. The season that followed had it's own sensations - Chelsea leading and falling away before Liverpool appeared to pull decisively away only for Rafa Benitez's infamous 'fact' rant to unwittingly de-rail them. By the time the rivals met in early March, many assumed that a United win would close out the title. Instead, Liverpool shocked the hosts 4-1, a defeat compounded by another loss at Fulham a week later. It took Frederico Macheda to rescue wins against Villa and Sunderland to keep United a step ahead before a cagey nil-nil with Arsenal confirmed United's 18th record equalling championship. In Europe, Ronaldo confi rmed his standing as the best player in the world by almost single-handedly hauling United into another fi nal. This time, shorn of the industry of Darren Fletcher, United were no match for the Catalans in a game that proved to be the Portuguese's swansong. Written with an eye for the humour and pomposity surrounding the modern game, Justin Blundell brings the matches, goals and managerial spats back to life. From the Ronaldo transfer saga to the despair of defeat in Rome, this is an entertaining, minute-by-minute guide to the matches that really mattered. It contains the season's best quotes from the likes of Ferguson and Benitez to Paddy Crerand and Mickey Thomas. Far from following the tired blueprint of statistics and dry match reports, "18 Times" is a book for everyone who lives and breathes United, not just on match day but every single day.

"There Is A Bonny Fitba Team" is the story of one fan's journey as he follows Hibernian FC through the highs and lows of fifty years on the Hibee highway. The story starts in April 1958 when eleven-year-old Ted Brack left Hampden in tears after Hibs had lost the Scottish Cup Final. Between that day and watching Hibs win the CIS Cup nearly fifty years later, Ted Brack has been to over 1,000 games and has dedicated a major part of his life to the club. During that time he got to know many of the club's legendary players, its officials and supporters and was a regular contributor to the Hibs fanzine. "There Is A Bonny Fitba Team" is a funny, affectionate and honest account of the trials and tribulations of a devoted Hibs fan as well as a history of the club over the last fifty years and a must-read book for all the fans who have lived through good times and bad with Hibernian FC.

With "The Gashouse Gang," John Heidenry delivers the definitive account of one the greatest and most colorful baseball teams of all times, the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals, filled with larger-than-life baseball personalities like Branch Rickey, Leo Durocher, Pepper Martin, Casey Stengel, Satchel Paige, Frankie Frisch, and--especially-- the eccentric good ol' boy and great pitcher Dizzy Dean and his brother Paul.

The year 1934 marked the lowest point of the Great Depression, when the U.S. went off the gold standard, banks collapsed by the score, and millions of Americans were out of work. Epic baseball feats offered welcome relief from the hardships of daily life. The Gashouse Gang, the brilliant culmination of a dream by its general manager, Branch Rickey, the first to envision a farm system that would acquire and "educate" young players in the art of baseball, was adored by the nation, who saw itself--scruffy, proud, and unbeatable--in the Gang.

Based on original research and told in entertaining narrative style, "The Gashouse Gang" brings a bygone era and a cast full of vivid personalities to life and unearths a treasure trove of baseball lore that will delight any fan of the great American pastime.

Surrey County Cricket Club have been involved in many titanic struggles over the years. With match reports, scorecards and illustrations, this book recounts vital and historic encounters against rival first-class counties and touring sides from around the world.

Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA's Culture of Rape, Violence, and Crime is a searing indictment of professional basketball players who live in a world where criminal laws and social norms don't exist, a world where they are given license to act above the law.

On the court, they dazzle us with their spectacular physical feats. They generate millions of dollars of revenue for the NBA and their teams. They inspire adulation. But underneath all the glitz, the money, and alley-oops is a seamy underbelly, a rash of lawlessness that is gripping the NBA.

Based on a first-of-its-kind investigation into the criminal histories of 177 NBA players from the 2001-2002 season, Out of Bounds shows that an alarming four out of every ten NBA players have a police record involving a serious crime. They are All-Stars and they are journeymen, involved in crimes ranging from armed robbery to domestic violence to gun possession to rape.

Out of Bounds takes a hard look at shocking cases, with graphic accounts of physical and sexual violence and other outrageous conduct by players. In all, more than 250 people are named, including many prominent NBA players. It exposes the environment and culture that encourages such criminal behavior. It also explains the unique challenges these cases pose for law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors. And Out of Bounds takes readers inside the hidden yet critically vital role that lawyers, agents, and fame play in insulating criminally accused players from accountability.

Author Jeff Benedict, an expert on athletes and crime, draws his conclusions from exhaustive research. In addition to his criminal-background checks, the author retrieved documents from law-enforcement agencies, courts, and private attorneys. He conducted more than 400 interviews with police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers, players, agents, victims, witnesses, and coaches. What emerges is a disturbing and appalling picture of men who live above the law.

A seminal and important work, Out of Bounds will forever change how we look at the NBA and its stars' lives of excess and privilege.

From the award-winning author of NO HUNGER IN PARADISE Outside the global spotlight, footballers don't drive Aston Martins or pose for underwear ads. This is war. This is life. This is football. Michael Calvin turned up for the first day of pre-season training at Millwall FC. 333 days later, he sat among the subs at Wembley. Over the course of a season, he witnessed the intimate everyday life of a football club far from the glitz and glamour of the Premier League, and the unique characters that come together every day on the field. These are dedicated, hard-working family men, close to their roots, 'playing for the people who hate their jobs, who'd love our lives.' Forget about the over-hyped circus of the Premier League. This is the beautiful game in all its raucous glory: essential reading for anyone whom football is a way of life.

This book is both research report and performance piece. Here is a team of researchers as they study communication on the volleyball court. And here are the voices and actions of the volleyball coach and his players as they practise and play. Research in process and research findings are represented in a play script which brings vividly to life both ethnographic research methods and communication in the world of sport. This highly original book adds innovation and imagination to the representation of language in social life.

Seoul Glow tells the story of the Great Britain men's hockey team who won gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Little to the team's knowledge, the final caught the British public's imagination as they beat rivals West Germany in the gold-medal match. After Sean Kerly's semi-final heroics and Imran Sherwani's double in the final, BBC commentator Barry Davies uttered the now infamous line: 'Where were the Germans? But, frankly, who cares?' Victory, for a team of amateurs, who had either quit their jobs or taken holiday to play in Seoul, propelled the team to celebratory heights on their return to British shores; it was GB's first hockey gold in the post-war era and followed an eight-year plan for a major title. The story also reveals how the team was inspirationally led by the late Roger Self, the manager who gelled his players into Olympic title holders.

Shortlisted for Rugby Book of the Year at the British Sports Book Awards 'An excellent read' - Rugby World Rob Andrew is one of the key figures in modern rugby history: an outstanding international who won three Grand Slams with England and toured twice with the British and Irish Lions, he also played a central role in the game's professional revolution with his trailblazing work at Newcastle. During a long spell on Tyneside, he led the team to a Premiership title at the first opportunity, brought European action to the north-east and gave the young Jonny Wilkinson his break in big-time union by fast-tracking him into the side straight out of school. What happened off the field was equally eventful. Rob produced 'The Andrew Report' - the most radical of blueprints for the future of English rugby - and then, over the course of a decade as one of Twickenham's top administrators, found himself grappling with the extreme challenges of running a game repeatedly blown off course by the winds of change. He did not merely have a ringside seat as one of the world's major sports went through its greatest upheaval in a century: more often than not, he was in the ring itself.

The emergence of baseball as the ""national pastime"" established the dynamics of spectator sports. Evolving in an urban landscape, the game attracted a dedicated fan base and enshrined the sports hero as a national celebrity. The game's allure was colored by the ethnic ambitions of the players and their supporters. Ethnic tensions were magnified when players began to see the game as a vehicle for individual rather than group achievement. The effect Irish-American players had on how the game was played and their support of Jim Crow culture shaped baseball into the next century. Players' salaries and off-season occupations were not overlooked by the public, who questioned their entitlement to the fruits of notoriety and derided their gratifying lifestyles. This book examines the development of baseball as 19th-century popular culture and as an institution that reinforced ideas about race, masculinity and American exceptionalism.

Dublin 4, probably best-known in sporting terms as the spiritual home of Leinster Rugby, has one of the highest densities of diverse sports clubs in all of Ireland. In this new work from Kurt Kullmann, a founding member of the Donnybrook, Ballsbridge and Sandymount Historical Society, the author explores the history of these clubs, creating a picture of the kaleidoscopic nature of Dublin's sporting culture.

The Jerry Sandusky child molestation case stunned the nation. As subsequent revelations uncovered an athletic program operating free of oversight, university officials faced criminal charges while unprecedented NCAA sanctions hammered Penn State football and blackened the reputation of coach Joe Paterno. In Wounded Lions, acclaimed sport historian and longtime Penn State professor Ronald A. Smith heavily draws from university archives to answer the How? and Why? at the heart of the scandal. The Sandusky case was far from the first example of illegal behavior related to the football program or the university's attempts to suppress news of it. As Smith shows, decades of infighting among administrators, alumni, trustees, faculty, and coaches established policies intended to protect the university, and the football team considered synonymous with its name, at all costs. If the habits predated Paterno, they also became sanctified during his tenure. Smith names names to show how abuses of power warped the "Penn State Way" even with hires like women's basketball coach Rene Portland, who allegedly practiced sexual bias against players for decades. Smith also details a system that concealed Sandusky's horrific acts just as deftly as it whitewashed years of rules violations, coaching malfeasance, and player crime while Paterno set records and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the university. A myth-shattering account of misplaced priorities, Wounded Lions charts the intertwined history of an elite university, its storied sports program, and the worst scandal in collegiate athletic history.

From the thousands of matches ever played by Swansea City, stretching from their early days at the Vetch to their wonderful Premier League era, here are 50 of the club's most intense, emotional and thrilling games of all! Expertly presented in evocative historical context, and described incident-by-incident in atmospheric detail, Swansea City's Greatest Games offers a terrace ticket back in time, taking in everything from their first ever game against Cardiff and Toshack's rampant rise to their glorious Premier League days, and beyond. An irresistible cast list of club legends - Alan Curtis and Ivor Allchurch, Leon Britton, Roger Freestone and Lee Trundle - springs to life at breathtaking moments including epic cup finals and Premier League giant-killings, European nights and unforgettable South Wales derby triumphs. In all, a journey through the highlights of Swansea's 102-year history which is guaranteed to make any fan's heart swell with pride.

Irresistible anecdotes, irrepressible characters, mindblowing stats and facts. Here's all the vital information you never knew you needed to know about Leicester City, coupled with a day-by-day diary of magical and memorable moments from the Foxes' rollercoaster history. Heard the one about the 0-12 drubbing at Forest after the players had attended 'Leggy' Turner's wedding? How about the goal that keeper Peter Shilton didn't know he'd scored? Or the 1974 team's funky single 'This Is the Season for Us'? Turn back the clock to 30 May 1994 when the Foxes finally won at Wembley at their seventh attempt. Revisit 10 August 1968, when City smashed the British transfer record, paying Fulham GBP150,000 for Allan Clarke. Or 23 August 1972, when Frank Worthington scored on his debut at Old Trafford. A brilliantly researched collection of trivia - essential for any fan who holds the riches of blue-and-white history close to their heart.