Cracks in the Outfield Wall

Cracks in the Outfield Wall
Author: Chris Holaday
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2024-04-05
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1469678861

The best-known story of integration in baseball is Jackie Robinson, who broke the major league color line in 1947 after coming up through the minor leagues the previous year. His story, however, differs from those of the many players who integrated the game in the Jim Crow South at all professional levels. Chris Holaday offers readers the first book-length history of baseball's integration in the Carolinas, showing its slow and unsteady progress, narrating the experience of players in a range of distinct communities, detailing the influence of baseball executives at the local and major league levels, and revealing that the changing structure of the professional baseball system allowed the major leagues to control integration at the state level. Holaday illuminates many smaller stories along the way, including desegregation in Little League and American Legion baseball, the first Black players to play in the tiny foothills town of Granite Falls, North Carolina, and the pipeline of Afro-Cuban players from Havana to the Carolina leagues. By showing how race and the national pastime intersected at the local level, Holaday offers readers new context to understand the long struggle of equality in the game.

Chicago's Wrigley Field

Chicago's Wrigley Field
Author: Paul Michael Peterson
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738533759

A "visual-historical tour" of 91 seasons of Chicago baseball from the focal point of the Cubs' stadium, featuring photographs that show the ballpark's history, legions of fans, and surrounding neighborhood.

American Icon

American Icon
Author: Teri Thompson
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2009-05-12
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0307273431

It was an epic downfall. In twenty-four seasons pitcher Roger Clemens put together one of the greatest careers baseball has ever seen. Seven Cy Young Awards, two World Series championships, and 354 victories made him a lock for the Hall of Fame. But on December 13, 2007, the Mitchell Report laid waste to all that. Accusations that Clemens relied on steroids and human growth hormone provided and administered by his former trainer, Brian McNamee, have put Clemens in the crosshairs of a Justice Department investigation. Why did this happen? How did it happen? Who made the decisions that altered some lives and ruined others? How did a devastating culture of drugs, lies, sex, and cheating fester and grow throughout Major League Baseball's clubhouses? The answers are in these extraordinary pages. American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime is about much more than the downfall of a superstar. While the fascinating portrait of Clemens is certainly at the center of the action, the book takes us outside the white lines and inside the lives and dealings of sports executives, trainers, congressmen, lawyers, drug dealers, groupies, a porn star, and even a murderer—all of whom have ties to this saga. Four superb investigative journalists have spent years uncovering the truth, and at the heart of their investigation is a behind-the-scenes portrait of the maneuvering and strategies in the legal war between Clemens and his accuser, McNamee. This compelling story is the strongest examination yet of the rise of illegal drugs in America’s favorite sport, the gym-rat culture in Texas that has played such an important role in spreading those drugs, and the way Congress has dealt with the entire issue. Andy Pettitte, Jose Canseco, Alex Rodriguez, and Chuck Knoblauch are just a few of the other players whose moving and sometimes disturbing stories are illuminated here as well. The New York Daily News Sports Investigative Team has written the definitive book on corruption and the steroids era in Major League Baseball. In doing so, they have managed to dig beneath the disillusion and disappointment to give us a stirring look at heroes who all too often live unheroic shadow lives.

Borchert Field

Borchert Field
Author: Bob Buege
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2017-04-21
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 087020789X

Someone lucky enough to live on Milwaukee’s near north side between 1888 and 1952 could experience the world without ever leaving the neighborhood. Nestled between North Seventh and Eighth Streets and West Chambers and Burleigh, Borchert Field was Milwaukee’s major sports venue for 64 years. In this rickety wooden stadium (originally called Athletic Park), Wisconsin residents had a close-up view of sports history in the making, along with rodeos, thrill shows, and even multiple eruptions of Mount Vesuvius. In Borchert Field, baseball historian Bob Buege introduces the famous and fascinating athletes who dazzled audiences in Milwaukee’s venerable ballpark. All the legendary baseball figures—the Bambino, Satchel Paige, Ty Cobb, Joltin’ Joe, Jackie Robinson, the Say Hey Kid—played there. Olympic heroes Jim Thorpe, Babe Didrikson, and Jesse Owens displayed their amazing talents in Borchert. Knute Rockne’s Fighting Irish competed there, and Curly Lambeau’s Green Bay Packers took the field 10 times. Buege tells stories of other monumental moments at Borchert as well, including a presidential visit, women ballplayers, the arrival of television broadcasting, the 1922 national balloon race, and an appearance by scat-singing bandleader Cab Calloway. Borchert Field is long gone, but every page of this book takes readers back to the sights, sounds, and spectacle of its heyday.

The Project Kids

The Project Kids
Author: Coach Mike Manley
Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
Total Pages: 77
Release: 2020-09-15
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1098015959

Let's go back to the time of rotary phones, party lines, TV screens that were fifteen inches, and the beginning of rock and roll. What was it like growing up in a Housing Authority project? Take a journey throughtime withnine friends in the fifties, as they try to show you kids are the same yesteryear as they are today. Or are they? Faith,friendship, and loyalty are the key words of the book. This book will make you laugh, cry, and wonder were the fifties the good old days. So when your grandkids ask,"How was it when you weregrowing up?"Hand them this book!Coach Mike Manley is a retired New York City physical education teacher. He often states there are 17,500 former students walking around sore from the thousands of pushups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, and chain breakers they did in hisclass His love of teaching, coaching, sports, and faith canbe traced back to his days growing up in a housing project. His book the Project Kids: Takes Us back to the 1950s.Many of the adventures with his eight friends will make you laugh, cry, and wonder how they grew up in such a small part of the world. Mike's book took forty-eight years in the making, and now he can check it off his bucket list.Mike still coaches on Cape Cod where he lives with his wife Carol.

When Baseball Was Still King

When Baseball Was Still King
Author: Gene Fehler
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0786493089

Baseball in the 1950s comes to life through the words of 92 players from the fifties. In their conversations with author Gene Fehler, they tell, in more than a thousand stories and comments, of memorable moments, their dealings with umpires and managers, injuries and trades that affected their careers, regrets and joys that still remain with them so many years later. Players spoken to include Hall of Famers, All Stars, journeymen, and a few who were in the big leagues for the proverbial cup of coffee. Regardless of stature, they all have wonderful stories to tell about big league life in the 1950s, high and low, and moments with other players.

Going, Going ... Caught!

Going, Going ... Caught!
Author: Jason Aronoff
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2009-01-23
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0786441135

Though Willie Mays' World Series catch of Vic Wertz's long drive in 1954 immediately comes to mind, there are many catches that have been called "the greatest." This work documents baseball's best catches by outfielders from 1887 through 1964 (the year of Duke Snider's retirement, the demolition of the Polo Grounds, and, arguably, Willie Mays' last great grab). After introductory chapters on factors that influenced the catches and their legacies--from ballpark quirks, changes to the baseball and the evolution of baseball gloves, to sportswriters and photography--the book describes famous catches by decade from such players as Mays, Willie Keeler, Joe DiMaggio, Duke Snider, Roberto Clement, Curt Flood and many others. Extensive research yields a wealth of information for each catch, including commentary by period sportswriters, players, and, often, the man who snagged the ball.

The Somerset Ball

The Somerset Ball
Author: Mikel D. Smith
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2015-10-20
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1491774371

The 1970 Tilghman baseball team was a conglomeration of students from all over Paducah, a town of about thirty thousand in West Kentucky. The Blue Tornado already had a proud history of success in football, basketball, track and baseball. However, little was expected from this years team. Fielding a starting roster and coaches with limited experience, the team began with a mediocre record, but became a tough opponent as the season progressed- ultimately surprising everyone by making it to the finals of the Kentucky State High School Tournament. The tournament was one of the most memorable in Kentucky sports history, including teams from Madisonville, Louisville Trinity, Lexington Lafayette, Somerset, Russell, Covington Catholic, Elizabethtown and Paducah Tilghman. This is a story about growing up in a small Midwestern town - remembering life in Paducah and a tribute to the great players across the State as told through photographs, statistics, news accounts and memories of the 1960s.

Yogi

Yogi
Author: Jon Pessah
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0316310980

Discover the definitive biography of Yogi Berra, the New York Yankees icon, winner of 10 World Series championships, and the most-quoted player in baseball history. Lawrence "Yogi" Berra was never supposed to become a major league ballplayer. That's what his immigrant father told him. That's what Branch Rickey told him, too—right to Berra's face, in fact. Even the lowly St. Louis Browns of his youth said he'd never make it in the big leagues. Yet baseball was his lifeblood. It was the only thing he ever cared about. Heck, it was the only thing he ever thought about. Berra couldn't allow a constant stream of ridicule about his appearance, taunts about his speech, and scorn about his perceived lack of intelligence to keep him from becoming one of the best to ever play the game—at a position requiring the very skills he was told he did not have. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and four years of reporting, Jon Pessah delivers a transformational portrait of how Berra handled his hard-earned success—on and off the playing field—as well as his failures; how the man who insisted "I really didn't say everything I said!" nonetheless shaped decades of America's culture; and how Berra's humility and grace redefined what it truly means to be a star. Overshadowed on the field by Joe DiMaggio early in his career and later by a youthful Mickey Mantle, Berra emerges as not only the best loved Yankee but one of the most appealingly simple, innately complex, and universally admired men in all of America.

The Essentials of Sports Reporting and Writing

The Essentials of Sports Reporting and Writing
Author: Scott Reinardy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2010-04-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1135591164

This text covers the full experience of sports writing. Authors Wayne Wanta and Scott Reinardy approach the topic using their own professional experience as sports writers and editors to give students a realistic view of the sports writing profession. After the overview and introduction to sports journalism, the authors move into the stages of article writing, organized around article beginnings, middles, and endings. The text also covers other types of sports stories, such as columns, profiles, and news, and addresses style and ethics issues. It provides students with a full understanding of how to produce quality content for sports stories, as well as offer insights as to what to expect in the sports reporter position.