Minor Players, Major Dreams

Minor Players, Major Dreams PDF Author: Brett H. Mandel
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803282322
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The author follows the Ogden Raptors, a recreational-league baseball team, for one season, attempting to get inside the heads of players, coaches, and managers

Minor Players, Major Dreams

Minor Players, Major Dreams PDF Author: Brett H. Mandel
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803282322
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The author follows the Ogden Raptors, a recreational-league baseball team, for one season, attempting to get inside the heads of players, coaches, and managers

Minor Moments, Major Memories

Minor Moments, Major Memories PDF Author: Mark Leinweaver
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781592287352
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Baseball is pure and hope springs eternal.

Shoeless Joe

Shoeless Joe PDF Author: W. P. Kinsella
Publisher: Rosetta Books
ISBN: 0795311710
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
The novel that inspired Field of Dreams: “A lyrical, seductive, and altogether winning concoction.” —The New York Times Book Review One of Sports Illustrated’s 100 Greatest Sports Books “If you build it, he will come.” When Ray Kinsella hears these mysterious words spoken in the voice of an Iowa baseball announcer, he is inspired to carve a baseball diamond in his cornfield. It is a tribute to his hero, the legendary Shoeless Joe Jackson, whose reputation was forever tarnished by the scandalous 1919 World Series. What follows is a timeless story that is “not so much about baseball as it is about dreams, magic, life, and what is quintessentially American” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). “A triumph of hope.” —The Boston Globe “A moonlit novel about baseball, dreams, family, the land, and literature.” —Sports Illustrated

Almost Yankees

Almost Yankees PDF Author: J. David Herman
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496215362
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
Almost Yankees is a poignant and nostalgic narrative of the lives and travails of Minor League Baseball, focusing on the 1981 championship season of the New York Yankees' Triple-A farm club, the Columbus Clippers. That year was especially notable in the annals of baseball history as the year Major League Baseball went on strike in midseason. When that happened, the Clippers were suddenly the best team in baseball and found themselves the focus of national media attention. Many of these Minor Leaguers sensed this was their last, best chance to make an impression and fulfill their dreams to one day reach the majors. The Clippers' raw recruits, prospects, and Minor League veterans responded to this opportunity by playing the greatest baseball of their lives on the greatest team most of them would ever belong to. Then the strike ended, leaving them to return to their ordinary aspirational lives and to be just as quickly forgotten. Almost Yankees is the previously untold baseball story of a team and its players performing in the shadow of one of the sport's most famous teams and infamous owners. Featuring interviews with more than thirty former players (including Steve Balboni, Dave Righetti, Buck Showalter, and Pat Tabler) and dozens of other baseball and media figures, this season's narrative chronicles success, failure, resilience, and redemption as told by a special group of players with hopes and dreams of big-league glory. J. David Herman, who worshipped the team as an eleven-year-old, tracked down his old heroes to learn their stories--and to better understand his own. The season proved to be a launching pad for some, a final chance for others, and the end of the dream for many others.

Bluegrass Baseball

Bluegrass Baseball PDF Author: Katya Cengel
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803235359
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Forget the steroid-addled, overpaid, and unmotivated players: America’s pastime is still alive and well, and is still the heartfelt sport it’s always been—in the Minor Leagues. And nowhere is this truer than in Kentucky, whose rich baseball history continues to play out in the four teams profiled in this book. Following these teams through the 2010 season—the triumphs, struggles, and big league hopes and dreams—the book tells the larger story of baseball in America’s smaller venues, where the game in its purest form is still valued and warmly embraced. The story begins before the season with national-anthem singing tryouts in Lexington, then tags along with players, staffs, and fans at home, in the office, and on the field, offering a rare glimpse of the unglamorous reality of Minor League ball. From the front-office staff in Bowling Green planning kooky promotions, to a trainer grocery shopping for a team on forty dollars a day, to a new wife coming to terms with her husband’s transitory lifestyle, to a father struggling to make it back to the Majors and a Cuban defector blowing everyone away with a 100-mph-plus fastball these are the people who live to make baseball happen, in all its nitty-gritty glory. Purchase the audio edition.

Where Nobody Knows Your Name

Where Nobody Knows Your Name PDF Author: John Feinstein
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307949583
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Minor league baseball is quintessentially American: small towns, small stadiums, $5 tickets, $2 hot dogs, the never-ending possibility of making it big. But looming above it all is always the real deal: Major League Baseball. John Feinstein takes the reader behind the curtain into the guarded world of the minor leagues, like no other writer can. Where Nobody Knows Your Name explores the trials and travails of the inhabitants of Triple-A, focusing on nine men, including players, managers and umpires, among many colorful characters, living on the cusp of the dream. The book tells the stories of former World Series hero Scott Podsednik, giving it one more shot; Durham Bulls manager Charlie Montoya, shepherding generations across the line; and designated hitter Jon Lindsey, a lifelong minor leaguer, waiting for his day to come. From Raleigh to Pawtucket, from Lehigh Valley to Indianapolis and beyond, this is an intimate and exciting look at life in the minor leagues, where you’re either waiting for the call or just passing through.

Odd Man Out

Odd Man Out PDF Author: Matt McCarthy
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780670020706
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Matt McCarthy never expected to get drafted by a Major League Baseball team. A biophysics major at Yale, he was a decent left-handed starter for a dismal college team. But good southpaws are hard to find, and when the Anaheim Angels selected him in the 21

Class A

Class A PDF Author: Lucas Mann
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307907554
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
An unforgettable chronicle of a year of minor-league baseball in a small Iowa town that follows not only the travails of the players of the Clinton LumberKings but also the lives of their dedicated fans and of the town itself. Award-winning essayist Lucas Mann delivers a powerful debut in his telling of the story of the 2010 season of the Clinton LumberKings. Along the Mississippi River, in a Depression-era stadium, young prospects from all over the world compete for a chance to move up through the baseball ranks to the major leagues. Their coaches, some of whom have spent nearly half a century in the game, watch from the dugout. In the bleachers, local fans call out from the same seats they’ve occupied year after year. And in the distance, smoke rises from the largest remaining factory in a town that once had more millionaires per capita than any other in America. Mann turns his eye on the players, the coaches, the fans, the radio announcer, the town, and finally on himself, a young man raised on baseball, driven to know what still draws him to the stadium. His voice is as fresh and funny as it is poignant, illuminating both the small triumphs and the harsh realities of minor-league ball. Part sports story, part cultural exploration, part memoir, Class A is a moving and unique study of why we play, why we watch, and why we remember.

The Baseball Whisperer

The Baseball Whisperer PDF Author: Michael Tackett
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544386396
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
“Field of Dreams was only superficially about baseball. It was really about life. So is The Baseball Whisperer . . . with the added advantage of being all true.” —MLB.com From an award-winning journalist, this is the story of a legendary coach and the professional-caliber baseball program he built in America's heartland, where boys would come summer after summer to be molded into ballplayers—and men. Clarinda, Iowa, population 5,000, sits two hours from anything. There, between the cornfields and hog yards, is a ball field with a bronze bust of a man named Merl Eberly, who specialized in second chances and lost causes. The statue was a gift from one of Merl’s original long-shot projects, a skinny kid from the Los Angeles ghetto who would one day become a beloved Hall-of-Fame shortstop: Ozzie Smith. The Baseball Whisperer traces the “deeply engrossing” story (Booklist, starred review) of Merl Eberly and his Clarinda A’s baseball team, which he tended over the course of five decades, transforming them from a town team to a collegiate summer league powerhouse. Along with Ozzie Smith, future manager Bud Black, and star player Von Hayes, Merl developed scores of major league players. In the process, he taught them to be men, insisting on hard work, integrity, and responsibility. More than a book about ballplayers in the nation’s agricultural heartland, The Baseball Whisperer is the story of a coach who put character and dedication first, reminding us of the best, purest form of baseball excellence. “Mike Tackett, talented journalist and baseball lover, has hit the sweet spot of the bat with his first book. The Baseball Whisperer takes one coach and one small Iowa town and illuminates both a sport and the human spirit.” —David Maraniss, New York Times-bestselling author of Clemente and When Pride Still Mattered

Good Enough to Dream

Good Enough to Dream PDF Author: Roger Kahn
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803277793
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Roger Kahn?s first major league hit was a grand slam: The Boys of Summer, his runaway bestseller that immortalized the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers. Now Kahn does the same for players whose moment in the sun has not yet arrived. Good Enough to Dream is the story of his year as owner of the Class A, very minor leagueøUtica Blue Sox. Most of the Blue Sox will never make it to the majors, but they all share the dream that links the small child in the sandlot with the bonus baby who has just smacked one out of the stadium. It?s a dream Kahn learned from his father and, in the course of a season, passes on to his daughter?hours of practice for a moment of poetry; a hard living but a touch of legend. Good Enough to Dream presents baseball unadorned, a game still sweet enough to lure grown men to leagues where first-class transportation is an old school bus and the infield is likely to be the consistency of thick soup. It is a funny and poignant story of one season and one special team that will make us hesitate before we ever call anything ?bush league? again.