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An unforgettable account of the epic Baseball World Series between the celebrated Los Angeles Dodgers and the perennial underdog Baltimore Orioles. Nobody expected the Orioles to have a chance - after all, by 1966, the Dodgers had replaced the Yankees as the dominant team in baseball, winning two of the previous three World Series. Few outside Baltimore gave the Orioles more than a fighting chance to win.What transpired over four games astonished and mesmerised a nation in turmoil. Baltimore'...

Canadian-born George "Moon" Gibson (1880-1967) grew up playing baseball on the sandlots around London, Ontario, before going on to star with the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League. In an era known for tough, defensive catchers, Gibson was an ironman and set records for endurance. He helped the Pirates defeat Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers to win their first World Series in 1909. Gibson built a reputation as a smart player and had a knack for helping develop young pitchers. He played with...

Chicago's Wrigley Field opened in 1914 as Weeghman Park, the new North Side stadium erected for use by the Federal League's Chicago team, which would eventually be called the Whales. It was built in just 50 days, with an rectangular shape in the style of New York's Polo Grounds, designed to fit the odd dimensions of the lot which formerly housed a seminary school that Whales owner "Lucky" Charley Weeghman had purchased with a 99-year lease at a little over $300,000. In all, it took $250,000 and...

Few political figures of the modern age have been so vilified as Fidel Castro, and both the vilification and worship generated by the Cuban leader have combined to distort the true image of Castro. The baseball myths attached to Fidel have loomed every bit as large as the skewed political notions that surround him. Castro was never a major league pitching prospect, nor did he destroy the Cuban national pastime in 1962. In Fidel Castro and Baseball: The Untold Story, Peter C. Bjarkman dispels nu...

A 2013 CASEY Award Finalist for Best Baseball Book of the Year and a Booklist Top Ten Sports Book of the Year When baseball swept America in the years after the Civil War, independent, semipro, and municipal leagues sprouted up everywhere. With civic pride on the line, rivalries were fierce and teams often signed ringers to play alongside the town dentist, insurance salesman, and teen prodigy. In drought-stricken Bismarck, North Dakota during the Great Depression, one of the most improbable tea...

Unbreakable gives fans the fascinating stories behind incredible records and the players who made them and provides a basis for comparing players of the Deadball era with those of today. Most importantly, it gives the true baseball fan quantitative objective data to bring to arguments about players and their records. It is almost impossible to fathom how Jack Chesbro could have won 41 games in 1904 when pitchers today don't even make that many starts in a season. Ed Walsh pitched 464 innings in...

In The Great Book of Baseball Knowledge, David Nemec combines the most compelling features of his many baseball quiz books and his best selling Great Baseball Feats, Facts, & Firsts. The result is an absolutely unique illustrated treasury of questions, answers, and information that serves as both an invaluable reference work and a rich storehouse of entertainment.The Great Book of Baseball Knowledge engages the reader with well over a thousand probing questions and insights about baseball's lege...

He was not much of a player and not much more of a manager, but by the time Branch Rickey (1881-1965) finished with baseball, he had revolutionized the sport-not just once but three times. In this definitive biography of Rickey - the man sportswriters dubbed "The Brain," "The Mahatma," and, on occasion, "El Cheapo" - Lee Lowenfish tells the full and colorful story of a life that forever changed the face of America's game. As the mastermind behind the Saint Louis Cardinals from 1917 to 1942, Rick...

The post-season leadoff hitter for the 2004 Boston Red Sox describes growing up and his life in baseball, and provides a personal account of the 2004 championship season.

Interviews, contemporary newspaper articles and memoirs of the participants are used to describe the intense rivalry.

In the late 1850s organized baseball was a club-based fraternal sport thriving in the cultures of respectable artisans, clerks and shopkeepers, and middle-class sportsmen. Two decades later it had become an entertainment business run by owners and managers, depending on gate receipts and the increasingly disciplined labor of skilled player-employees. Playing for Keeps is an insightful, in-depth account of the game that became America's premier spectator sport for nearly a century. Reconstructin...

Most sports fans know that Ted Williams ended his major league career with style, swatting a home run in his final at bat. But what about Babe Ruth? Ty Cobb? Joe DiMaggio? Willie Mays? How did some of baseball's greatest players bow out of The Game? Last Time Out answers that question as it examines how the greatest players in baseball history left the game they once ruled. The stories of these men and how they finished their careers, never collected anywhere before now, show another side of the...

Eddie Robinson s career spans the pre-integration era before and during World War II, integration, the organization of the players union, expansion, use of artificial turf, free agency, labor stoppages, and even the steroid era. Today Eddie is working to secure pension benefits for former players not covered by the major league labor agreement. During his six and a half decades in America s pastime, Eddie has known, played with or against, or worked for Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson,...

David Ortiz first won over the Fenway faithful in 2003 with his monstrous home runs, beaming smile, big hugs, and kind heart. The following fall, he proved heroic, belting walk-off hits in Games 4 and 5 of the ALCS in an epic series comeback over Jeter's Yankees. His legendary feats helped the Red Sox end the 86-year-old "Curse of the Bambino" and deliver a World Series title to Boston. In the largest gathering in American history of any kind 3 million fans cheered Ortiz & Co. in the World Serie...