Praying for Gil Hodges

Praying for Gil Hodges PDF Author: Thomas Oliphant
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312317621
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
"Tom Oliphant has created a small masterpiece." --Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the bestselling Wait Till Next Year Praying for Gil Hodges is built around a detailed reconstruction of the seventh game of the 1955 World Series, when the Brooklyn Dodgers won the world championship of baseball. Thomas Oliphant creates a relentless melodrama that shows this final game in its true glory. As we move through the game, he builds a remarkable history of the Dodgers' status as a national team, based on their fabled history of near-triumphs and disasters that made them classic underdogs. He weaves into this brilliant recounting a winning memoir of his own family's story and their time together on that fateful Game Seven day, thrilling a nine-year-old boy in a loving, struggling family for whom the Dodgers were a rare source of the joys and symbols that bring families together through tough times. Written with power and clarity, this is a brilliant work that captures the majesty of baseball, the issue of race in America, and the love that one young boy, his parents, and the borough of Brooklyn had for their team. "In Praying for Gil Hodges, Tom Oliphant has created a small masterpiece---a splendid recreation of life in the 1950s, a poignant tribute to his parents, and a fabulous story about the central role the Brooklyn Dodgers played in the lives of his and countless other families. Moving effortlessly from an adult's perspective to a child's recollection, shifting seamlessly between the present and the past, he captures the reader's interest at every step along the way. I found myself happily transported back in time, following a warm-hearted young boy as he comes of age in a memorable era." ---Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the bestselling Wait Till Next Year "Tom Oliphant is one of our most lyrical writers and he has written a love story---about his parents, about baseball, and most of all about the American values that shaped their lives." ---Bob Schieffer, Face the Nation "The story builds to a beautiful and moving resolution, proving that the true center of this book is not the seventh game of the World Series. The heart of the story is the love of a family for a place, a baseball team, but mostly for each other." ---The Boston Globe

Praying for Gil Hodges

Praying for Gil Hodges PDF Author: Thomas Oliphant
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312317621
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Tom Oliphant has created a small masterpiece." --Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the bestselling Wait Till Next Year Praying for Gil Hodges is built around a detailed reconstruction of the seventh game of the 1955 World Series, when the Brooklyn Dodgers won the world championship of baseball. Thomas Oliphant creates a relentless melodrama that shows this final game in its true glory. As we move through the game, he builds a remarkable history of the Dodgers' status as a national team, based on their fabled history of near-triumphs and disasters that made them classic underdogs. He weaves into this brilliant recounting a winning memoir of his own family's story and their time together on that fateful Game Seven day, thrilling a nine-year-old boy in a loving, struggling family for whom the Dodgers were a rare source of the joys and symbols that bring families together through tough times. Written with power and clarity, this is a brilliant work that captures the majesty of baseball, the issue of race in America, and the love that one young boy, his parents, and the borough of Brooklyn had for their team. "In Praying for Gil Hodges, Tom Oliphant has created a small masterpiece---a splendid recreation of life in the 1950s, a poignant tribute to his parents, and a fabulous story about the central role the Brooklyn Dodgers played in the lives of his and countless other families. Moving effortlessly from an adult's perspective to a child's recollection, shifting seamlessly between the present and the past, he captures the reader's interest at every step along the way. I found myself happily transported back in time, following a warm-hearted young boy as he comes of age in a memorable era." ---Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the bestselling Wait Till Next Year "Tom Oliphant is one of our most lyrical writers and he has written a love story---about his parents, about baseball, and most of all about the American values that shaped their lives." ---Bob Schieffer, Face the Nation "The story builds to a beautiful and moving resolution, proving that the true center of this book is not the seventh game of the World Series. The heart of the story is the love of a family for a place, a baseball team, but mostly for each other." ---The Boston Globe

Praying for Gil Hodges

Praying for Gil Hodges PDF Author: Thomas Oliphant
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
ISBN: 9780312317614
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
On a steamy hot Sunday, the Reverend Herbert Redmond was celebrating Mass at a church in Brooklyn, when he startled his congregation thus: "It's far too hot for a sermon. Keep the Commandments and say a prayer for Gil Hodges." Praying for Gil Hodges is built around a detailed reconstruction of the seventh game of the 1955 World Series, which has always been on the short list of great moments in baseball history. On a sunny, breezy October afternoon, something happened in New York City that had never happened before and never would again: the Brooklyn Dodgers won the world championship of baseball. For one hour and forty-four minutes, behind a gutsy, twenty-three-year-old kid left-hander from the iron-mining region of upstate New York named Johnny Podres, everything that had gone wrong before went gloriously right for a change. Until that afternoon, leaving out the war years, the Dodgers and their legions of fans had endured ten seasons during which they lost the World Series to the New York Yankees five times and lost the National League pennant on the final day of the season three times--- facts of history that give the famous cry of "Wait Till Next Year!" its defiant meaning. Pitch by pitch and inning by inning, Thomas Oliphant re-creates a relentless melodrama that shows this final game in its true glory. As we move through the game, he builds a remarkable history of the hapless "Bums," exploring the Dodgers' status as a national team, based on their fabled history of near-triumphs and disasters that made them classic underdogs. He weaves into this brilliant recounting a winning memoir of his own family's story and their time together on that fateful day that the final game was played. This victory thrilled the national African-American community, still mired in the evils of segregation, who had erupted in joy at the arrival of Jackie Robinson eight years earlier and rooted unabashedly for this integrated team at a time when the country was thoroughly segregated. And it also thrilled a nine-year-old boy on the East Side of Manhattan in a loving, struggling family for whom the Dodgers were a rare source of the joys and symbols that bring families together through tough times. Every once in a while a book provides a certain view of America, and whether it is The Greatest Generation, Big Russ & Me, or Wait Till Next Year, these works strike a chord with readers everywhere. Praying for Gil Hodges is such a book. Written with power and clarity, this is a brilliant work capturing the majesty of baseball, the issue of race in America, and the love that one young boy, his parents, and the borough of Brooklyn had for their team.

Baseball as a Road to God

Baseball as a Road to God PDF Author: John Sexton
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101609737
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
The president of New York University offers a love letter to America’s most beloved sport and a tribute to its underlying spirituality. For more than a decade, John Sexton has taught a wildly popular New York University course about two seemingly very different things: religion and baseball. Yet Sexton argues that one is actually a pathway to the other. Baseball as a Road to God is about touching that something that lies beyond logical understanding. Sexton illuminates the surprisingly large number of mutual concepts shared between baseball and religion: faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, and even sacredness among many others. Structured like a game and filled with riveting accounts of baseball’s most historic moments, Baseball as Road to God will enthrall baseball fans whatever their religious beliefs may be. In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Sexton elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to enlightenment.

The Road to Camelot

The Road to Camelot PDF Author: Thomas Oliphant
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501105582
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
A “provocative reconstruction of John F. Kennedy’s ‘five-year campaign’ for the White House” (The New Yorker), beginning with his bold, failed attempt to win the vice presidential nomination in 1956 and culminating when he plotted his way to the presidency and changed the way we nominate and elect presidents. John F. Kennedy and his young warriors invented modern presidential politics. They turned over accepted wisdom that his Catholicism was a barrier to winning an election. They hired Louis Harris to become the first presidential pollster. They twisted arms and they charmed. They turned the traditional party inside out. They invented The Missile Gap in the Cold War and out-glamoured Richard Nixon in the TV debates. Now “Thomas Oliphant and Curtis Wilkie, both veteran political journalists, retell the story of this momentous campaign, reminding us of now forgotten details of Kennedy’s path to the White House” (The Wall Street Journal). The authors have examined more than 1,600 oral histories at the John F. Kennedy library; they’ve interviewed surviving sources, including JFK’s sister Jean Smith, and they draw on their own interviews with insiders including Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. From the start of the campaign in 1955, “The Road to Camelot brings much new insight to an important playbook that has echoed through the campaigns of other presidential aspirants as disparate as Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The authors take us step by step on the road to the Kennedy victory, leaving us with an appreciation for the maniacal attention to detail of both the candidate and his brother Robert, the best campaign manager in American political history” (The Washington Post). “A must-read for fans of presidential history” (USA TODAY), this is “an excellent chronicle of JFK’s innovations, his true personality, and how close he came to losing” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Mind Game

Mind Game PDF Author: Steven Goldman
Publisher: Workman Publishing
ISBN: 9780761140184
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
An account of the 2004 winning season of the Red Sox debunks popular myths and provides statistics and commentary on players and teams to explain how baseball games are won.

Dough

Dough PDF Author: Mort Zachter
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820329347
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
"In Dough, Zachter chronicles the life-altering discovery made at age thirty-six that he was heir to several million dollars his bachelor uncles had secretly amassed in stocks and bonds. Although initially elated, Zachter battled bitter memories of the long hours his mother worked at the bakery for no pay. And how could his own parents have kept the secret from him while he was a young married man, working his way through night school? As he cleans out his uncles' apartment, Zachter discovers clues about their personal lives that raise more questions than they answer. He also finds cake boxes packed with rolls of two-dollar bills and mattresses stuffed with coins.".

Why We Hate Us

Why We Hate Us PDF Author: Dick Meyer
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307449807
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Americans are as safe, well fed, securely sheltered, long-lived, free, and healthy as any human beings who have ever lived on the planet. But we are down on America. So why do we hate us? According to Dick Meyer, the following items on this (much abbreviated) list are some of the contributors to our deep disenchantment with our own culture: Cell-phone talkers broadcasting the intimate details of their lives in public spaces Worship of self-awareness, self-realization, and self-fulfillment T-shirts that read, “Eat Me” Facebook, MySpace, and kids being taught to market themselves High-level cheating in business and sports Reality television and the cosmetic surgery boom Multinational corporations that claim, “We care about you.” The decline of organic communities A line of cosmetics called “S.L.U.T.” The phony red state–blue state divide The penetration of OmniMarketing into OmniMedia and the insinuation of both into every facet of our lives You undoubtedly could add to the list with hardly a moment’s thought. In Why We Hate Us, Meyer absolutely nails America’s early-twenty-first-century mood disorder. He points out the most widespread carriers of the why-we-hate-us germs, including the belligerence of partisan politics that perverts our democracy, the decline of once common manners, the vulgarity of Hollywood entertainment, the superficiality and untrustworthiness of the news media, the cult of celebrity, and the disappearance of authentic neighborhoods and voluntary organizations (the kind that have actual meetings where one can hobnob instead of just clicking in an online contribution). Meyer argues—with biting wit and observations that make you want to shout, “Yes! I hate that too!”—that when the social, spiritual, and political turmoil that followed the sixties collided with the technological and media revolution at the turn of the century, something inside us hit overload. American culture no longer reflects our own values. As a result, we are now morally and existentially tired, disoriented, anchorless, and defensive. We hate us and we wonder why. Why We Hate Us reveals why we do and also offers a thoughtful and uplifting prescription for breaking out of our current morass and learning how to hate us less. It is a penetrating but always accessible Culture of Narcissism for a new generation, and it carries forward ideas that resounded with readers in bestsellers such as On Bullshit and Bowling Alone.

Sports Talk

Sports Talk PDF Author: Alan Eisenstock
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439183236
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
A Journey inside the World of Sports Talk Radio Their voices explode over the airwaves -- with names like Mike and the Mad Dog, the Stinkin' Genius, Hacksaw, and JT the Brick. They broadcast in drive time and downtime, from rush hour to the dead of night. And yet, millions of fans tune in around the clock to hear their favorite larger-than-life radio personalities rant, rave, critique, predict, and mix it up with callers -- the dedicated fans of sports talk radio. Never before has this cloistered world opened its doors to a no-holds-barred, behind-the-scenes, full-access look at itself. Noted journalist (and fan) Alan Eisenstock embarks on a journey through the American sports radio landscape and gives readers a front-row seat -- from breakfast at the kitchen table of Eddie Andelman, Boston's godfather of sports radio, to the WFAN commissary with Mike and the Mad Dog in New York; from the plush home game room of Chicago's hot dog-vendor-turned-#1 DJ Mike North to the empty 3 AM studio parking garage with nationally syndicated JT the Brick. Eisenstock goes into the studios, homes, and lives of these and many other of America's hottest and most-listened-to sports talk hosts. Filled with hilarious and entertaining tales of what makes these hosts tick -- as well as the unbelievable stories of how they got where they are today -- Sports Talk paints a picture the fans never see. Eisenstock shows us the blood, sweat, and tears of program directors with their reputations on the line; hosts searching for career security; and station managers who are always eyeing the bottom line. And, of course, there are stories of the rabid, obsessed, and off-the-wall fans. Whether you're a sports fan or a sports talk junkie, you'll be hooked from the first page.

Wait Till Next Year

Wait Till Next Year PDF Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439188580
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
By the award-winning author of Team of Rivals and The Bully Pulpit, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball. Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans. We meet the people who most influenced Goodwin’s early life: her mother, who taught her the joy of books but whose debilitating illness left her housebound: and her father, who taught her the joy of baseball and to root for the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges. Most important, Goodwin describes with eloquence how the Dodgers’ leaving Brooklyn in 1957, and the death of her mother soon after, marked both the end of an era and, for her, the end of childhood.

Faith and Fear in Flushing

Faith and Fear in Flushing PDF Author: Greg W. Prince
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 162636771X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
The New York Mets fan is an Amazin’ creature whose species finds its voice at last in Greg Prince’s Faith and Fear In Flushing, the definitive account of what it means to root for and live through the machinations of an endlessly fascinating if often frustrating baseball team. Prince, coauthor of the highly regarded blog of the same name, examines how the life of the franchise mirrors the life of its fans, particularly his own. Unabashedly and unapologetically, Prince stands up for all Mets fans and, by proxy, sports fans everywhere in exploring how we root, why we take it so seriously, and what it all means. What was it like to enter a baseball world about to be ruled by the Mets in 1969? To understand intrinsically that You Gotta Believe? To overcome the trade of an idol and the dissolution of a roster? To hope hard for a comeback and then receive it in thrilling fashion in 1986? To experience the constant ups and downs the Mets would dispense for the next two decades? To put ups with the Yankees right next door? To make the psychic journey from Shea Stadium to Citi Field? To sort the myths from the realities? Greg Prince, as he has done for thousands of loyal Faith and Fear in Flushing readers daily since 2005, puts it all in perspective as only he can.