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The Detroit Tigers gave a memorable performance in the pennant race against the New York Yankees in 1961, the American League's first expansion season. Starting faster, the Tigers held first place for more than half the season, until the Yankees caught up in late July. They met in a climactic three-game series at Yankee Stadium. The Bronx Bombers swept all three, winning the pennant for the eleventh time in 13 seasons. But the 18 games the Tigers and Yankees played against each other were some...

During the 19th century, baseball was a game with few rules, many rowdy players and just one umpire. Dirty tricks were simply part of a winning strategy-spiking, body-blocking, cutting bases short or hiding an extra ball to be used when needed were all OK. Deliberately failing to catch a fly in order to have the game called due to darkness was also acceptable. And drinking before a game was perhaps expected. Providing brief bios of dozens of players, managers, umpires and owners, this book chron...

Amazing Tales from the 2004 Boston Red Sox Dugout is a different kind of look back at the incredible championship season through the eyes of the players involved. It is packed full of anecdotes, quotes, and perspectives from each member of the team, presented in the context of their on-field heroics. The book includes intimate snapshots of particularly relevant moments rare glimpses behind the scenes in order bring you back to the moment. This was a group of bona fide characters who showed great...

Dale Scott’s career as a professional baseball umpire spanned nearly forty years, including thirty-three in the Major Leagues, from 1985 to 2017. He worked exactly a thousand games behind the plate, calling balls and strikes at the pinnacle of his profession, working in every Major League Baseball stadium, and interacting with dozens of other top-flight umpires, colorful managers, and hundreds of players, from future Hall of Famers to one-game wonders. Scott has enough stories about his career...

The Indianapolis Clowns were a black touring baseball team that featured an entertaining mix of comedy, showmanship, and skill. Sometimes referred to as the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball - though the Globetrotters' comedy evolved directly from the Clowns - they captured the affection of Americans of all ethnicities and classes. Alan Pollock's father, Syd, owned the Clowns, as well as a series of black barnstorming teams that crisscrossed the country from the late 1920s until the mid-1960s. Th...

The story about baseball's being invented in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839 by Civil War hero Abner Doubleday seemed to prove America's national pastime was an American game, not derived from the English children's game of rounders as had been believed. The tale, embraced by Americans, has been proven to be false. To this day, Cooperstown is celebrated as the birthplace of baseball based on an assertion long ago dismissed as impossible. The story has captured the hearts and minds of millions. Bu...

Albert G. Spalding's addiction to what he saw as a peculiarly American sport began early on the sandlot in Rockford, Illinois. One of the first professional baseball players and later a manager and club owner, he branched out to become a leading manufacturer of sporting goods. America's National Game, published a few years before his death in 1915, lays out the beginnings of baseball and its advancement while dispensing Spalding's vivid reminiscences and firm opinions. The essential nature of th...

'With every...baseball book, Don Honig heaps delight on top of pleasure...He has worked the vein with skill and taste and enthusiasm enough to enrich all of us fans' - Red Smith. 'Honig has proven himself to be one of baseball's best and most important chroniclers...This is baseball history at its best. Fans will treasure it' - "Library Journal". 'We are given a new dimension - we are made to discover not only what happens on the ballfield, but how it happens' - "Newsday". 'Honig shows his knack...

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 second-third finishes, and 30 out of a possible 65 championships in the league's first 61/2 decades. Their games often showcased match-ups between baseball's most talented and toughest players and often had playoff implications. This history of the rival...

Hoosier Beginnings tells the story of Indiana University athletics from its founding in 1867 to the interwar period. Crammed full of rare images and little-known anecdotes, it recounts how sport at IU developed from its very first baseball team, made up mostly of local Bloomington townsfolks, to the rich and powerful tradition that is the "Hoosier" legacy. Hoosier Beginnings uncovers fascinating stories that have been lost to time and showcases how Indiana University athletics built its founda...

House of David barnstorming baseball (1915-1957) was played without pre-determined schedules, leagues, player statistics or standings. The Davids quickly gained popularity for their hirsute appearance and flashy, fast-paced style of play. During their 200 seasons, they travelled as many as 30,000 miles, criss-crossing the United States, Canada and Mexico. The Benton Harbor teams invented the pepper game and were winners year after year, becoming legends in barnstorming baseball. Initially a loo...

The author ranks the performance of players, managers, umpires and teams, using a variety of statistical categories and drawing from records as far back as the inception of the National League in 1876.

Baseball has produced some notably strange plays—like Randy Johnson's fastball dismantling a bird—yet there have been many that defy belief. Beginning with Todd Frazier tricking umpires into calling an out with a rubber ball and culminating in Al "The Mad Hungarian" Hrabosky pitching into a scrum of two batters and a manager at home plate, this book describes the 150 most bizarre plays in the history of the game. Baserunners going in the wrong direction, outfielders kicking the ball, three runne...