Sports Books

Step into the locker rooms and living rooms of NFL players and personnel to see how a close relationship with God guides football's biggest stars.Compiled from dozens of interviews, Men of Sunday marks the intersection of two Sunday traditions:...

The relationship between meditation and the martial arts is a multifaceted one: meditation is one of the practices in which martial artists engage in order to prepare for combat, while the physical exercises constituting much of the discipline of the...

This distinctive Handbook covers the breadth of sports and media scholarship, one of the up-and-coming topics bridging media entertainment, sports management, and popular culture. Organized into historical, institutional, spectator, and critical studies...

In their own words, the pioneers and legends of professional football tell of the early glory years of the National Football League. From the 1920s through the 1940s, pro football players were paid only hundreds of dollars per game and rarely had...

One of Sports Illustrated's top 100 sports books of all-timeThe 1908 National League pennant race was without question the most exciting and dramatic battle of all time. Three teams, the Giants, the Cubs, and the Pirates, battled from start to finish,...

"This is a baseball book, but whether Creamer intended it or not, it's much, much more."-Sports Illustrated. "[Creamer] recalls this momentous year in baseball and world history. He reprises Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, Ted Williams's .406...

Before the jump shot, basketball was an earth-bound game. In fact, inventor James Naismith did not originally intend for players to move with the ball. The inspired invention of the dribble first put the ball handler in motion. The jump shot then took...

After the war and right up to the present day, many hundreds of companies, hobbyists and designers around the world have built countless special vehicles based on a Volkswagen chassis, initially on the platform of the Wehrmacht Kübelwagen. Some were...

The history of baseball is filled with players whose careers were defined by one bad play. Mike Torrez is remembered as the pitcher who gave up the infamous three-run homer to Bucky "Bleeping" Dent in the 1978 playoffs tie-breaker between the Red Sox...

Greatness is often overlooked in its own time. For Ezzard Charles--one of boxing's most skilled practitioners, with a record of 93-25-1 (52 KO)--recognition took decades. Named by The Ring magazine as the greatest light heavyweight of all time,...

Many in baseball consider the scout to be the most important figure in any organization: It is the scout's work in the high school and college bleachers that unearths future legends. Few have achieved more--and in such grand style--than George...

The Troy Haymakers were a pioneer baseball team legendary for exploits on and off the field. Formed in 1860 in Troy, New York--a rapidly growing industrial city--the team was embraced by the tough-minded Trojans as emblematic of their vigorous...

Baseball fans may know the story of the Brooklyn Dodgers, but they don't know the whole story. With a foreword by Branch Barrett Rickey (grandson of Branch Rickey), this book fills the void in Dodgers scholarship, exploring their impact on popular...

The first organized, sanctioned American stock car race took place in 1908 on a road course around Briarcliff, New York--staged by one of America's early speed mavens, William K. Vanderbilt, Jr. A veteran of the early Ormond-Daytona Beach speed...

A great little sports car race took place on an island in Lake Erie, offshore of Sandusky, Ohio. The drivers came on ferry boats to compete for silver cups in an age when there were no sponsors and no prize money. The drivers were car salesmen, stock...

Beginning with prehumans running down prey, this book describes how ancient, medieval and modern runners have come to run ever faster. Writers of antiquity left few detailed accounts of running but in the early 1800s detailed accounts of running feats...

Greg Moore is one of three sons of NASCAR Hall of Famer Bud Moore. Bud is a highly decorated World War II veteran who landed on Utah Beach on D-Day. Greg grew up in an auto racer's world in which his father's cars and drivers won dozens of races and...

The Negro Southern League was a baseball minor league that operated off and on from 1920 to 1951. It served as a valuable feeder system to the Negro National League and the Negro American League. A number of NNL and NAL stars got their start in the...

The Giants' accomplishments took place against an historical backdrop of a change in the African-American experience. The original players from Jacksonville, Florida, joined the northward black migration during World War I. The team was named after...

This is the story of the L.A. Dodgers' volatile fortunes during Sandy Koufax's transformation from a wild left-hander with a losing record on the verge of quitting the game, to an artist with exquisite control of the baseball--a veritable Mozart on...

This is the biography of Bud Fowler (ne John Jackson), the first African American to play in organized baseball, and the longest tenured at the time that the color line was drawn. In addition to his professional playing career, which lasted more than...

This the story of the seven baseball-playing Boyer brothers from western Missouri who signed professional contracts in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Led by oldest brother Cloyd, a pitcher, third baseman Ken and third baseman Clete, three of the seven...

Between October 1961 and October 1962, the Yankees and the Mets shared the city for the first time, their front offices located on opposite sides of Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, and their playing fields--Yankee Stadium and the Polo...

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...

Fred "Duke" Slater was the greatest African American football player of the first half of the 20th century. Born into poverty, he developed into a two-time All-American tackle at the University of Iowa from 1918 to 1921. When the College Football Hall...

Negro League ballplayers, earning paychecks comparable to those of blue-collar workers, needed an off-season source of income to make ends meet. Many of them found the answer in baseball, by joining racially integrated barnstorming teams that toured...

Though they played in the years before Rube Foster formed the first Negro League, the St. Paul Gophers and their bitter crosstown rivals, the Minneapolis Keystones, had the talent, bench depth, and determination to rival many of those later, better...

August Garry Herrmann entered the murky waters of 19th century machine politics in Cincinnati, serving as a trusted lieutenant to one of the most powerful political bosses in the country, George B. Cox. Herrmann, a gifted man who introduced modern...

Cleveland and the surrounding area was home to one of the earliest and most active baseball scenes outside of the eastern seaboard. This extraordinarily detailed history combines author commentary with first-hand accounts to document baseball's rapid...

From authors Anne Jones and former NASCAR champion Rex White, here are oral histories of more than 50 individuals from stock car and drag racing's not-so-distant past and present. Rich with original interviews and previously unpublished material, it...

Hundreds of major leaguers--including the Hall of Fame's Hank Greenburg, Johnny Mize, Rod Carew, Carl Yastrzemski and Joe Morgan--got their starts in North Carolina, where baseball has been a fixture in the state for nearly 100 years--in Charlotte and...

As a player, manager, team captain, umpire, owner and league president, Hall of Famer Jim O'Rourke (1851-1918) spoke for the players in the emerging game of baseball. O'Rourke's career paralleled the rise of the game from a regional sport with few...

As early as the 1880s, baseball owners and sportswriters were decrying the greediness of players as the leading threat to the national pastime. Nearly a century later in 1976, the Player's Association was able to finally tear down baseball's permanent...

It's often said that catcher is the most important, most demanding defensive position in baseball. This view explains why so many light-hitting catchers have enjoyed long--and by all accounts successful--major league careers. Yet arguments over the...

Professional wrestling revels in its exaggeration of masculinity. This hyper-masculinity is evident in the physical appearance of wrestlers, the sexuality-charged and violent moves used in and out of the ring, the role assigned to women and the...

The rivalry between the Chicago Cubs and the New York Giants--the National League's greatest teams in its early days--took hold with the founding of the league in 1876. Between the two bitter rivals there were nine first-second finishes, eight...

The popularity of youth soccer in the United States has increased dramatically in recent years. The number of players and spectators has risen and soccer now rivals the more traditional American sports of baseball, basketball, and football. This is a...

Relief pitchers have important roles in baseball today, often coming in to pitch at some of the game's most critical and exciting moments, but they have not always been a part of the game. This work provides a history of relief pitching in the major...

When he died in 1933, James J. "Gentleman Jim" Corbett was honored by two distinguished groups of people: the professional boxing public, who celebrated him as America's greatest boxing champion, and the world of popular theater admirers, who revered...

This book is a comprehensive account of author Roger Graham's 36 years of covering the games and affairs of Greenock Morton Football Club while sports editor of the evening newspaper, the Greenock Telegraph. It includes the highs of a period under Benny...

Capturing Maui's golden era of windsurfing, from the early pioneering days of Kailua to the big waves at Hookipa and Jaws, this book tells the story of the Kings and legends of the sport as it evolved from longboards to high-performances in big surf...

Do you have a sports injury? Well, don't just lie there, screaming in agony. Read this book! STEVE MOORE, America’s foremost syndicated sports cartoonist, presents an anthology of more than 300 of his most irreverent In the Bleachers...

More Than One Way chronicles the eleven years and counting of an empty nester who, while not looking for something to do, was grabbed by the Appalachian Trail. The story begins with a short day hike and evolves into personal growth, life changing...

During September, October and November, an army of hunters, twenty-five percent larger than the entire United States Marine Corps., marches across country to the Cowboy Hunting lands of the Rockies. For every one who makes the trip, countless others...

Mastering the fly cast is not a simple feat. This book is designed for the novice through advanced student. Part one provides complete lesson plans for the beginner, intermediate and distance caster. Part two is chock full of detailed information on how...