Urban Shocker

Urban Shocker PDF Author: Steve Steinberg
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496200977
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
2018 SABR Baseball Research Award Winner Baseball in the 1920s is most known for Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees, but there was another great Yankee player in that era whose compelling story remains untold. Urban Shocker was a fiercely competitive and colorful pitcher, a spitballer who had many famous battles with Babe Ruth before returning to the Yankees. Shocker was traded away to the St. Louis Browns in 1918 by Yankees manager Miller Huggins, a trade Huggins always regretted. In 1925, after four straight seasons with at least twenty wins with the hapless Browns, Shocker became the only player Huggins brought back to the Yankees. He finally reached the World Series, with the 1926 Yankees. In the Yankees’ storied 1927 season, widely viewed to be the best in MLB history, Shocker pitched with guts and guile, finishing with a record of 18‑6 even while his fastball and physical skills were deserting him. Hardly anyone knew that Shocker was suffering from an incurable heart disease that left him able to sleep only while sitting up and which would take his life in less than a year. With his physical skills diminishing, he continued to win games through craftiness and well-placed pitches. Delving into Shocker’s baseball career, his love of the game, and his battle with heart disease, Steve Steinberg shows the dominant and courageous force that he was. Purchase the audio edition.

The Wonder Team

The Wonder Team PDF Author: Leo Trachtenberg
Publisher: Popular Press
ISBN: 9780879726782
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Details events leading to the 1927 World Series, when the New York Yankees, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Waite Hoyt, became baseball's best team ever. Draws on interviews with everyone connected to the team, from players and management to batboys, and relates stories concerning players' personalities, skills, and hijinks on and off the field. Includes 1927 statistics and biographical sketches of management, players, and staff, plus bandw photos. Paper edition (unseen), $13.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The International League

The International League PDF Author: Marshall D. Wright
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476611939
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
From 1884 to 1953, the International League enjoyed a measure of stability that was the envy of many other minor leagues. With franchises located in cities along the East Coast and Canada--including Newark, Toronto, Baltimore, Montreal, and Providence--the circuit produced a brand of baseball that was only a bit below that of the majors. This is the complete, year-by-year, team-by-team statistical history of the first 70 years of the International League, from its beginnings with the Eastern League in 1854, to 1953 when longtime member Baltimore was forced to relocate its franchise to make way for a major league team. For each season, there is a brief essay that covers the league's highlights and its champion. Full rosters for each team are then provided, with complete statistics for all players.

The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers

The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers PDF Author: Bill James
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439103771
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
Preeminent baseball analyst Bill James and ESPN.com baseball columnist Rob Neyer compile information on pitches and their origins, nearly two thousand pitchers, and more in this comprehensive guide. Pitchers, the pitches they throw, and how they throw them—they’re the stuff of constant scrutiny, but there's never been anything like a comprehensive source for such information…until now. Bill James and Rob Neyer spent over a decade compiling the centerpiece of this book, the Pitcher Census, which lists specific information for nearly two thousand pitchers, ranging throughout the history of professional baseball. Their guide also includes a dictionary describing virtually every known pitch, biographies of great pitchers who have been overlooked, and top ten lists for fastballs, spitballs, and everything in between. James and Neyer also weigh in on the debate over pitcher abuse and durability, offer a formula for predicting the Cy Young Award winner, and reveal James’s Pitcher Codes. Learn about the origins and development of baseball’s most important pitches and more knuckleballers and submariners than you ever thought existed! Baseball’s action always starts with the pitchers. Begin to understand them and join in on entertaining debates while having a great deal of fun with the history of the game that captivates so many with this one-of-a-kind guide.

1921

1921 PDF Author: Lyle Spatz
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803229941
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
At the dawn of the roaring twenties, baseball was struggling to overcome two of its darkest moments: the death of a player during a Major League game and the revelations of the 1919 Black Sox scandal. At this critical juncture for baseball, two teams emerged to fight for the future of the game. They were also battling for the hearts and minds of New Yorkers as the city rose in dramatic fashion to the pinnacle of the baseball world. "1921" captures this crucial moment in the history of baseball, telling the story of a season that pitted the New York Yankees against their Polo Grounds landlords and hated rivals, John McGraw's Giants, in the first all-New York Series and resulted in the first American League pennant for the now-storied Yankees' franchise. Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg recreate the drama that featured the charismatic Babe Ruth in his assault on baseball records in the face of McGraw's disdain for the American League and the Ruth-led slugging style. Their work evokes the early 1920s with the words of renowned sportswriters such as Damon Runyon, Grantland Rice, and Heywood Broun. With more than fifty photographs, the book offers a remarkably vivid picture of the colorful characters, the crosstown rivalry, and the incomparable performances that made this season a classic.

Spitballers

Spitballers PDF Author: Charles F. Faber
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786482621
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
On September 10, 1934, grizzled reliever Burleigh Grimes helped the Pittsburgh Pirates to an inconsequential 9-7 win over the New York Giants in the Polo Grounds. For Grimes, the September contest marked his 270th and final win. For baseball, it marked the last time a legal spitballer would win a major league contest. Though the pitch had been banned in 1920, the American and National leagues both agreed to grant two exemptions per team to spitballers who were already in the majors. In 1921, both leagues agreed to extend grandfather provisions to cover the veteran spitball pitchers for the remainder of their careers. Under the extended rule, 17 pitchers were granted exemptions for their careers. This work looks at the lives and careers of these 17: Red Faber, Burleigh Grimes, Jack Quinn, Urban Shocker, Stan Coveleskie, Bill Doak, Ray Caldwell, Clarence Mitchell, Dutch Leonard, Ray Fisher, Dick Rudolph, Allen Sothoron, Phil Douglas, Allan Russell, Doc Ayers, Dana Fillingim and Marvin Goodwin.

SABR 50 at 50

SABR 50 at 50 PDF Author: Bill Nowlin
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496222687
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
SABR 50 at 50 celebrates and highlights the Society for American Baseball Research’s wide-ranging contributions to baseball history. Established in 1971 in Cooperstown, New York, SABR has sought to foster and disseminate the research of baseball—with groundbreaking work from statisticians, historians, and independent researchers—and has published dozens of articles with far-reaching and long-lasting impact on the game. Among its current membership are many Major and Minor League Baseball officials, broadcasters, and writers as well as numerous former players. The diversity of SABR members’ interests is reflected in this fiftieth-anniversary volume—from baseball and the arts to statistical analysis to the Deadball Era to women in baseball. SABR 50 at 50 includes the most important and influential research published by members across a multitude of topics, including the sabermetric work of Dick Cramer, Pete Palmer, and Bill James, along with Jerry Malloy on the Negro Leagues, Keith Olbermann on why the shortstop position is number 6, John Thorn and Jules Tygiel on the untold story behind Jackie Robinson’s signing with the Dodgers, and Gai Berlage on the Colorado Silver Bullets women’s team in the 1990s. To provide history and context, each notable research article is accompanied by a short introduction. As SABR celebrates fifty years this collection gathers the organization’s most notable research and baseball history for the serious baseball reader.

The Team by Team Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball

The Team by Team Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball PDF Author: Dennis Purdy
Publisher: Workman Publishing
ISBN: 0761139435
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 1186

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Book Description
Looks at the history of every existing major league baseball team and provides a variety of team and player statistics.

Greatness in Waiting

Greatness in Waiting PDF Author: Ray Istorico
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 078643211X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Before they acquired Babe Ruth or won a single championship, the New York Yankees (née Highlanders) were a team that inspired the strongest of feelings in baseball circles. Stars such as Jack Chesbro, Hal Chase, and Brooklyner Willie Keeler drew loud followings, and the team made loyal fans of those who disliked the cross-town Giants or Dodgers. Even Ban Johnson prized the franchise, which gave his upstart American League a foothold in the nation’s most populous city. Baltimoreans, on the other hand, nurtured an animus toward the team, which only a few years earlier had been called the Orioles. And former Orioles manager John McGraw hatched a plan, along with Giants owner Andrew Freedman, to sabotage the new club. This heavily illustrated volume combines a fully documented history of the deadball-era Yankees with 195 photos of the people, places, and events that figured prominently in the story.

Urban Shocker

Urban Shocker PDF Author: Steve Steinberg
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496200950
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
2018 SABR Baseball Research Award Winner Baseball in the 1920s is most known for Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees, but there was another great Yankee player in that era whose compelling story remains untold. Urban Shocker was a fiercely competitive and colorful pitcher, a spitballer who had many famous battles with Babe Ruth before returning to the Yankees. Shocker was traded away to the St. Louis Browns in 1918 by Yankees manager Miller Huggins, a trade Huggins always regretted. In 1925, after four straight seasons with at least twenty wins with the hapless Browns, Shocker became the only player Huggins brought back to the Yankees. He finally reached the World Series, with the 1926 Yankees. In the Yankees' storied 1927 season, widely viewed to be the best in MLB history, Shocker pitched with guts and guile, finishing with a record of 18‑6 even while his fastball and physical skills were deserting him. Hardly anyone knew that Shocker was suffering from an incurable heart disease that left him able to sleep only while sitting up and which would take his life in less than a year. With his physical skills diminishing, he continued to win games through craftiness and well-placed pitches. Delving into Shocker's baseball career, his love of the game, and his battle with heart disease, Steve Steinberg shows the dominant and courageous force that he was.