Go to the Head of the Class with a Baseball Legend Baseball legend Casey Stengel is considered by many to be the greatest manager in baseball history. He was certainly one of the most successful. He managed the fabled New York Yankees from 1949 to 1960 and compiled ten American League pennants and seven world championships during that time. He was also without question one of the game's all-time characters, best known for conversing in a mangled form of English that came to be known as Stengelese."" Beyond the comedy and the world championships, however, his baseball life spanned the ages, from the dead-ball era to Astro Turf. He began his big league career by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1912 and ended it by managing the hapless New York Mets in 1965. Between the first and last stop, Stengel was a World Series hero; a failed manager with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves; a washed-up, aging manager in the minors; and the wacky interloper who took over the stuffy, staid Yankees in 1949 and reformed them into a dynasty. In Casey Stengel: Baseball's ""Old Perfessor, "" dozens of former players, friends, and associates recall the Stengel myth and the Stengel reality. They explore his managing style with great teams and with horrible teams; his pioneering, controversial techniques; his humor, his edginess, and his weaknesses; why some players hated him while others loved him; why some think he was a genius and others think he was merely the right man in the right place at the right time. What emerges is a fascinating ride through baseball history and a thoughtful look at the life of a man who was counted out, mocked, and underestimated--and yet he never gave up, finally findingsuccess in his later years.""

Go to the Head of the Class with a Baseball Legend Baseball legend Casey Stengel is considered by many to be the greatest manager in baseball history. He was certainly one of the most successful. He managed the fabled New York Yankees from 1949 to 1960 and compiled ten American League pennants and seven world championships during that time. He was also without question one of the game's all-time characters, best known for conversing in a mangled form of English that came to be known as Stengelese."" Beyond the comedy and the world championships, however, his baseball life spanned the ages, from the dead-ball era to Astro Turf. He began his big league career by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1912 and ended it by managing the hapless New York Mets in 1965. Between the first and last stop, Stengel was a World Series hero; a failed manager with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves; a washed-up, aging manager in the minors; and the wacky interloper who took over the stuffy, staid Yankees in 1949 and reformed them into a dynasty. In Casey Stengel: Baseball's ""Old Perfessor, "" dozens of former players, friends, and associates recall the Stengel myth and the Stengel reality. They explore his managing style with great teams and with horrible teams; his pioneering, controversial techniques; his humor, his edginess, and his weaknesses; why some players hated him while others loved him; why some think he was a genius and others think he was merely the right man in the right place at the right time. What emerges is a fascinating ride through baseball history and a thoughtful look at the life of a man who was counted out, mocked, and underestimated--and yet he never gave up, finally findingsuccess in his later years.""

Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams is a true sports legend, a superstar who was his era's greatest hitter. His lifetime .344 average remains one of the highest marks ever achieved. Known at various times as "the Splendid Splinter, " "Teddy Ballgame, " and simply as "the Kid, " Williams played his entire career with the Boston Red Sox. Although missing nearly five full seasons due to military service and two major injuries, Williams still managed to hit 521 home runs to go with his six batting titles, two Triple Crowns, two Most Valuable Player awards, eighteen All-Star selections, and a .406 batting average in 1941 that remains the last time any major-leaguer has topped the .400 mark for a season.

Williams was a talented sportsman who hated to lose. He was also an athletic perfectionist who spent half his career being compared with and contrasted to fellow superstar Joe DiMaggio of the rival New York Yankees. The temperamental yet outgoing Williams wasn't exactly a media darling, but he was a respected, hard-working student of the game. Some observers say Williams was to hitting a baseball what Ben Hogan was to striking a golf ball, which might help explain why the two men had a mutual respect for each other that led to a casual friendship.

In I Remember Ted Williams, the legendary Red Sox outfielder is remembered through dozens of anecdotes, stories, and insights offered in their own words by former teammates as well as friends, associates, media, baseball officials, and fishing buddies. Together these contributors offer a unique and unforgettable reminiscence of one of the greatest and most enigmatic performers in baseball history.

At both the plate and in the field, Joe DiMaggio was one of baseball's most graceful athletes. During his thirteen seasons with the New York Yankees, he played in ten World Series and won nine world championships. For his career, he was a two-time batting champion, three-time Most Valuable Player, hit 361 home runs, and maintained a .325 batting average. His fifty-six-consecutive-game batting streak in 1941 has yet to be broken.

DiMaggio's baseball career began in 1932 when he filled in at shortstop at midseason for a minor league team. In 1934 he became the property of the New York Yankees, which marked the beginning of his road toward greatness in the nation's most famous city on one of the most hallowed fields in the sport. Off the field, his life was marked by a famous marriage to and divorce from Marilyn Monroe, a late-1960s popular song, and a somewhat unhappy retirement.

On baseball's one hundredth anniversary in 1969, he was voted the greatest living player of the game, and the Yankees erected a plaque to him among the memorials to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. On March 8, 1999, at the age of eighty-four, DiMaggio died after a five-month battle with cancer.

In I Remember Joe DiMaggio, dozens of the great ballplayer's contemporaries, teammates, coaches, fans, friends, and relatives recall their favorite memories and anecdotes of this man who became an icon of America. It is a warm, entertaining, and inspiring book about a man whose fame has been the stuff of legend for more than half a century.