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Sports / Recreation
From the icons of the game to the players who got their big break but never quite broke through, The Baseball Talmud provides a wonderful historical narration of Major League Jewish Baseball in America. All the stats, the facts, the stories, and the (often unheralded) glory.
The Baseball Talmud reveals that there is far more to Jewish baseball than Hank Greenberg's powerful slugging and Sandy Koufax's masterful control. From Ausmus to Zinn, Berg to Kinsler, Holtzman to Yeager, and many others, Megdal draws upon the lore and the little-known details that increase our enjoyment of the game, including:
But this is more than just stories. Megdal, a stat geek himself, uses the wealth of modern sabermetrics to determine the greatest Jewish players at each position, the all-time Jewish All-Star Team, and how they would rate against the greatest teams in baseball history, from the 1906 Chicago Cubs to the 1998 New York Yankees.
The Baseball Talmud rewrites the history of Jewish baseball and is a book that every baseball fan should own.
In Baseball, one of the great bards of America's Grand Old Game gives a rousing account of the sport, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day. George Vecsey casts a fresh eye on the game, illuminates its foibles and triumphs, and performs a marvelous feat: making a classic story seem refreshingly new. Baseball is a narrative of America's can-do spirit, in which stalwart immigrants such as Henry Chadwick could transplant cricket and rounders into the fertile American culture and in which die-hard unionist baseballers such as Charles Comiskey and Connie Mack could eventually become the tightfisted avatars of the game's big-money establishment. It's a celebration of such underdogs as a rag-armed catcher turned owner named Branch Rickey and a sure-handed fielder named Curt Flood, both of whom flourished as true great men of history. But most of all, Baseball is a testament to the unbreakable bond between our nation's pastime and the fans, who've remained loyal through the fifty-year-long interdict on black athletes, the Black Sox scandal, franchise relocation, and the use of performance-enhancing drugs by some major stars. Reverent, playful, and filled with Vecsey's charm, Baseball begs to be read in the span of a rain-delayed doubleheader, and so enjoyable that, like a favorite team's championship run, one hopes it never ends.
"Vecsey possesses a journalist's eye for detail and a historian's feel for the sweep of action. His research is scrupulous and his writing crisp. This book is an instant classic--a highly readable guide to America's great enduring pastime."--The Louisville Courier Journal
On a quiet street on Long Island early on a December morning in 2005, more than fifty federal agents stood outside a lovely new home waiting for the front door to be opened. When it did, there stood the central figure in one of the biggest scandals in sports history: Kirk Radomski.
Radomski was a regular New York kid who, from the age of fifteen had the amazing fortune of working in the Mets clubhouse. The focus of his job was to give the players whatever they wanted or needed?he got their uniforms ready, packed up their homes at the end of the season, cashed their checks, and helped them beat the drug tests that would have led to suspension. And at the end of the 1986 season he even led the World Champions down Broadway during their victory parade. Eventually, he graduated to helping in other ways: providing them with steroids and human growth hormones. By the time the Feds knocked on his door, he was the main clubhouse supplier of performance-enhancing drugs to almost three hundred baseball players.
Under threat of a long prison sentence?and after being identified by players he?d helped?he cooperated with Senator George Mitchell to produce the Mitchell Report, providing names and dates. Now he's ready to tell the whole story to the world. Radomski made little money from these transactions, and in this stunning book he will recount what baseball knew about the problem, his life since the report came out, and who took what. This is the tale of a young man seeing his heroes turn into clay, and the degradation of a once great sport into the drug-addicted spectacle it has become.
Based on decades of sports reporting as well as featuring material original to this book, The Bases Were Loaded (and So Was I) takes athletes we thought we knew and reveals how wrong we often are. This is a rare and surprising work of reportage that will appeal to sports fans and non-sports fans alike.
A celebration of basketball by way of the 100 greatest players to ever grace the court in the history of the NBA--from The Athletic's foremost basketball writers and analysts the game has to offer. With a foreword by Charles Barkley.
Over the course of 100 luminous player profiles, the best sports newsroom on the planet paints vivid portraits of the game's most compelling characters. There's George Mikan, who was cut from his high school team because he wore glasses, then went on to become the fledgling NBA's first transcendent star. Gary Payton, called "The Glove" for his skintight defense, who talked as much trash to his teammates as he did to his opponents on the court. Dennis Rodman, who started playing basketball at age 20, and in a few short years went from working as a janitor at the airport to being one of the strangest superstars that sport has ever known. Allen Iverson, who drew inspiration from hip hop for his inimitable style and swagger, on and off the court. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was so dominant in the paint that they changed the rules--and Steph Curry, who was so dominant outside it that he seemed to expand the very boundaries of the court.
The Basketball 100, edited by award-winning reporters David Aldridge and John Hollinger, also answers the game's toughest, most important questions: How should we weight championship rings, versus statistical profiles, versus the "eye test"? Were the great players of yesteryear, like Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, propelled by the inferior athleticism of their competition or would they have been transcendent in any era? And of course, who's the GOAT--MJ or LeBron? Speaking of GOATs, for the book, Hollinger (inventor of the statistical metric PER) has created a new benchmark, GOAT Points.
Wonderfully written, authoritative, and full of joy, The Basketball 100 is a fitting tribute to the greatest sport in the world.
The National Basketball Association (NBA), with 30 teams and an average attendance of more than 17,000 spectators per game, is the richest and most popular basketball league -- and arguably the most viewed American sport -- in the world. This new edition of Basketball For Dummies not only covers the rules and regulations of the NBA, but offers coverage on the WNBA, NCAA, and international basketball leagues.
Basketball For Dummies is a valuable resource to the many fans of this beloved sport, covering everything from players and personalities in the game to rules, regulations, and equipment. Completely updated with information and intrigue that's occurred in the sport since publication of the previous edition, Basketball For Dummies gets you up to speed on everything from NCAA Tournament brackets to college players en route to the NBA.
Whether you're a basketball player or a courtside spectator, Basketball For Dummies is a slam-dunk of information and intrigue for anyone who loves the sport.
Miraculously, he got the job, and on April 7, 1992, Matt walked into the madness of the Yankee clubhouse on Opening Day. And there was Don Mattingly, Donnie Baseball himself, asking him to run an errand, an errand which soon induced panic in the rookie bat boy. Thus began two years of adventures and misadventures--from the perils of chewing tobacco while playing catch with the centerfielder, to being set up on a date by the bullpen, to studying for a history exam at 3: 00 a.m. at Yankee Stadium, to his own folly as Matt gradually forgets he's not a baseball star, he's a high school student.
BAT BOY captures the lure and beauty of the American pastime, but much more it is a tale of what happens to a young man when his fondest dream comes true. Matthew McGough wonderfully evokes that twilight time just before adulthood, ripe with possibility, foolishness, and hard-won knowledge.
--Harlan Hill, 1950s "I didn't have any particular grievance with any of the Packer players, I just wanted to beat them all."
--Hall of Famer Doug Atkins, 1960s "Doug Buffone took me aside to tell me about Green Bay games . . . to set me straight about the importance of the rivalry. It definitely was not a game to be taken for granted."
--Brian Baschnagel, 1970s "Each year at the start of the season, fans we'd meet would just have the one request--please beat Green Bay."
--Jim Flanigan, 1990s