Early Sport

Baseball's Golden Age comes alive through the voices of men who were there. Selected from the original tapes on which Lawrence S. Ritter based his classic book of baseball history, The Glory of Their Times is a collection of wonderful tales that paint a vivid and evocative picture of a lively young America and the giants who starred on her ballfields, legends like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson, and many others.

Kobe Bryant’s death in January 2020 did more than rattle the worlds of sports and celebrity. The tragedy of that helicopter crash, which also took the life of his daughter Gianna, unveiled the full breadth and depth of his influence on our culture, and by tracing and telling the oft-forgotten and lesser-known story of his early life, The Rise promises to provide an insight into Kobe that no other analysis has.

This is the true story of how organized baseball started, how gambling shaped the game from its earliest days, and how it became our national pastime and our national mirror. Baseball in the Garden of Eden draws on original research to tell how the game evolved from other bat-and-ball games and gradually supplanted them, how the New York game came to dominate other variants, and how gambling and secret professionalism promoted and plagued the game.

Joe Farrell, Joe Farley, and Lawrence Knorr have combed New York and Pennsylvania for the gravesites and biographies of some of our most interesting and accomplished sports figures. Included in this volume are: Alan Ameche “The Horse” William “Willie” Law Anderson “Golf’s Forgotten Legend” Paul Arizin “Pitchin’ Paul” Don Richard “Ritchie” Ashburn “His Whiteness” De Bonneville “Bert” Bell “Modern Football’s Founding Father” Billy Conn “The Pittsburgh Kid” James “Jim” Crowley and Harry Stuhldreher “Half the Horsemen” Joe William Frazier “...

Picking up where he left off in his acclaimed memoir Sting-Ray Afternoons, Steve Rushin brilliantly captures a bygone era, and the thrills of new adulthood in the early 80s. It begins in Bloomington, Minnesota, with a 13-year-old kid staging his own author photo that he hopes will someday grace...

In this “sharp-eyed account of a nearly forgotten African-American sports legend” (Publishers Weekly)—the remarkable Major Taylor who became the world’s fastest bicyclist at the height of the Jim Crow era—“Kranish has done historians and fans a service by reminding us that such...

Throughout the NCAA Tournament’s history, underdogs, Cinderella stories, and upsets have captured the attention and imagination of fans. Making March Madness is the story of this premiere tournament, from its early days in Kansas City, to its move to Madison Square Garden, to its surviving a point-shaving scandal in New York and taking its games to different sites across the country.

Road to Nowhere is the story of New York City baseball from 1990 to 1996, describing in intimate detail the collapse of both the Mets and the Yankees in the early nineties, the Yankees' then reclaiming of the city, and the Mets attempts to rebuild from the ashes. After the chaos of the 1980s, the New York Yankees finally bottomed out in 1990. It looked like New York would remain a Mets town well into the twenty-first century.

Transform your child's soccer journey and become the coach they need, even if you've never set foot on the pitch before! Do you feel overwhelmed trying to piece together effective training sessions for aspiring young soccer players? Are you struggling to keep little athletes engaged while teaching them the fundamentals of the game? Or maybe you're just looking for practical ways to bolster your child's mental toughness on the pitch?

In 1990, though no one knew it then, a fearless group of players changed the sport of soccer in the United States forever. Young, bronzed, and mulletted, they were America’s finest athletes in a sport that America loved to hate. Even sportswriters rooted against them. Yet this team defied massive odds and qualified for the World Cup, making possible America’s current obsession with the world’s most popular game. New Kids in the World Cup is the origin story of modern American soccer.

The untold story of the people who make the calls. Every great game has its heroes — but not all of them wear the team colors. Umps & Refs: The History of Officiating – From Early Whistles to the Digital Age takes you behind the scenes of sports’ most misunderstood role, revealing how officiating has evolved across soccer, football, baseball, basketball, and more. You’ll discover: How referees in the early 1900s worked without standardized uniforms or training. The birth of iconic tools — from the pea whistle to penalty flags and scorecards. Legendary officials who became as ...

Playing for Keeps is an insightful, in-depth account of the game that became America's premier spectator sport for nearly a century. Reconstructing the culture and experience of early baseball through a careful reading of the sporting press, baseball guides, and the correspondence of the player-manager Harry Wright, Warren Goldstein discovers the origins of many modern controversies during the game's earliest decades.The 20th Anniversary Edition includes information about the changes that have occurred in the history of the sport since the 1980s.

The powers-that-be in auto racing in the 1920s, namely the American Automobile Association's Contest Board, prohibited everyone who wasn't a White male from the sport. Dewey Gaston, a Black man who went by the name Rajo Jack, broke into the epicenter of racing in California, refusing to let the pervasive racism of his day stop him from competing against entire fields of White drivers. In The Brown Bullet, Bill Poehler uncovers the life of a long-forgotten trailblazer and the great lengths he took to even get on the track.

Brace yourself for a veritable smorgasbord of history and trivia. There’s absurdity galore, of course—those moments when history just refuses to behave. But it’s not all lighthearted and goofy. Between the delightful oddities, you’ll find tales that run the full spectrum of human experience: fascination, wonder, and, yes, more than a few heavy doses of sadness. Some stories wade into that melancholy territory, and while they might leave a lump in your throat, they don’t linger in misery. The twist? They often leave behind a strange, bittersweet joy, the kind that stirs your soul ...

Throughout his baseball career and life Christy Mathewson often wrote down his observations and philosophies. The most famous collection of these writings was published by John N. Wheeler in the classic baseball book Pitching in a Pinch. He was asked many times to write an autobiography yet never completed one. This book is a compilation of many of those writings not included in Pitching in a Pinch and completes, with that book and the brand new Managing in a Moment a marvelous and fascinating trilogy of Matty's nonfiction writings.

I have had the idea of writing a book for a while now, and the beauty of the Internet is that anyone can put their work out there - websites, workout videos, books - freely without having to navigate through the traditional gatekeepers of self-expression. The most important part of putting this out is your response; I know I can get a lot better at this writing thing, and your critiques will be my first step in doing so. What you are about to hear is my story as a basketball player - only as it pertains to basketball - from the time I began playing the game up to and through my college years.

Zwei Spieler sind noch lange keine Bar-Bolz-Bande. So machen sich Mark und Derik auf, den nächsten Ballzauberer zu suchen...

The Celtics Legacy: The Heart Of Boston is the ultimate guide to one of the greatest teams in the history of basketball. This comprehensive book explores the rich history of the Boston Celtics, from their early years to their current dominance on the court.