The Life and Teams of Johnny F. Bassett

The Life and Teams of Johnny F. Bassett PDF Author: Denis M. Crawford
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476642958
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the most influential sportsmen of the late 20th century, Johnny F. Bassett's marketing wizardry belied his impact on professional hockey and football. A Canadian showman with a Barnumesque flair for spectacle, Bassett challenged the orthodoxy of sports, building sporting utopias in the fatally flawed World Football League, World Hockey Association, and United States Football League. He catered to the common fan, demanded fair treatment of athletes, and forced the sporting establishment to change the way it did business, often to his own detriment. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Bassett's contemporaries, this comprehensive biography chronicles his life in and around professional sports: his quixotic attempt to compete with the Maple Leafs; his stunning coup in signing three members of the reigning Super Bowl champions for his WFL team; his battles with the Canadian government over American football; his audacious marketing of hockey in Alabama; and his rivalry with Donald Trump for the soul of the USFL.

The Life and Teams of Johnny F. Bassett

The Life and Teams of Johnny F. Bassett PDF Author: Denis M. Crawford
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476642958
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the most influential sportsmen of the late 20th century, Johnny F. Bassett's marketing wizardry belied his impact on professional hockey and football. A Canadian showman with a Barnumesque flair for spectacle, Bassett challenged the orthodoxy of sports, building sporting utopias in the fatally flawed World Football League, World Hockey Association, and United States Football League. He catered to the common fan, demanded fair treatment of athletes, and forced the sporting establishment to change the way it did business, often to his own detriment. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Bassett's contemporaries, this comprehensive biography chronicles his life in and around professional sports: his quixotic attempt to compete with the Maple Leafs; his stunning coup in signing three members of the reigning Super Bowl champions for his WFL team; his battles with the Canadian government over American football; his audacious marketing of hockey in Alabama; and his rivalry with Donald Trump for the soul of the USFL.

The Life and Teams of Johnny F. Bassett

The Life and Teams of Johnny F. Bassett PDF Author: Denis M. Crawford
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476684324
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the most influential sportsmen of the late 20th century, Johnny F. Bassett's marketing wizardry belied his impact on professional hockey and football. A Canadian showman with a Barnumesque flair for spectacle, Bassett challenged the orthodoxy of sports, building sporting utopias in the fatally flawed World Football League, World Hockey Association, and United States Football League. He catered to the common fan, demanded fair treatment of athletes, and forced the sporting establishment to change the way it did business, often to his own detriment. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Bassett's contemporaries, this comprehensive biography chronicles his life in and around professional sports: his quixotic attempt to compete with the Maple Leafs; his stunning coup in signing three members of the reigning Super Bowl champions for his WFL team; his battles with the Canadian government over American football; his audacious marketing of hockey in Alabama; and his rivalry with Donald Trump for the soul of the USFL.

The 1958 Baltimore Colts

The 1958 Baltimore Colts PDF Author: George Bozeka
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476671451
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
The 1958 Baltimore Colts were one of the greatest teams ever in professional football. Owned by the controversial Carroll Rosenbloom and led by head coach Weeb Ewbank and six future Hall of Fame players--Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, Lenny Moore, Jim Parker, Art Donovan and Gino Marchetti--they won the NFL title that season, defeating the New York Giants in the first sudden death championship game in NFL history. The Colts laid the foundation for the ultra-popular spectacle football would become with the American public. They were a talented group of players. Many had been rejected or underappreciated at various points in their careers though they were loved and respected by the blue collar fans of Baltimore. This book tells the complete story of the '58 Colts and the city's love affair with the team.

Gratoony the Loony

Gratoony the Loony PDF Author: Gilles Gratton
Publisher: ECW Press
ISBN: 1773050680
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of hockeyÕs most colourful characters, from hockeyÕs most colourful era, tells all Gilles Gratton was not a typical pro hockey player. He refused to don his equipment and man his net if the planets were not properly aligned. He skated naked at practice. He created one of hockeyÕs most famous goalie masks based on his astrological sign. He fought with coaches and management, speaking his mind to his detriment. Sex, drugs, and rock ÕnÕ roll ruled his life, not stopping pucks. Truthfully? He never really wanted to be an NHL goaltender; he wanted to be Tibetan monk. And so, he quit hockey to seek enlightenment. Now, in his autobiography, Gratton teams up with author Greg Oliver to tell his wild and at times, yes, loony story: from his early days in Montreal, where his brother Norm Gratton became an NHL player, too; through his stints with the OHAÕs Oshawa Generals, the Ottawa Nationals and Toronto Toros of the rogue WHA, and the St. Louis Blues and New York Rangers in the NHL.

The Goal of My Life

The Goal of My Life PDF Author: Paul Henderson
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771039158
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The Goal" was only one moment of many that made up a hockey career that lasted twenty years -- and a life that has gone far beyond. Paul grew up in the small town of Lucknow, Ontario, and played hockey from a young age. He started his professional career with the Detroit Red Wings in 1962, where he played with future Hall of Famers Gordie Howe, Alex Delvecchio, and Ted Lindsay. He was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs at the end of the decade, and it was there that his career took off, culminating with an invitation to the Summit Series. In the years following, the most famous hockey player in Canada left the NHL for the rebel WHA, playing with the Birmingham Bulls in the United States. It was in Birmingham that Paul developed and deepened his spirituality -- a quest that had begun in Toronto and would define his life after hockey. He founded The Leadership Group, where he serves as a mentor to other men trying to maintain a spiritual life in and out of sports. In The Goal of My Life, Henderson shares a story that cannot be defined by one goal, but by the many goals that he has set for himself throughout his life, both in hockey and beyond.

Breakaway

Breakaway PDF Author: Tal Pinchevsky
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118096207
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
From behind the Iron Curtain onto hockey's biggest stage The incredible true story of the trailblazing men who risked everything to pass through the Iron Curtain and become NHL superstars, Breakaway is a thrilling look at the untold stories that changed hockey forever. From midnight meetings in secluded forests, to evading capture by military and police forces, this is the story of the brave players whose passion of the game trumped all. Featuring exclusive interviews with the legends of the ice who put everything on the line just for the chance to play on the world's greatest stage, many of them speaking about their experiences for the very first time, the book looks at how Peter Stastny, Igor Larionov, Petr Klima, Petr Nedved, Sergei Fedorov, Slava Fetisov, Alexander Mogilny, and other hockey superstars captured the imaginations of fans around the world. The remarkable true story of some of the true pioneers of hockey, told for the very first time, often in the players' own words A fascinating look behind the Iron Curtain and the trials these brave men endured for a taste of freedom, through their love of the game Looks at how some of the NHL's greatest players made it onto North American ice As much a tale of espionage and social history as a gripping hockey chronicle, Breakaway sheds light on the untold stories of some of the sports' most inspiring heroes.

Wilmington, Vermont

Wilmington, Vermont PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Wilmington (Vt.)
Languages : en
Pages : 74

Get Book Here

Book Description


Football for a Buck

Football for a Buck PDF Author: Jeff Pearlman
Publisher: Mariner Books
ISBN: 0544454383
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Get Book Here

Book Description
From a multiple New York Times bestselling author, the rollicking, outrageous, you-can't-make-this-up story of the USFL The United States Football League--known fondly to millions of sports fans as the USFL--was the last football league to not merely challenge the NFL, but cause its owners and executives to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, 1983-85. It secured multiple television deals. It drew millions of fans and launched the careers of legends. But then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic owner--a New York businessman named Donald J. Trump. The league featured as many as 18 teams, and included such superstars as Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, Reggie White, Doug Flutie and Mike Rozier. In Football for a Buck, the dogged reporter and biographer Jeff Pearlman draws on more than four hundred interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to airplane brawls and player-coach punch outs, to backroom business deals, to some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports readers back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious, unforgettable era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost on the backs of professional athletes and also how, thirty years ago, Trump was a scoundrel and a spoiler. For fans of Terry Pluto's Loose Balls or Jim Bouton's Ball Four and of course Pearlman's own stranger-than-fiction narratives, Football for a Buck is sports as high entertainment--and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.

A Whole New Game

A Whole New Game PDF Author: Neil Longley
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
ISBN: 1771623810
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book Here

Book Description
Hockey used to be Canada’s game. What happened? A renowned sports expert details the sellout of a sport Canada once dominated to big-money U.S. corporatization and enumerates the effects, including declining amateur participation and audience size. Hockey is still Canada’s most popular spectator sport. Yet, many fans question how organized hockey serves the country of its origin as they watch the NHL expand ever deeper into an indifferent American south, taking the best young Canadian talent and leaving major Canadian markets in Quebec, the Maritimes and the Prairies in the cold. Minor hockey, once the pride of smaller communities, now serves as a brutal corporate feeder system for the NHL, treating underpaid teenagers like chattel, often shipping players as young as fourteen far away from their homes and families on short notice. Neil Longley contrasts the current state of the game with the way it was before the expansion era, when hockey teams were nurtured and supported at the community level, a system still practiced in much of Europe. In one of the most perceptive and authoritative analyses yet written on modern hockey history, Professor Longley finds no magic formula for putting heart and local pride back in Canada’s game, but makes a strong case for placing today’s corporate system “in a more realistic, less-Disneyfied, less sanitized, context.”

Factory Man

Factory Man PDF Author: Beth Macy
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316231568
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 469

Get Book Here

Book Description
The instant New York Times bestseller about one man's battle to save hundreds of jobs by demonstrating the greatness of American business. The Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. Run by the same powerful Virginia family for generations, it was also the center of life in Bassett, Virginia. But beginning in the 1980s, the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately Bassett was forced to send its production overseas. One man fought back: John Bassett III, a shrewd and determined third-generation factory man, now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of more than $90 million. In Factory Man, Beth Macy brings to life Bassett's deeply personal furniture and family story, along with a host of characters from an industry that was as cutthroat as it was colorful. As she shows how he uses legal maneuvers, factory efficiencies, and sheer grit and cunning to save hundreds of jobs, she also reveals the truth about modern industry in America.