Hoyt Wilhelm's intriguing baseball career lasted two decades. A veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, the eight-time All-Star from Huntersville, North Carolina was a standout for the New York Giants, Baltimore Orioles, Chicago White Sox and Atlanta Braves, though he did not reach the majors until he was nearly 30.He pitched a no-hitter as a starter, won as many as 15 games a season, was the first reliever to win more than 100 games and save more than 200, and broke Cy Young's record for most games on the mound. Along the way, he relied almost entirely on his baffling skill with a rare weapon of choice--the knuckleball. This first full-length biography covers the life and career of the first relief pitcher in the Hall of Fame.

With 363 victories, Warren Spahn is the winningest lefty in baseball history. Over 21 years, he won 20 or more games 13 times, was a 17-time All Star, won a Cy Young-award, then, of course, was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Spahn was also a war hero, serving in World War II and awarded the Purple Heart. To say Spahn lived a storied life is an understatement. In Warren Spahn, author Lew Freedman tells the story of this incredible lefty. Known for his supremely high leg kick, Spahn became one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. However, the road wasn't as easy as it would seem. Struggling in his major-league debut at age twenty, manager Casey Stengel demoted the young left. It would be four years before Spahn would return to the diamond, as he received a calling of a different kind--one from his country. Enlisting in the Army, Spahn would serve with distinction, seeing action in the Battle of the Bulge and the Ludendorff Bridge, and was awarded a battlefield commission, along with a Purple Heart. Upon his return to the game, he would take the league by storm. Spahn dominated for over two decades, spending twenty years with the Braves (both Boston and Milwaukee), as well as a season with the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants. Pitching into his mid-forties, he would throw two no-hitters at the advanced ages of thirty-nine and forty. From his early days in Buffalo and young career, through his time and the military and all the way to the 1948 Braves and "Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain," author Lew Freedman leaves no stone unturned in sharing the incredible life of this pitching icon, who is still considered the greatest left-handed pitcher to ever play the game.

The Whalers are the only football team above the Arctic Circle: 330 north to be exact, a place with no grass, no trees, and plenty of permafrost. Of the 44 Eskimo, Tongan, Samoan, Asian-American, African-American and Caucasian teenagers who signed up for this experiment, only four had ever played organized football before. Seasoned journalist Lew Freedman captures this inspiring story.

Revered standout pass catcher Don Hutson played for three Green Bay Packers championship squads between 1935 and 1945 and was a charter-class member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963. An All-American wide receiver for the University of Alabama, the Pine Bluff, Arkansas native was a pioneer of the position, mastering the passing game just as it was reaching maturation. He invented many of the pass routes still in use today and retired from the game with 19 NFL records, some of which stood for decades. This first book-length biography chronicles Hutson's life and career during football's leather helmet era of the Great Depression and World War II.

During his 15-season Major League career, slugger Johnny Mize was among the preeminent power hitters in baseball, a star for the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Giants, and a clutch player for the New York Yankees when they won five straight World Series in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Raised in rural Georgia, Mize caught the tail end of the Cardinals' Gas House Gang era and had his career interrupted by World War II before achieving greatness at the plate. An MVP, perennial All-Star and four-time National League home-run champion, he made a science of batting and wrote a book on it (How to Hit, 1953). This first full-length biography traces the arc of Mize's career through his prime years in the limelight to his retirement, when renewed interest in his legacy saw him inducted into the Hall of Fame.

In June of 1938, southpaw Johnny Vander Meer of the Cincinnati Reds became the only pitcher in Major League history to hurl two consecutive no-hitters--an achievement that has stood unsurpassed for more than 80 years. Vander Meer was just 23 at the time and a glorious future was predicted. Despite injuries, he became a four-time All-Star yet ended up a .500 pitcher--not a surefire Hall of Famer as many expected. Both the Reds and Vander Meer persevered, but decades later the left-hander is best remembered for his stunning no-hit package. This volume follows Vander Meer and the Reds through the triumphs of two National League pennants and one World Series title, the hardship of World War II, and the trying suicide of a teammate.

Lowell Thomas Jr. is a famed Alaskan who made his mark as a Bush pilot and by serving in state government, but who also has had a lifetime’s worth of adventures that have taken him around the world. Thomas, now eighty-nine, and living in Anchorage, is the son of one of the most widely known Americans of the twentieth century, and his connection to Lowell Thomas Sr. (1892-1981) enabled him to jump-start his life of adventure at a very early age. From the time he was fifteen, Lowell Thomas Jr. has been involved in a series of journeys that have seen him cross paths with many famous lives and take part in many historic events.

More than a century ago, the Philadelphia Athletics enjoyed a glorious five-season run under legendary manager Connie Mack, winning three World Series and four pennants from 1910 through 1914. A's stars such as Hall of Famers Eddie Plank, Eddie Collins, Albert "Chief" Bender and Frank "Home Run" Baker are well known among baseball aficionados-and this book reveals more about their lives and careers. Mack's pivotal role in founding the team and building it into a successful franchise-before he shocked the sports world by dismantling it-is covered, along with advent of the all-but-forgotten Federal League.

From Nick Altrock to Casey Stengel, Dizzy Dean to Satchel Paige, Bill Veeck to Bob Uecker, baseball has always admired the clever. This book tells the stories of some of the players, coaches, managers and broadcasters who had the most fun in the Major Leagues and made fans laugh out loud (or shake their heads in disbelief). The author recounts tales both famous and little known that capture the character of unusual and offbeat players, unique and engaging personalities and the succession of eccentrics who were officially dubbed ""Clown Prince of Baseball.

The Kenai is a world-class salmon river that attracts fishermen from all over the world, but is also the "everyman" river of the great fishing paradise of Alaska because of its accessibility. The Kenai River is special not only because world-record salmon are caught in its stunning green waters, but because it is on the road system and thus can be accessed by the average fisherman, not merely the well-to-do who pay huge sums to fish in remote Alaskan areas controlled by private lodges and that are approachable only by small planes.
In a state that takes at least a share of its identity from its image as The Last Frontier and concurrently as a fishing haven, the Kenai River is the lifeblood of a sporting world and industry that offers an incomparable fishing experience to the resident, the tourist, the hardcore fisherman, the beginner, and the expert. Fishermen in the Lower 48 states, seduced by images of gigantic fighting salmon, dream of some day fishing the picturesque waters of the Kenai River. Fishermen who live in Southcentral Alaska, including Alaska's largest city of Anchorage, plot their fishing seasons around the arrival of king salmon, red salmon, and silver salmon. To all of them, the Kenai is a magical river.
Not only is it the place of dreams, where an angler might catch a world record or world-class fish, it is, despite its nearness to the small cities of Kenai and Soldotna, still a wilderness. At one bend in the river there might be a hotel, a private summer home, or a forest since the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge also swallows the Kenai River.
The eighty-file-mile-long Kenai River is, more or less, two rivers. The upper river prohibits motorized boats altogether. The lower river features them. The upper river invites rafters and fly-fishermen. The lower river offers savvy guides who know each turn of the river, each rock's placement, and the opportunity to fish for 70-, 80-, or 90-pound salmon through specially developed styles appropriate to the area and the species. The upper river allows for Dolly Varden and rainbow trout fishing. The lower river emphasizes big salmon.
Each summer thousands of anglers fish the Kenai River. They bring millions of dollars worth of business to the Kenai Peninsula while following their dreams and bringing home stories of wilderness fishing adventures.

George Altman grew up in the segregated South but through a mix of timing and opportunity was able to participate in the sport at more levels of competition than perhaps anyone else who has ever played the game, starting in the 1940s and concluding in the 1970s. Not only did Altman play baseball at all of the usual kids' levels, he played college baseball at Tennessee State University, played for the Kansas City Monarchs during the waning days of the Negro Leagues, played for the US Army in service competition, played winter league ball in Cuba and Panama, spent nine years in the majors with the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets as a two-time All-Star outfielder, and then culminated his remarkable career by playing in Japan where he was a regular All-Star. For Altman, it was a case of ""Have bat, will travel."" When it comes to baseball, Altman has seen it all and he offers illuminating observations about teams, fans and the game as he journeyed around the world to play it.

Joe Louis held the heavyweight boxing championship longer than any other fighter and defended it a record 25 times. During the 1930s and 1940s, the owner of the heavyweight title belt was the most prominent sports competitor not aligned with a team sport. In addition, Louis helped make breakthroughs for African American athletes and bridge the gap of understanding between whites and blacks. During World War II he not only raised money for Army and Navy relief, entertained millions of troops as a morale officer, but became a symbol of American hope and strength. In a famous speech Louis pronounced that the United States would win the war ""Because we're on God's side."" The simple phrase helped energise the populace and some said that Louis ""named the war."" The biography of Louis outlines his rise from poverty in Alabama to becoming the best-known African American of his times and describes how an uneducated man, simple at his core, became so articulate and always ended up on the side of right in the battles he fought, with fist or voice.

When Babe Ruth left the New York Yankees in 1935, some feared that the loss would cripple the club for years. However, the post-Ruth era Yankees continued to dominate until the start of World War II. Their forward-thinking administrative staff signed and developed top-flight talent like Joe DiMaggio and retained superstars like Lou Gehrig, who remained the greatest first baseman in the game until he succumbed to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This history of Yankees from 1936 to World War II details the team's swift recovery from losing Ruth, reintroduces unheralded players, examines the personal styles of the key men, and chronicles the team's remarkable achievements, including winning six American League pennants in eight years and five World Series, a time triumph and tragedy, of characters colorful and sorrowful.

This is a history of Major League Baseball's first All-Star Game, originally conceived in 1933 as a one-time ""Game of the Century"" (including greats such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Carl Hubbell and Lefty Grove) to lift the spirits of the nation and its people in the midst of the Great Depression. The game was so successful that it became a yearly event and an integral part of the baseball season. The work describes the game, from the Chicago Tribune's early advocacy for the contest through every play, and describes the later accomplishments of many of the individuals involved.

William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917) rose from humble origins in Iowa to become one of the most famous and most photographed people in the world. He became a leading scout during the American Indian Wars, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, and a renowned show business fixture whose traveling Wild West exhibitions played to millions of spectators the world over for 30 years. He hobnobbed with presidents, kings, queens and European heads of state, befriending many legendary individuals of the West, from General George Armstrong Custer and Sitting Bull to Wild Bill Hickok and Annie Oakley. Aside from these achievements, Cody's most important legacy may be how he shaped the world's enduring views of the American West through his shows, which he considered to be educational events rather than entertainment. This biography is a fresh look at the life of Buffalo Bill.

An early celebrity pitcher, Denton "Cy" Young (1867-1955) established supreme standards on the mound. A small-town Ohio farmer made good, he set Major League pitching records in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that will likely last forever. The winner of 511 games - nearly one hundred more than the second-ranked hurler - Young pitched the first perfect game of the modern era, as well as three no-hitters. His talents helped establish the American League in 1901. Among the Hall of Fame's first inductees, he remained a sought-after interviewee decades after retirement. A year after his death, the Cy Young Award was dedicated as baseball's most prestigious honor for pitchers.

Kenny Sailors was a basketball star, and the inventor of the jump shot. He attended the University of Wyoming and was MVP in 1943 in college AA basketball. After WWII, he spent five years as an early player in the new NBA. As a youngster, Kenny was five-foot-seven but his older brother was six-foot-two so when playing basketball, Kenny had to jump up over his brother to get off a shot. That is how the jump shot was born, and Kenny used it in college and professional basketball. He played in Denver and several other cities whose team names have now changed, but he also played for the Boston Celtics with Bob Cousy. After he left the NBA, he moved to Alaska and in 1965 settled in the Glennallen area, where he was a fishing and hunting guide in the Wrangle Mountains for thirty-five years. He now lives in Idaho, and his son lives and flies aircraft from Antioch, California.
Excellent choice for sports/basketball buffs
Popular historic sports hero thanks to recent features in "Sports Illustrated" and "Denver Post."
Inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame 2012
Early in the 2008-9 basketball season, Wyoming designated Sailors's No. 4 jersey as the first to be retired and hung in the field house. His fans are advocating for Kenny to be inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame.https: //www.facebook.com/pages/Get-Kenny-Sailors-into-the-Basketball-Hall-of-Fame/107319762637644
Sailors led Wyoming to its only national championship, in 1943, when he was named the NCAA tournament's Most Outstanding Player as well as college basketball's player of the year.
For two years in the NBA he was the top scorer for the original Denver Nuggets in 1949--50
His innovative jump shot landed him in "LIFE" magazine in 1946.
Indie Christian Film Festival piece on Kenny by Jacob Bryan Hamilton, Austin, TX: http: //www.atticfilmfest.org/portfolio-item/jumpshot/
Featured in Wyoming PBS Documentary in 2012
Released in time for NCAA March Madness
Excerpt from "Sports Illustrated" 3/06/13: Sailors was also a revolutionary who changed the game by developing and ultimately popularizing the modern-day jump shot. . . . "Once I started using the jumper], I realized I could get this shot off over anybody," says Sailors, who was five-foot-ten in college. "It paid off every time I ran into a six-foot-five player who could give me trouble."

Here at last is the thrilling memoir of the legendary mountaineer Bradford Washburn, one of the last explorers and adventurers of the twentieth century. Drawing from decades of memories, journals, and an exquisite photographic collection, Washburn completes the self-portrait of a man drawn to altitude, from his first great climb of Mount Washington at age eleven, through numerous first ascents of peaks all over the world, to handily scaling a climbing wall at eighty-eight.       Indeed, Washburn also became renowned for his pioneering work in aerial photography, his dedication to science and cartography, his decades of leading Boston’s Museum of Science, and his close association with the National Geographic Society.       This mountaineering icon candidly offers an intimate look at a life devoted to the world’s highest places, to the friends who challenged the mountains with him, and to wife Barbara, who shared his adventures for nearly sixty-five years.

Ernie Banks is the best-known ballplayer in the history of the Chicago Cubs-a man as famous for his personality and trademark phrases as for his accomplishments on the field. Nicknamed "Mr. Cub," Banks won two National League Most Valuable Player awards and slugged 512 home runs, all while battling discrimination and poverty. His conduct away from the field was so exemplary he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Based on interviews conducted with Banks, the author details the life of this Texas-born shortstop and first baseman from his childhood playing softball to his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame to his death in 2015.

Lowell Thomas Jr. is a famed Alaskan who made his mark as a Bush pilot and by serving in state government, but who also has had a lifetime’s worth of adventures that have taken him around the world. Thomas, now eighty-nine, and living in Anchorage, is the son of one of the most widely known Americans of the twentieth century, and his connection to Lowell Thomas Sr. (1892-1981) enabled him to jump-start his life of adventure at a very early age. From the time he was fifteen, Lowell Thomas Jr. has been involved in a series of journeys that have seen him cross paths with many famous lives and take part in many historic events.

The Kenai is a world-class salmon river that attracts fishermen from all over the world, but is also the "everyman" river of the great fishing paradise of Alaska because of its accessibility. The Kenai River is special not only because world-record salmon are caught in its stunning green waters, but because it is on the road system and thus can be accessed by the average fisherman, not merely the well-to-do who pay huge sums to fish in remote Alaskan areas controlled by private lodges and that are approachable only by small planes.
In a state that takes at least a share of its identity from its image as The Last Frontier and concurrently as a fishing haven, the Kenai River is the lifeblood of a sporting world and industry that offers an incomparable fishing experience to the resident, the tourist, the hardcore fisherman, the beginner, and the expert. Fishermen in the Lower 48 states, seduced by images of gigantic fighting salmon, dream of some day fishing the picturesque waters of the Kenai River. Fishermen who live in Southcentral Alaska, including Alaska's largest city of Anchorage, plot their fishing seasons around the arrival of king salmon, red salmon, and silver salmon. To all of them, the Kenai is a magical river.
Not only is it the place of dreams, where an angler might catch a world record or world-class fish, it is, despite its nearness to the small cities of Kenai and Soldotna, still a wilderness. At one bend in the river there might be a hotel, a private summer home, or a forest since the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge also swallows the Kenai River.
The eighty-file-mile-long Kenai River is, more or less, two rivers. The upper river prohibits motorized boats altogether. The lower river features them. The upper river invites rafters and fly-fishermen. The lower river offers savvy guides who know each turn of the river, each rock's placement, and the opportunity to fish for 70-, 80-, or 90-pound salmon through specially developed styles appropriate to the area and the species. The upper river allows for Dolly Varden and rainbow trout fishing. The lower river emphasizes big salmon.
Each summer thousands of anglers fish the Kenai River. They bring millions of dollars worth of business to the Kenai Peninsula while following their dreams and bringing home stories of wilderness fishing adventures.

Now in paperback! More than half a century after the Boston Celtics' legendary first championship, here is a riveting inside account of one of sports' greatest franchises-between 1957 and 1969, winners of eleven titles, including a record eight in a row starting in 1959. Lew Freedman, who grew up attending Celtics games and eventually befriended the players and team management, chronicles the team's glory years under coach Red Auerbach, star player Bill Russell, and a legendary lineup of other talents. Revealing how he was swept up in dramatic moments both on and off the court, Dynasty is a great book about a vibrant sports town, the greatest players in basketball, and an unprecedented run of championships rarely challenged before or since in team sports.

A one-stop record containing everything White Sox fans want to know about their favorite baseball team, this resource is packed with anecdotes, history, explanations of traditions, statistics, trivia, and photos.