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The 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates were a special team--team being the operative word. There were no superstars, although Roberto Clemente would become one, and nobody had a record season. The Battling Bucs frequently came from behind to win late in the game, with Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince signing off, "We had 'em all the way." Pittsburgh was the Sad Sack of baseball through most of the 1950s, and as the Pirates grabbed the National League lead early in the 1960 season, fans wondered if the guys in vest-shirts and black sleeves could indeed hang on. And then there was the World Series, the one everybody but the Pirates thought would be won by the Yankees, in which Bill Mazeroski provided the most dramatic finish of all sports championships. This book, featuring interviews with Clemente, Dick Groat, Bob Friend and Dick Schofield, chronicles the Pirates of 1960--a team of friends--and their push through a long and magical season.
This is the story of one of the all-time great teams of major league baseball, the 1957 Milwaukee Braves. The Braves boasted a lineup packed with power and a pitching staff anchored by three aces. Four future Hall of Famers led the team to the National League pennant, and a fidgety right-hander pitched the Braves past the mighty Yankees in the World Series. Covering the Braves' magical season in remarkable detail, the author chronicles the winning streaks and the tough stretches, comments on the key transactions and costly injuries, and recalls the unforgettable players (such as Bob "Hurricane" Hazle) and the events (the Shoe Polish Incident) that have since become part of baseball lore.
Who comprised the most productive pairs in the history of professional team sports? Joe Montana and Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers? Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen of the Chicago Bulls? What about the prolific hockey tandem of Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier? And that all-time great New York Yankees twosome of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig certainly can't be excluded. Using various selection criteria--including longevity, level of statistical compilation, impact on one's team, and overall place in history--The 50 Most Dynamic Duos in Sports History attempts to ascertain which twosome truly established itself as the most dominant tandem in the history of the four major professional team sp...
"Historians, sports scholars, and students will refer to Benching Jim Crow for many years to come as the standard source on the integration of intercollegiate sport."ùMark S. Dyreson, author of Making the American Team: Sport, Culture, and the Olympic Experience --
Baseball and law have intersected since the primordial days. In 1791, a Pittsfield, Massachusetts, ordinance prohibited ball playing near the town's meeting house. Ball games on Sundays were barred by a Pennsylvania statute in 1794. In 2015, a federal court held that baseball's exemption from antitrust laws applied to franchise relocations. Another court overturned the conviction of Barry Bonds for obstruction of justice. A third denied a request by rooftop entrepreneurs to enjoin the construction of a massive video screen at Wrigley Field. This exhaustive chronology traces the effects the law has had on the national pastime, both pro and con, on and off the field, from the use of copyright to protect not only equipment but also "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" to frequent litigation between players and owners over contracts and the reserve clause. The stories of lawyers like Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Branch Rickey are entertainingly instructive.
"You talk about destiny, well, you can't rule that out. We were hard-nosed and that showed up in 1957." -- Braves catcher Del Crandall to editor Gregory H. Wolf Few teams in baseball history have captured the hearts of their fans like the Milwaukee Braves of the 19505. During the Braves' 13-year tenure in Milwaukee (1953-1965), they had a winning record every season, won two consecutive NL pennants (1957 and 1958), lost two more in the final week of the season (1956 and 1959), and set big-league attendance records along the way. This book celebrates the Milwaukee Braves' historic 1957 World Series championship season. Led by the bats of National League Most Valuable Player Henry Aaron and sl...
Over the past century, high school and college athletics have grown into one of America's most beloved--and most controversial--institutions, inspiring great loyalty while sparking fierce disputes. In this richly detailed book, Pamela Grundy examines the many meanings that school sports took on in North Carolina, linking athletic programs at state universities, public high schools, women's colleges, and African American educational institutions to social and economic shifts that include the expansion of industry, the advent of woman suffrage, and the rise and fall of Jim Crow. Drawing heavily on oral history interviews, Grundy charts the many pleasures of athletics, from the simple joy of ba...
By 1964 the storied St. Louis Cardinals had gone seventeen years without so much as a pennant. Things began to turn around in 1953, when August A. Busch Jr. bought the team and famously asked where all the black players were. Under the leadership of men like Bing Devine and Johnny Keane, the Cardinals began signing talented players regardless of color, and slowly their star started to rise again. Drama and Pride in the Gateway City commemorates the team that Bing Devine built, the 1964 team that prevailed in one of the tightest three-way pennant races of all time and then went on to win the World Series, beating the New York Yankees in the full seven games. All the men come alive in these pages--pitchers Ray Sadecki and Bob Gibson, players Lou Brock, Curt Flood, and Bobby Shantz, manager Johnny Keane, his coaches, the Cardinals' broadcasters, and Bill White, who would one day run the entire National League--along with the dramatic events that made the 1964 Cardinals such a memorable club in a memorable year.