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"They're Playing My Game" is a unique look at Hank Stram and his incredible 17-year career as a football coach with the Texans/Chiefs (1960-1974) and New Orleans Saints (1976-1977), and his successful second career as an analyst for CBS television and in the radio booth on "Monday Night Football."
The 1970s were both successful and tragic for the Pittsburgh Pirates. They won five NL Eastern Division crowns and the 1971 World Championship, but lost the great Roberto Clemente in a plane crash and pitcher Bob Moose in a car accident during this time. By the end of the 1970s, the Pirates were a good team but no longer considered favorites to win a World Series. Thanks to a fantastic finish in 1978, the Pittsburghers gained new hope for the 1979 season. As intriguing as the season was, it wasn't until the evening of August 25th that the Pirate fans really started to believe "it" could happen. The history of that magical ball club is covered here, from how the 1979 world champion team was built, to a thorough look at the season and post season, to how "The Family" finally fell. Also included are biographical sketches of all players who appeared on the team's roster that year and a section of complete statistics.
The captivating story of how The Sheik captured the imagination of a generation, conquered the wrestling business, and lost it all in a blaze of flame and glory He was the most vicious, bloodthirsty, reviled villain in the history of the ring. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, he drew record crowds everywhere he went and left a trail of burned and bloody opponents in his wake. He was The Sheik: the mysterious and terrifying madman from Syria whose wanton destruction and mayhem are the stuff of wrestling legend. But what those legions of fans screaming for his head never knew was that The Sheik was really Eddie Farhat. From Lansing, Michigan, and the son of Arab immigrants, Farhat served his country proudly in World War II and was fulfilling the American dream through hard work and tireless dedication to his craft. And when he wasn’t screaming unintelligibly and attacking his enemies with sharp objects, he was busy being the owner and operator of World Wide Sports, one of the most successful wrestling companies in North America. This is Blood and Fire: The Unbelievable Real-Life Story of Wrestling’s Original Sheik.
With personal interviews of players and owners and with over two decades of research in newspapers and archives, Bill Marshall tells of the players, the pennant races, and the officials who shaped one of the most memorable eras in sports and American history. At the end of World War II, soldiers returning from overseas hungered to resume their love affair with baseball. Spectators still identified with players, whose salaries and off-season employment as postmen, plumbers, farmers, and insurance salesmen resembled their own. It was a time when kids played baseball on sandlots and in pastures, fans followed the game on the radio, and tickets were affordable. The outstanding play of Joe DiMagg...
Baseball is much more than the national pastime. It has become an emblem of America itself. From its initial popularity in the mid-nineteenth century, the game has reflected national values and beliefs and promoted what it means to be an American. Stories abound that illustrate baseball's significance in eradicating racial barriers, bringing neighborhoods together, building civic pride, and creating on the field of play an instructive civics lesson for immigrants on the national character. In A People's History of Baseball, Mitchell Nathanson probes the less well-known but no less meaningful other side of baseball: episodes not involving equality, patriotism, heroism, and virtuous capitalism...
A major authoritative biography of one of the greatest catchers in the history of the game—and the greatest living New York Yankee—presents Yogi Berra as he has never been seen before. Sifted from more than 4,000 newspaper and magazine articles, interviews, papers, and hundreds of memoirs and biographies, this compilation examines one of the most competitive players of his generation and one of the most unique men in baseball history. This updated, paperback edition will bring readers up to date on Berra’s life.
Soon after Satchel Paige arrived at spring training in 1937 to pitch for the Pittsburgh Crawfords, he and five of his teammates, including Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell, were lured to the Dominican Republic with the promise of easy money to play a short baseball tournament in support of the country’s dictator, Rafael Trujillo. As it turned out, the money wasn’t so easy. After Paige and his friends arrived on the island, they found themselves under the thumb of Trujillo, known by Dominicans for murdering those who disappointed him. In the initial games, the Ciudad Trujillo all-star team floundered. Living outside the shadow of segregation, Satchel and his recruits spent their nights caro...
"I can't separate what part of pro football is business and what part is personal with me," he said. "I just know that it is very important that I succeed." He had loved games as a young boy, had played them as a young man, and now, as a naive but determined 27-year-old in the summer of 1959, Lamar Hunt announced that he was going to launch a new football league. What he couldn't possibly have known on that day was that the forces of the entrenched National Football League would soon be arrayed against him. The league would place its own team in his hometown of Dallas, in direct competition with his team, and would attempt to undermine the new league, trying on repeated occasions before that...
On Melbenan Drive just west of Atlanta, sunlight falls onto a long row of well-kept lawns. Two dozen homes line the street; behind them wooden decks and living-room windows open onto vast woodland properties. Residents returning from their jobs steer SUVs into long driveways and emerge from their automobiles. They walk to the front doors of their houses past sculptured bushes and flowers in bloom. For most people, this cozy image of suburbia does not immediately evoke images of African Americans. But as this pioneering work demonstrates, the suburbs have provided a home to black residents in increasing numbers for the past hundred years—in the last two decades alone, the numbers have nearl...
Sports Matters brings critical attention to the centrality of race within the politics and pleasures of the massive sports culture that developed in the U.S. during the past century and a half.