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Author: Paul Kocak
Publisher: Creators Publishing
ISBN: 1945630302
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
Author: Paul Kocak
Publisher: Creators Publishing
ISBN: 1945630302
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Paul Kocak
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781945630316
Category : Baseball teams
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
Spanning a baseball fan's life, this memoir explores hero worship, coming of age, and obsession. Paul Kocak grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, as a New York Giants fan in baseball's golden age. When the boy's team moved to San Francisco after the 1957 season, he became a fan in exile. Mostly because of Willie Mays, he stayed with the team that abandoned him (though he did try to reach out and touch Mays by phone). We relive backyard fantasies of fathers and sons and brothers and buddies who play Wiffle Ball and Hitting Them Out. We learn of a heart-breaking teenage drowning of the narrator's neighbor, a Dodgers fan. The chronicle's time line coincides with the assassination of JFK, the Beatles' bursting onto the scene, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Second Vatican Council, and the Vietnam War. Kocak's journey features encounters with Hall of Famer Willie McCovey, former Cy Young winner Vida Blue, commentator William F. Buckley Jr. - and Willie Mays. With a subtext of addiction and recovery, Chasing Willie Mays travels coast-to-coast and into the soul with grace, insight, and humor.
Author: John Klima
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 9780470400135
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
The story of Willie Mays's rookie year with the Negro American League's Birmingham Black Barons, the Last Negro World Series, and the making of a baseball legend Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays is one of baseball's endearing greats, a tremendously talented and charismatic center fielder who hit 660 career homeruns, collected 3,283 hits, knocked in 1,903 runs, won 12 Gold Glove Awards and appeared in 24 All-Star games. But before Mays was the "Say Hey Kid", he was just a boy. Willie's Boys is the story of his remarkable 1948 rookie season with the Negro American League's Birmingham Black Barons, who took a risk on a raw but gifted 16-year-old and gave him the experience, confidence, and connections to escape Birmingham's segregation, navigate baseball's institutional racism, and sign with the New York Giants. Willie's Boys offers a character-rich narrative of the apprenticeship Mays had at the hands of a diverse group of savvy veterans who taught him the ways of the game and the world. Sheds new light on the virtually unknown beginnings of a baseball great, not available in other books Captures the first incredible steps of a baseball superstar in his first season with the Negro League's Birmingham Black Barons Introduces the veteran group of Negro League players, including Piper Davis, who gave Mays an incredible apprenticeship season Illuminates the Negro League's last days, drawing on in-depth research and interviews with remaining players Explores the heated rivalry between Mays's Black Barons and Buck O'Neil's Kansas City Monarchs , culminating in the last Negro League World Series Breaks new historical ground on what led the New York Giants to acquire Mays, and why he didn't sign with the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees, or Boston Red Sox Packed with stories and insights, Willie's Boys takes you inside an important part of baseball history and the development of one of the all-time greats ever to play the game.
Author: James S. Hirsch
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439171653
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 658
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Book Description
The New York Times bestselling, authorized, “enormously entertaining and wide-ranging” (The Seattle Times) biography of the late, great Willie Mays. Willie Mays (1931–2024) was arguably the greatest player in baseball history, revered for the passion he brought to the game. He began as a teenager in the Negro Leagues, became a cult hero in New York, and was the headliner in Major League Baseball’s bold expansion to California. He was a blend of power, speed, and stylistic bravado that enraptured fans for more than two decades. Author James Hirsch reveals the man behind the player. Mays was a transcendent figure who received standing ovations in enemy stadiums and who, during the turbulent civil rights era, urged understanding and reconciliation. More than his records, his legacy is defined by the pure joy that he brought to fans and the loving memories that have been passed to future generations so they might know the magic and beauty of the game. With meticulous research and drawing on interviews with Mays himself as well as with close friends, family, and teammates, Hirsch presents a brilliant portrait of one of America’s most significant cultural icons.
Author: Bill Madden
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306823330
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
1954: Perhaps no single baseball season has so profoundly changed the game forever. In that year—the same in which the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education, that segregation of the races be outlawed in America's public schools—Larry Doby's Indians won an American League record 111 games, dethroned the five-straight World Series champion Yankees, and went on to play Willie Mays's Giants in the first World Series that featured players of color on both teams. Seven years after Jackie Robinson had broken the baseball color line, 1954 was a triumphant watershed season for black players—and, in a larger sense, for baseball and the country as a whole. While Doby was the dominant player in the American League, Mays emerged as the preeminent player in the National League, with a flair and boyish innocence that all fans, black and white, quickly came to embrace. Mays was almost instantly beloved in 1954, much of that due to how seemingly easy it was for him to live up to the effusive buildup from his Giants manager, Leo Durocher, a man more widely known for his ferocious "nice guys finish last" attitude. Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Bill Madden delivers the first major book to fully examine the 1954 baseball season, drawn largely from exclusive recent interviews with the major players themselves, including Mays and Doby as well as New York baseball legends from that era: Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford of the Yankees, Monte Irvin of the Giants, and Carl Erskine of the Dodgers. 1954 transports readers across the baseball landscape of the time—from the spring training camps in Florida and Arizona to baseball cities including New York, Baltimore, Chicago, and Cleveland—as future superstars such as Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, and others entered the leagues and continued to integrate the sport. Weaving together the narrative of one of baseball's greatest seasons with the racially charged events of that year, 1954 demonstrates how our national pastime—with the notable exception of the Yankees, who represented "white supremacy" in the game—was actually ahead of the curve in terms of the acceptance of black Americans, while the nation at large continued to struggle with tolerance.
Author: Jackie Robinson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African American athletes
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Jackie Robinson's theme is that integration in baseball has proved that Americans can live together in peaceful competition. The theme is developed with a history of Negroes in baseball. Excerpts from their lives as players are given in their own words, by Larry Doby, for instance, and by Roy Campanella. Ball club managers, prominently Branch Rickey, tell why they hired Negroes and how the barriers were broken down.
Author: Matthew Silverman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762793236
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Interest and attendance were dropping, and football was ascending. Stuck in a rut, baseball was dying. Then Steinbrenner bought the Yankees, a second-division club with wife-swapping pitchers, leaving the House That Ruth Built not with a slam but a simper. He vowed not to interfere—before soon changing his mind. Across town, Tom Seaver led the Mets’ stellar pitching line-up, and iconic outfielder Willie Mays was preparing to say goodbye. For months, the Mets, under Yogi Berra, couldn’t get it right. Meanwhile, the A’s were breaking a ban on facial hair while maverick owner Charlie Finley was fighting to keep them underpaid. But beneath the muttonchops and mayhem, lay another world. Elvis commanded a larger audience than the Apollo landings. A Dodge Dart cost $2,800, gas was a quarter per gallon. A fiscal crisis loomed; Vietnam had ended, the vice president resigned, and Watergate had taken over. It was one of the most exciting years in the game’s history, the first with the designated hitter and the last before arbitration and free agency. The two World Series opponents went head-to-head above the baby steps of a dynasty that soon dwarfed both league champions. It was a turbulent time for the country and the game, neither of which would ever be the same again.
Author: Jason Aronoff
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786441135
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 277
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Book Description
Though Willie Mays' World Series catch of Vic Wertz's long drive in 1954 immediately comes to mind, there are many catches that have been called "the greatest." This work documents baseball's best catches by outfielders from 1887 through 1964 (the year of Duke Snider's retirement, the demolition of the Polo Grounds, and, arguably, Willie Mays' last great grab). After introductory chapters on factors that influenced the catches and their legacies--from ballpark quirks, changes to the baseball and the evolution of baseball gloves, to sportswriters and photography--the book describes famous catches by decade from such players as Mays, Willie Keeler, Joe DiMaggio, Duke Snider, Roberto Clement, Curt Flood and many others. Extensive research yields a wealth of information for each catch, including commentary by period sportswriters, players, and, often, the man who snagged the ball.
Author: George Singleton
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1565124049
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
Growing up in the tiny rural town of Forty-Five, South Carolina, Mendal Dawes wants nothing more than to escape his backwater hometown and his crazy father, who buries stuff in their backyard, calls Mendal "Fuzznuts," makes him recite Marx and Durkheim, and forces him to take terrible unpaid jobs--from helping out in nursing homes to tutoring. By the author of These People Are Us.
Author: Hank Aaron
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781892129055
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
The baseball legend and his admirers describe his career, from his seasons with the Negro Leagues through his Major League days
