Finley Ball

Finley Ball PDF Author: Nancy Finley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 162157542X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This is the story of a losing baseball team that became a 1970s dynasty, thanks to the unorthodox strategies and stunts of two very colorful men. When Charlie Finley bought the A's in 1960, he was an outsider to the game—a insurance businessman with a larger-than-life personality. He brought his cousin Carl on as his right-hand man, moved the team from Kansas City to Oakland, and pioneered a new way to put together a winning team. With legendary players like Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Vida Blue, the Finleys' Oakland A's won three straight World Series and riveted the nation. Now Carl Finley's daughter Nancy reveals the whole story behind her family's winning legacy—how her father and uncle developed their scouting strategy, why they employed odd gimmicks like orange baseballs and "mustache bonuses," and how the success of the '70s Oakland A's changed the game of baseball.

Finley Ball

Finley Ball PDF Author: Nancy Finley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 162157542X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book

Book Description
This is the story of a losing baseball team that became a 1970s dynasty, thanks to the unorthodox strategies and stunts of two very colorful men. When Charlie Finley bought the A's in 1960, he was an outsider to the game—a insurance businessman with a larger-than-life personality. He brought his cousin Carl on as his right-hand man, moved the team from Kansas City to Oakland, and pioneered a new way to put together a winning team. With legendary players like Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Vida Blue, the Finleys' Oakland A's won three straight World Series and riveted the nation. Now Carl Finley's daughter Nancy reveals the whole story behind her family's winning legacy—how her father and uncle developed their scouting strategy, why they employed odd gimmicks like orange baseballs and "mustache bonuses," and how the success of the '70s Oakland A's changed the game of baseball.

Charlie Finley

Charlie Finley PDF Author: Roger D. Launius
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802778577
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Before the "Bronx Zoo" of George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin, there were the Oakland Athletics of the early 1970s, one of the most successful, most colorful-and most chaotic-baseball teams of all time. They were all of those things because of Charlie Finley. Not only the A's owner, he was also the general manager, personally assembling his team, deciding his players' salaries, and making player moves during the season-a level of involvement no other owner, not even Steinbrenner, engaged in. Drawing on interviews with dozens of Finley's players, family members, and colleagues, G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius present "Baseball's Super Showman" (Time magazine's description of Finley on the cover of an August 1975 issue) in all his contradictions: generous yet vengeful, inventive yet destructive. The stories surrounding him are as colorful as the life he led, the chronicle of which fills an important gap in baseball's literature.

Billy Ball

Billy Ball PDF Author: Dale Tafoya
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493043633
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
In the early 1970s, the Oakland Athletics became only the second team in major-league baseball history to win three consecutive World Series championships. But as the decade came to a close, the A's were in free fall, having lost 108 games in 1979 while drawing just 307,000 fans. Free agency had decimated the A’s, and the team’s colorful owner, Charlie Finley, was looking for a buyer. First, though, he had to bring fans back to the Oakland Coliseum. Enter Billy Martin, the hometown boy from West Berkeley. In Billy Ball, sportswriter Dale Tafoya describes what, at the time, seemed like a match made in baseball heaven. The A’s needed a fiery leader to re-ignite interest in the team. Martin needed a job after his second stint as manager of the New York Yankees came to an abrupt end. Based largely on interviews with former players, team executives, and journalists, Billy Ball captures Martin’s homecoming to the Bay area in 1980, his immediate embrace by Oakland fans, and the A’s return to playoff baseball. Tafoya describes the reputation that had preceded Martin—one that he fully lived up to—as the brawling, hard-drinking baseball savant with a knack for turning bad teams around. In Oakland, his aggressive style of play came to be known as Billy Ball. A’s fans and the media loved it. But, in life and in baseball, all good things must come to an end. Tafoya chronicles Martin’s clash with the new A’s management and the siren song of the Yankees that lured the manager back to New York in 1983. Still, as the book makes clear, the magical turnaround of the A’s has never been forgotten in Oakland. Neither have Billy Martin and Billy Ball. During a time of economic uncertainty and waning baseball interest in Oakland, Billy Ball filled the stands, rejuvenated fans, and saved professional baseball in the city.

Finley the Fish Who Loved Football

Finley the Fish Who Loved Football PDF Author: John Cindrich
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1039103774
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 115

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Book Description
What if a fish wanted to go to a football game? That’s the question facing Finley, a river fish, and his underwater friends. Finley and company, a clever, hard-working, and creative bunch, fire up an old TV they find sunken in the river. Before long, Finley falls in love with watching football, and he dreams of traveling to the stadium to watch a game. Using odds and ends from an old submerged junkyard, Finley and his quirky crew hatch a zany plan. They stumble into strange landscapes, dodge pumpkins, and crash into crazy football fans, defying overwhelming odds to get Finley to the big game. Full of fun (and sneakily educational), Finley, the Fish Who Loved Football proves that with good friends, creativity, and hard work, a river fish can make a big splash in the world of humans...even when he’s up to his gills in madcap mayhem.

American Jack Stock Stud Book

American Jack Stock Stud Book PDF Author: American Breeders Association of Jacks and Jennets
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Asses and mules
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description


Last Nine Innings

Last Nine Innings PDF Author: Charles Euchner
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402248792
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
"The Last Nine Innings is the last word on the inside of baseball. It's full of wonderful revelations and perceptions that help us understand the game in ways that we might never have imagined. Charlie Euchner has done a marvelous job in getting players to talk, simply, about how they play, and we're the wiser for it." -Frank Deford "Charlie takes an unorthodox approach to an emotional week and succeeds at finding the heart of both the tension of the World Series and the technical foundations of the baseball profession. This is a different book, in a very good way." -Howard Bryant, the Washington Post, and author of Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball "The lengthy description of game 7 makes for dramatic reading, and the interviews with key players from that game add a human dimension." -Booklist "I enjoyed Charles's book. It's an interesting read, rich in thought-provoking detail and context, in the manner of Malcolm Gladwell. He deftly pulls off a difficult double play: educating the serious fan while entertaining the casual one." -Tom Verducci, Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated "The Last Nine Innings is entertaining, engaging and enlightening. You'll never watch a baseball game the same way." -Andrew Zimbalist, author of Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime and Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics at Smith College "Memo to ESPN analysts, FOX color announcers and daily baseball scribes: stop telling us about who had a haircut, who didn't have a haircut and who collects stamps. Rip out the red thread on the baseball, peel back the cowhide and talk about all the stuff that's wound up inside the game. That's what Charles Euchner does in The Last Nine Innings and it's fascinating." -Leigh Montville, author of Ted Williams, Biography of an American Hero and Why Not Us?: The 86-Year Journey of the Boston Red Sox Fans from Unparalleled Suffering to the Promised Land of the 2004 World Series The Great American Pastime has changed. For the first time in the history of the game, the three major forces that drive the evolution of modern pro baseball-The Triple Revolution-is revealed: The Triple Revolution: (1) Globalization of Recruiting and Business (2) Scientific Analysis & Reduction of Physical Baseball Movements (3) Evolution Effect of Modernized Stat-Crunching Charles Euchner uses a dramatic moment-by-moment narrative of the seventh game of the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and the Diamondbacks to display the Triple Revolution; and to reveal the hidden dimensions of the "game within the game": From pitching motions to batting styles, from fielding and base-running, to training and strategy. Euchner uses extensive interviews with all the players from this modern classic to produce a comprehensive view of the game that will fascinate casual fans, and stimulate baseball experts. The insider narrative includes Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, Tino Martinez, Luis Gonzalez and Curt Schilling, along with the game's coaches, managers, support staff, even medical researchers and top game stats experts. Among the questions answered: What is the ideal pitching motion? How can we judge defensive performance? What makes managers succeed and fail? What changes the odds over the course of the game? And much more. Whether a recreational fans, or serious student of the game, The Last Nine Innings enlightens; as baseball author Andrew Zimbalist writes, "You'll never watch a baseball game the same way."

Somerset County Historical Quarterly

Somerset County Historical Quarterly PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Somerset County (N.J.)
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description


Freshman Quarterback

Freshman Quarterback PDF Author: Clair Bee
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
ISBN: 1433676419
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
As a member of the freshman football team at State University, Chip Hilton encounters cliques, rivalries, and a conspiracy by the Booster Association to favor some players over others.

Finley's Adventures

Finley's Adventures PDF Author: Sherry Fendell
Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
ISBN: 1489747346
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Finley, an enthusiastic Labrador retriever puppy enjoys 100 adventures in the forest, fields and seascapes of New England.

Stumbling Around the Bases

Stumbling Around the Bases PDF Author: Andy McCue
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496207033
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
The first examination of the management of the American League and its consequences for the twentieth century.