Playing Ball with the Boys

Playing Ball with the Boys
Author: Betsy Ross
Publisher: Clerisy Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2010-11-09
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1578604605

Female sideline reporters are the fastest-growing trend in broadcasts of professional and college football: names like Suzy Kolber, Erin Andrews, and Andrea Kremer are now as well known as any of the men in the booth. But even more has been going on. In recent years women have garnered spots as sports columnists and reporters, talk-show hosts, and even coaches and team administrators. Yet there has never been a book about this phenomenon. Former ESPN news anchor Betsy Ross fills this gap with Playing Ball with the Boys, a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the emerging role that women play in sports broadcasting and reporting, as well as in the business of sports. The book features interviews with the legendary women’s sports activist Billie Jean King, as well as Women’s Professional Soccer League leader Tonya Antonucci and ESPN College Basketball Analyst Rebecca Lobo. Prominent women working in the media are also featured in the book, including WFAN’s Ann Ligouri, CBS’ Lesley Visser, ESPN’s Pam Ward, USA Today’s Christine Brennan and Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts. Playing Ball with the Boys delivers firsthand accounts of the struggles and triumphs of women succeeding in what has long been a man's game.

Playing Ball with the Boys

Playing Ball with the Boys
Author: Betsy Ross
Publisher: Clerisy Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2010-10-25
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1578604613

The use of female sideline reporters is the fastest-growing new aspect of televised broadcasts of professional and college football. Names like Suzy Kolber, Erin Andrews, and Andrea Kremer are now as well known as any of the men in the booth. In recent years women have been sports columnists and reporters, talk-show hosts, even coaches and team administrators. And yet there has never been a book about this phenomenon. Former ESPN news anchor Betsy Ross fills this void with Playing Ball with the Boys, a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the emerging role that women play in sports broadcasting and reporting as well as in the business of sports. Ross interviews a number of the biggest names--from Kolber and Kremer to USA Today columnist Christine Brennan and Lesley Visser and many others--who offer first-hand accounts of the struggles and the triumphs of women playing what has always been a man's game. She provides a history of this unique facet of the sports world, from pioneering female newspaper sports reporters to the celebrated breakthrough into televised sports by former Miss America Phyllis George, who is interviewed in the book. Ross covers the controversial moments, from locker room confrontations between players and female reporters to the infamous sideline interview in which Joe Namath attempted to kiss Suzy Kolber during a live broadcast. Readers also learn of women who played pro sports on male teams or coached men's teams. They meet a woman who runs a professional baseball team and another who is a team doctor. Through this tale, Ross weaves her own story, recalling how she went from a small town in Indiana to the anchor's chair at the largest sports network in the world, ESPN. She explains what it's like for a woman to succeed in the male-dominated world of sports broadcasting.

Sid and the Boys

Sid and the Boys
Author: Carl McCullough
Publisher:
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2021-03-02
Genre:
ISBN: 9781736417003

This is a story about a small town, big oil, an undersized high school basketball team, a coach with a huge heart, and how a season was nearly undone by well-intentioned corporate interference and racism. Big oil and basketball both grew up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma in the first half of the twentieth century. The eleven-time national AAU champion Phillips 66er and their corporate sponsor gained international fame together in the 1940s and 50s. Due in large part to Phillips Petroleum Company, Bartlesville had a highly educated and affluent population. Thanks also to Phillips, there was a stockpile of All-American basketball stars who lived there and served as coaches and mentors to youth throughout the community. In the late fall of 1966, just as the high school basketball season was getting underway, one of those former players was dispatched by Phillips to "assist" the local team, only to learn that the help was unwelcome. What Phillips failed to understand was the loyalty between the coach and his team. In an exceptional and unexpected show of unity, as well as fierce loyalty, the players rallied around their coach and commenced their season, playing against the state's largest schools. This is a heartwarming story of that coach, his team and the lasting impact of their remarkable relationship. This story reminds me of 'Hoosiers.' It combines high school basketball with timely social issues. Well researched and a great read. --Jay Bilas, ESPN Debut author Carl McCullough has captured not only a great sports story, but provides food for thought on current issues. His treatment of racism is sensitive and timely. --Former Oklahoma Sooners and Dallas Cowboys Head Coach, Barry Switzer This is a classic story of an undersized high school basketball team from a big oil town in Northeast Oklahoma that finds a way to make a run at a state championship while fighting systemic racism at the height of the civil rights movement and attempts by corporate business to control who coaches and plays on the team. A sociologist's dream that turns into a fairy tale finish. --Dick Weiss, Hall of Fame Sports Columnist.

Nobody Wants to Play with a Ball Hog

Nobody Wants to Play with a Ball Hog
Author: Julie Gassman
Publisher: Capstone
Total Pages: 57
Release: 2011
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1434220567

Tyler has a perfect shot on the basketball court. Since he can't miss, he quits passing to his teammates. But will Tyler learn that nobody wants to play with a ball hog?

The Boys of Summer

The Boys of Summer
Author: Roger Kahn
Publisher: Aurum
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2013-08-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1781312079

This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the colour barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is a book about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory days were behind them. In short, it is a book fathers and sons and about the making of modern America. 'At a point in life when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams.' Sentimental because it holds such promise, and bittersweet because that promise is past, the first sentence of this masterpiece of sporting literature, first published in the early '70s, sets its tone. The team is the mid-20th-century Brooklyn Dodgers, the team of Robinson and Snyder and Hodges and Reese, a team of great triumph and historical import composed of men whose fragile lives were filled with dignity and pathos. Roger Kahn, who covered that team for the New York Herald Tribune, makes understandable humans of his heroes as he chronicles the dreams and exploits of their young lives, beautifully intertwining them with his own, then recounts how so many of those sweet dreams curdled as the body of these once shining stars grew rusty with age and battered by experience.

Ball Boy

Ball Boy
Author: Paul Shirley
Publisher:
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2021-02-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780578800356

Gray Taylor wants to be remarkable but isn't. Gray gets the chance to change this when his mother moves him from Los Angeles to the dying Kansas town of Beaudelaire, where Gray finds basketball. Gray uses basketball to become someone people notice. And later to save Beaudelaire from itself. Ball Boy is The Karate Kid meets Hoosiers meets The Shortstop from Tokyo. It's a book about growing up, about the importance of community, and about the power of finding the thing that makes you feel special.

Playing with the Big Boys

Playing with the Big Boys
Author: Lou Antolihao
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2015-05-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0803255462

""Playing with the Big Boys" traces the development of basketball in the Philippines from an educational tool during the early period of American colonial rule in the early twentieth century to a ubiquitous national pastime"--

A Boy, a Ball, and a Dog

A Boy, a Ball, and a Dog
Author: Gianna Marino
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 45
Release: 2016-06-21
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1626722870

"An adventure story about a boy and his dog running through the neighborhood and playing catch"--

Did you take the B from my _ook? (Books That Drive Kids Crazy, Book 2)

Did you take the B from my _ook? (Books That Drive Kids Crazy, Book 2)
Author: Matt Stanton
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2016-04-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1460705963

'Witty, silly, and interactive ... A rollicking read for children and adults alike' - Kirkus Reviews For the Grown-Ups: OK. Two things you need to know. Firstly, your favourite thing in the whole world is the letter B. And secondly, you're about to sneeze and all the Bs are going to be blown out of the book. So until you can get your favourite letter back, you're about to sound really, really silly ... And the kids will love it! PRAISE FOR THE BOOKS THAT DRIVE KIDS CRAZY SERIES 'The kids are having a ball (whoops, having fun) and a discussion is born' -- 4 stars, Good Reading 'Funny, clever, deliciously dry ... this book encourages kids to think outside the square, and hopefully, somewhere deep in that unlimited subconscious, understand that what we see is all about perception. What a powerful thought' -- Kids' Book Review