Author: Wendell Lloyd Jones
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476694389
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 195
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Book Description
The National League was in its second season of existence in 1877. In mid-season, the Louisville Grays suddenly took the league by storm and by mid-August were considered a lock to win the pennant. Then, disaster struck. The Grays fell out of first place, and the pennant was lost. Suspicions were high that the club had sold out to gamblers. Three players were tricked into confessing to the selling of exhibition games and were blacklisted from the sport along with a fourth player who refused to cooperate with the investigation. Since then, historians have presented a simple narrative about how the Grays sold the pennant to gamblers, how that treachery was discovered, and the steps that followed. However, none of this is true. For nearly 150 years the story of the Louisville Grays has been told, and the story has been wrong. For the first time, the objective evidence that was there all along is examined in comparison to the narrative that has been told about the Grays. The evidence shows the Grays did not sell the pennant; they simply lost it. This is the story of how Major League Baseball's first great scandal never truly happened.
Author: Wendell Lloyd Jones
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476651841
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 195
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Book Description
The National League was in its second season of existence in 1877. In mid-season, the Louisville Grays suddenly took the league by storm and by mid-August were considered a lock to win the pennant. Then, disaster struck. The Grays fell out of first place, and the pennant was lost. Suspicions were high that the club had sold out to gamblers. Three players were tricked into confessing to the selling of exhibition games and were blacklisted from the sport along with a fourth player who refused to cooperate with the investigation. Since then, historians have presented a simple narrative about how the Grays sold the pennant to gamblers, how that treachery was discovered, and the steps that followed. However, none of this is true. For nearly 150 years the story of the Louisville Grays has been told, and the story has been wrong. For the first time, the objective evidence that was there all along is examined in comparison to the narrative that has been told about the Grays. The evidence shows the Grays did not sell the pennant; they simply lost it. This is the story of how Major League Baseball's first great scandal never truly happened.
Author: Brian Martin
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476679614
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
A young German immigrant, Barney Dreyfuss was an American success story in business and in baseball. He fell in love with the game after settling in Paducah, Kentucky, where he discovered he had a knack for assembling good players on the diamond. Relocating to Louisville, he became involved in the professional game with the Colonels. Faced with ouster from the National League, he took his players to Pittsburgh, where he became owner of the Pirates and forged a winning tradition, leading the club to six pennants and two World Series. This first biography of Dreyfuss chronicles the innovative career of the Hall of Famer executive who built Forbes Field--the National League's first concrete-and-steel ballpark, into which he put $1 million of his own money--pushed for creation of the office of commissioner to govern the game and helped initiate the modern World Series.
Author: Bob Hill
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1613212690
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 203
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Book Description
Crack of the Bat is a comprehensive and entertaining look at the most famous icon in the history of baseball, the "Louisville Slugger" bat. It includes the evolution of bats from pioneer wagon tongues to the sleek aluminum models of today. It examines the amazing physics involved in hitting a baseball, where .003 seconds means the difference between a home run and a foul ball. It tells the fascinating history of the still family-owned Hillerich & Bradsby Company, which in just 80 years went from making butter churns to making seven million bats a year. Reinforcing this are dozens of stories about the bats themselves, and the personal idiosyncracies of the most famous hitters in baseball history, including Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken Jr. and Derek Jeter. The book explains why the players picked the bats they did, the amazing lengths they would go to to protect them, and how valuable these bats have now become in the hands of collectors. Illustrated with hundreds of archival photographs, baseball decals, and icons, many in color, this book will become as much a cherished keepsake as some of the bats it describes.
Author: Tim Newby
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 1985900874
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 277
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Book Description
Louis "Pete" Rogers Browning was one of the greatest baseball players of the nineteenth century. His skills with the bat made the difficult art of hitting a baseball appear easy. Over his thirteen-year career, he won three batting titles, finished in the top three nine times, and was one of the premodern era's greatest hitters. Browning is recognized as not only the namesake but also the genesis for the famed Louisville Slugger, as the Hillerich & Bradsby Company shaped the first ever custom-made bat based on his instructions. Browning's athletic prowess was overshadowed by his drunken adventures and struggles off the field. A champion consumer of bourbon and a man with obvious demons, he led a life littered with eccentricities. During games he refused to slide and often stood perched on one leg. Known as the Gladiator, he drank tabasco sauce, washed his eyes with buttermilk, and named bats after biblical characters, all in an effort to improve his hitting. Few were aware that, behind the comedic persona, Browning suffered from mastoiditis, a devastating physical ailment that robbed him of his hearing, deprived him of an education, eroded his professional skills, and led to his heavy dependence on alcohol. Accounts of Browning's unconventional behavior were bolstered by his own outlandish storytelling. These stories were embellished by newspapers of the time, making him a legend. Tim Newby addresses the myths surrounding the larger-than-life figure, uncovers the thin line between fact and fiction, and presents an extensive account of Browning—the man, and legendary ball player.
Author: Albert Goodwill Spalding
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Baseball
Languages : en
Pages : 586
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Book Description
This book is Albert Spaldings work of "historic facts concerning the beginning, evolution, development and popularity of base ball, with personal reminiscences of its vicissitudes, its victories and its votaries." It is one of the defining books in the early formative years of modern baseball.
Author: Jeffrey Michael Laing
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786472642
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
This is the biography of Bud Fowler (ne John Jackson), the first African American to play in organized baseball, and the longest tenured at the time that the color line was drawn. In addition to his professional playing career, which lasted more than 25 years, Fowler was a scout, organizer, owner, and promoter of touring black baseball clubs--including the legendary Page Fence Giants--in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Emphasizing the social and cultural contexts for Fowler's accomplishments on and off the baseball diamond, and his prominence within the history and development of the national pastime, the text builds a convincing case for Fowler as one of the great pioneering figures of the early game.
Author: Eliot Asinof
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805065374
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
"The most thorough investigation of the Black Sox scandal on record . . . A vividly, excitingly written book."--Chicago Tribune
Author: Bernard Malamud
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446419126
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
This is a book about heroism - of sorts. Roy Hobbs has an immense natural gift for playing baseball. He could become one of the great ones of the game, a player unmatched in his time - a hero. But his first hard-won big chance ends violently, at the hands of a crazy girl, and then it is years before he gets another shot. At last, in a few short seasons, or never, he must achieve the towering reputation that he feels is his right.
Author: Sallie Bingham
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374711860
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
“Shows us just how brave, rebellious, and creative this unique woman really was, and how her generosity benefits us to this day.” —Gloria Steinem In The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham chronicles the notorious tobacco heiress who was perhaps the greatest modern woman philanthropist. Duke established her first foundation when she was twenty-one; cultivated friendships with Jackie Kennedy, Imelda Marcos, and Michael Jackson; flaunted interracial relationships; and adopted a thirty-two year-old woman she believed to be the reincarnation of her deceased daughter. Even though Duke was the subject of constant scrutiny, little beyond the tabloid accounts of her behavior has been publicly known. When her personal papers were made available, Sallie Bingham set out to discover her true identity. She found an alluring woman whose life was forged in the Jazz Age, who was not only an early war correspondent but also an environmentalist, a surfer, a collector of Islamic art, a savvy businesswoman who tripled her father’s fortune, and a major philanthropist with wide-ranging passions from dance to historic preservation to human rights. In The Silver Swan, Bingham dissects the stereotypes that have defined Duke’s story while also confronting the disturbing questions that cleave to her legacy. “Illuminating . . . Bingham is a generous biographer in this exacting, measured work.” —Publishers Weekly “The most significant, dramatic, and compelling biography of Doris Duke. . . . that will delight and inspire all readers concerned about a more humane future.” —Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt (vols. I, II, III)
