Hockey Dreams

Hockey Dreams
Author: David Adams Richards
Publisher: Anchor Canada
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2011-04-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307363813

With a voice as Canadian as winter, David Adams Richards reflects on the place of hockey in the Canadian soul. The lyrical narrative of Hockey Dreams flows from Richards' boyhood games on the Miramichi to heated debates with university professors who dare to back the wrong team. It examines the globalization of hockey, and how Canadians react to the threat of foreigners beating us at "our" game. Part memoir, part essay on national identity, part hockey history, Hockey Dreams is a meditation by one of Canada's finest writers on the essence of the game that helps define our nation.

Baseball Memories & Dreams

Baseball Memories & Dreams
Author: The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
Publisher: Mango Media Inc.
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2022-10-04
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1642508780

Discover What Made Baseball America’s Pastime #1 New Release in Baseball Statistics Baseball Memories & Dreams celebrates the iconic moments, heroes, and trends that define baseball for its millions of fans This compendium of baseball writing covers it all—recollections of Hall of Famers and narratives from top baseball writers; stories on the rich iconography and history of the game across the full diversity of players, teams, and leagues; and reflections on the way America’s pastime has shaped our culture. Selected from the Baseball Hall of Fame’s member magazine, Baseball Memories & Dreams brings to life the best of baseball. More than just a baseball history book. Revel in America’s pastime and explore baseball history in articles written by notable sports writers, Hall of Famers, media personalities, and the Hall’s own expert historians. Baseball Memories & Dreams showcases the best of baseball facts, baseball biographies, and baseball media personalities into a robust catalogue of known and unknown information. Get the inside scoop into the lives of baseball giants like Johnny Bench, Peter Gammons, John Grisham, Tim Kurkjian, Ichiro Suzuki, Joe Torre, and more. From their stories, gain insight into each individual life to see just what trials and hardships made these men into the best baseball players in history. With Baseball Memories & Dreams in hand, you’ll see America’s pastime in a new light. Inside, you’ll find over 70 articles on America’s pastime, highlighting: Baseball facts, baseball biographies, stats, and artifacts—and the history and lore behind them Coverage of Black, Hispanic, and woman players Stories about baseball’s great players, teams, and rivalries, as well as the moments that trace the game’s wide-ranging history If you enjoy baseball books—best sellers like The Baseball 100, Cloudbuster Nine, or Talking to GOATS—you’ll love Baseball Memories & Dreams.

Catching Dreams

Catching Dreams
Author: Frazier Robinson
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2000-12-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780815606581

In a rare memoir about the Negro Leagues and its celebrated players, Frazier "Slow" Robinson offers an inspiring and often entertaining view of the black baseball diamond through a catcher's mask. In 1939, at the age of 29—after playing professional baseball for twelve years—Frazier Robinson caught the legendary Satchel Paige in barnstorming games from New Orleans to Walla Walla. Robinson played several more seasons in the Negro Leagues before finishing his career in Canada. While his career was a solid one, it was less spectacular than that of his friend and Hall-of-Famer, Satchel Paige, and so more typical of the experience of most Negro Leaguers. Richly embroidered with the threads of black society and of life as a black athlete in a racially divided nation, Robinson recounts his long career with the skill and ease of a natural storyteller. He covers, in remarkable detail, the personal perspective of the men, the teams, and the times that shaped this uniquely American subculture. From playing catcher for obscure industrial teams to barnstorming with Satchel Paige, he chronologically traces his nationwide path through the 1920s, '30s, '40s, and early '50s. The Foreword by John "Buck" O'Neil and Introduction by Gerald Early place Robinson squarely in the world of sports, African American culture, and American history.

Invisible Ball of Dreams

Invisible Ball of Dreams
Author: Emily Ruth Rutter
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2018-04-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 149681715X

Winner of the 2018 John Coates Next Generation Award from the Negro Leagues Research Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research Although many Americans think of Jackie Robinson when considering the story of segregation in baseball, a long history of tragedies and triumphs precede Robinson’s momentous debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. From the pioneering Cuban Giants (1885-1915) to the Negro Leagues (1920-1960), Black baseball was a long-standing staple of African American communities. While many of its artifacts and statistics are lost, Black baseball figured vibrantly in films, novels, plays, and poems. In Invisible Ball of Dreams: Literary Representations of Baseball behind the Color Line, author Emily Ruth Rutter examines wide-ranging representations of this history by William Brashler, Jerome Charyn, August Wilson, Gloria Naylor, Harmony Holiday, Kevin King, Kadir Nelson, and Denzel Washington, among others. Reading representations across the literary color line, Rutter opens a propitious space for exploring Black cultural pride and residual frustrations with racial hypocrisies on the one hand and the benefits and limitations of white empathy on the other. Exploring these topics is necessary to the project of enriching the archives of segregated baseball in particular and African American cultural history more generally.

Baseball Memories

Baseball Memories
Author: Ronald a Mayer
Publisher: Sunbury Press, Incorporated
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2020-02-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9781620062449

"Baseball Memories" is a collection of 101 poems celebrating America's national pastime--baseball. The focus is not one team, player, or event. Many outstanding players and their achievements are recalled, for example: Joe DiMaggio's 56- game hitting streak, Ted Williams .406 batting title in 1941, and the magical pitching of Orel Hershiser, just to mention a few. Some of the wild and zany events Major League Baseball would love to forget are highlighted, including the night in Cleveland when the club ran a promotion selling 12 ounces of beer at the ridiculously low price of 10 cents or at Dodger Stadium when someone had the bright but eventual disastrous idea to hold Ball Night. And then there are the classic games that are simply fun to recall and relive: in 1993 when the Toronto Blue Jays won their second consecutive World Series in dramatic fashion or the more recent 2016 World Series when every baseball fan was watching two teams, the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians, both having failed to win a Fall Classic in many, many years. The last World Series championship for Chicago was 1908 and for the Indians 1948. For those of you too young to remember or perhaps have forgotten there is a poem entitled, "The Craziest Trade Ever." It is totally true and quite bizarre. This is only a small taste of what "Baseball Memories" is all about. These 101 poems will delight, inform, entertain, and may even bring tears. And it will make Brooklyn Dodger fans angry.

Once Upon a Game

Once Upon a Game
Author: Alan Schwarz
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2007
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780618731275

Critically acclaimed author Schwarz assembles a delightful collection of personal memories about baseball from some of the game's all-time legends. Lavishly illustrated and handsomely designed, this is a one-of-a-kind collective reminiscence.

Transpacific Field of Dreams

Transpacific Field of Dreams
Author: Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2012-04-04
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0807882666

Baseball has joined America and Japan, even in times of strife, for over 150 years. After the "opening" of Japan by Commodore Perry, Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu explains, baseball was introduced there by American employees of the Japanese government tasked with bringing Western knowledge and technology to the country, and Japanese students in the United States soon became avid players. In the early twentieth century, visiting Japanese warships fielded teams that played against American teams, and a Negro League team arranged tours to Japan. By the 1930s, professional baseball was organized in Japan where it continued to be played during and after World War II; it was even played in Japanese American internment camps in the United States during the war. From early on, Guthrie-Shimizu argues, baseball carried American values to Japan, and by the mid-twentieth century, the sport had become emblematic of Japan's modernization and of America's growing influence in the Pacific world. Guthrie-Shimizu contends that baseball provides unique insight into U.S.-Japanese relations during times of war and peace and, in fact, is central to understanding postwar reconciliation. In telling this often surprising history, Transpacific Field of Dreams shines a light on globalization's unlikely, and at times accidental, participants.

Diamond Dreams

Diamond Dreams
Author: Stephen Brunt
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 400
Release: 1997
Genre: Toronto Blue Jays (Baseball Team)
ISBN: 9780140239782

Benchwarmer

Benchwarmer
Author: Josh Wilker
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 161039402X

A moving, funny, inventive parenting memoir, written in a surprising form: an encyclopedia of failure in sports What can a new father learn about parenthood from reading sports almanacs? For most dads, the answer to this question is: nothing. But to Josh Wilker, whose life and writing have been defined by sports fandom, all of the joy, helplessness, and absurdity of parenthood are present between the lines. After all, what better way to think about losing control than Eugenio Velez's forty-five consecutive at-bats without a hit? How better to understand ridiculous joy than the NFL career of Walter Achiu, whose nickname was "Sneeze"? In the stories of sports figures large and small, Wilker finds the pathos in success and the humor in losing. As the terrified father of a one-day-old, Wilker recalls the 1986 World Series, when the moment was too big for the Red Sox. When he finds himself stealing away for an hour of alone time, Wilker thinks of boxer Roberto Duran, so beaten by Sugar Ray Leonard that he finally gave up. And yet, even as the frustrations and anxieties build, Wilker remembers Mets pitcher Anthony Young, who broke the baseball record for most consecutive losses -- and never stopped showing up. Finding the richness of life in obscure wrestling maneuvers and pop-ups lost in the sun, Benchwarmer is a book of unique humanity and surprising wisdom.

Memories Dreams and the Grid

Memories Dreams and the Grid
Author: Gordon Plotkin
Publisher: Amazon
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2023-01-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1960147668

Days before his 19th birthday, Grid awakes in the middle of the night screaming, “THE ELEVATOR! NO HANK!” He had just endured his first nightmare – his first of two. His dreams had been unusually pleasant to date – all of them. And until days before Grid’s 19th Birthday the protagonists were people he didn’t know, or so he thought. Every night since his second birthday, Grid would dream about Mike and Hank, The Brothers who weren’t really Brothers, the main characters of what played out like a series of movies in Grid’s head every night as he slept. He had wondered as a child what it was all about. When he asked his mother, Dolly, she became inexplicably cross and lashed out at her son. She convinced Grid that Hank and Mike weren’t real. And then Dolly warned her son sternly to never speak of it for fear that people would think Grid was crazy like his Grandfather. He had died the day Grid was born. She didn’t tell him Mike was that grandfather and Hank was his uncle, but not his real uncle. Grid only began to wonder anew what it was all about after his first nightmare, days before his 19th birthday on a Kibbutz in Israel. He decided to share his dreams for the first time with his roommate after waking from his second nightmare screaming, “NO HANK! DON’T LEAVE ME!”