Author: John C. Skipper
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786468475
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
Billy Southworth was the most successful major league baseball manager of the 1940s including the three straight years in which his St. Louis Cardinal teams won more than 100 games. He won three National League pennants with the Cardinals and one with the Boston Braves, and his .597 winning percentage is the fifth highest in baseball history. But Southworth was dogged by demons off the field, including the deaths of three children. On the field, his achievements were minimized by many because they occurred during the war years when the baseball talent level was below par. When he finally got top recognition, being elected to the Hall of Fame in 2007, the honor occurred 38 years after his death.
Author: James D. Szalontai
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786453354
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
The Second World War was in the bottom of the ninth inning in Germany and Japan, but back at home the bases were loaded with baseball players, many of them new to the big leagues. While the game's stars traded their stockings and gloves for khaki and rifles, America's leaders believed baseball would boost morale at home. Teams filled out their rosters with retired stars such as Jimmie Foxx and Babe Herman; with players like Pete Gray and Dick Sipek, whose disabilities had kept them out of the majors; and with teenagers like 17-year-olds Putsy Caballero and Tommy Brown. But while the level of major league talent had reached its nadir, war-weary fans packed the ballparks, eagerly following pennant races as intense as any that preceded the war.
Author: John P. Carmichael
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803263680
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
My Greatest Day in Baseball, one of the earliest collections of the game’s oral histories, presents forty-seven famous stars from the golden age of baseball relating their most unforgettable moments in the sport. Ty Cobb vividly recreates the seventeenth-inning tie between the Philadelphia Athletics and Detroit Tigers with the 1908 pennant at stake. Grover Cleveland Alexander describes the day he saved the 1926 world championship for the St. Louis Cardinals. Babe Ruth recalls hitting the homer he had promised to the crowd at a 1932 World Series game. Dizzy Dean recounts a run-in with Ford Frick and a record-setting day in 1933 when he struck out seventeen Chicago Cubs. Among the other celebrated baseball figures telling their dramatic stories are Leroy “Satchel” Paige, Casey Stengel, Leo “The Lip” Durocher, Honus Wagner, Johnny Evers, Lefty Gomez, Tris Speaker, Cy Young, Pepper Martin, George Sisler, Billy Southworth, Enos Slaughter, Connie Mack, Walter Johnson, and Rogers Hornsby.
Author: Danny Litwhiler
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781592135240
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
"Throughout his life, Litwhiler has passed on to others his knowledge and enthusiasm for baseball. His engaging memoir conveys his passion for the game as he fondly recalls playing with legends like Jackie Robinson and Enos Slaughter, teaching future major leaguers, and his tireless promotion of the game wherever he went. He has truly lived a baseball life."--Jacket.
Author: Leo Durocher
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226173895
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
“I believe in rules. Sure I do. If there weren't any rules, how could you break them?” The history of baseball is rife with colorful characters. But for sheer cantankerousness, fighting moxie, and will to win, very few have come close to Leo “the Lip” Durocher. Following a five-decade career as a player and manager for baseball’s most storied franchises, Durocher teamed up with veteran sportswriter Ed Linn to tell the story of his life in the game. The resulting book, Nice Guys Finish Last, is baseball at its best, brimming with personality and full of all the fights and feuds, triumphs and tricks that made Durocher such a success—and an outsized celebrity. Durocher began his career inauspiciously, riding the bench for the powerhouse 1928 Yankees and hitting so poorly that Babe Ruth nicknamed him “the All-American Out.” But soon Durocher hit his stride: traded to St. Louis, he found his headlong play and never-say-die attitude a perfect fit with the rambunctious “Gashouse Gang” Cardinals. In 1939, he was named player-manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers—and almost instantly transformed the underachieving Bums into perennial contenders. He went on to manage the New York Giants, sharing the glory of one of the most famous moments in baseball history, Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard ’round the world,” which won the Giants the 1951 pennant. Durocher would later learn how it felt to be on the other side of such an unforgettable moment, as his 1969 Cubs, after holding first place for 105 days, blew a seemingly insurmountable 8-1/2-game lead to the Miracle Mets. All the while, Durocher made as much noise off the field as on it. His perpetual feuds with players, owners, and league officials—not to mention his public associations with gamblers, riffraff, and Hollywood stars like George Raft and Larraine Day—kept his name in the headlines and spread his fame far beyond the confines of the diamond. A no-holds-barred account of a singular figure, Nice Guys Finish Last brings the personalities and play-by-play of baseball’s greatest era to vivid life, earning a place on every baseball fan’s bookshelf.
Author: Bryan Tsao
Publisher: ACTA Publications
ISBN: 9780879463410
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
A comprehensive analysis of the entire 2007 baseball season from the first pitch to the last out, including a breakdown of the post season and the World Series. Key features include: ? Reviews of how 2005 played out in each of baseball's six divisions ? An in-depth look at the minor leagues ? Detailed team stats and graphs ? Team-by-team individual hitting and fielding numbers ? A postseason and World Series round up
Author: Gary Caruso
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781566393843
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 566
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Book Description
1996 marked the 125th season of the oldest continuously operating professional sports franchise in America: the Atlanta Braves. This comprehensive reference begins with the team's birth in 1871 as the Boston Red Stockings, and follows them to Milwaukee in 1953 and to Atlanta in 1966, playing under such a variety of names as Beaneaters, Doves, Rustlers, Braves, Bees, and back to the Braves. Because of this transient past, much of the franchise's history has been misplaced over the years—until now. Beloved not only by their tomahawk-chopping local fans but by baseball fans everywhere, the Braves have become one of today's most successful sports organizations. The Braves Encyclopedia brings it all together. 150 player profiles—from Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Warren Spahn, and Eddie Matthews to all-time greats Dale Murphy, Phil Niekro, and Terry Pendleton to today's stars like David Justice, Greg Maddux, and Steve Avery 600 photographs of players, game highlights, and memorabilia extensive statistics, including box scores, team and individual records, and trades season-by-season descriptions bring to life the great moments, the World Series championships, the managerial strategies, the personalities, and the milestones a comprehensive history of the ballparks a wealth of little-known facts and surprising anecdotes Author note: Gary Caruso is the editor of Chop Talk a monthly magazine covering the Atlanta Braves. As a sports reporter for nearly 25 years, he has written for the Atlanta Journal has been executive sports editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and a senior editor and writer for The National Sports Daily.
Author: Jerome M. Mileur
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826271782
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
"Mileur provides a game-by-game account of the 1942 St. Louis Cardinals, world champions and the winningest team in franchise history. He recounts the team's close pennant race against the Brooklyn Dodgers and World Series victory over the New York Yankees, while conveying the physical and mental demands on the players within the context of wartime America"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Bob Bloss
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781566396615
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 422
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Book Description
Why is baseball the only team sport whose managers wear a uniform? Which two managers have led three different teams to the World Series? Who was the last player-manager? Which managers' uniform numbers have been retired? What happened when Ted Turner took over as manager after Atlanta had posted 16 consecutive losses? These and many more questions are answered in Bob Bloss'sBaseball Managers. The perfect book to have for settling a baseball argument, it contains records of each of the more than 400 twentieth-century managers. It traces managing evolution from the original Cincinnati Red Stockings to the Arizona Diamondbacks and from the early days of player-managers and their fourteen-man squads to today's relentless fan and media second-guessing and the emergence of free agency—which now often forces managers to enter battle with teams vastly restructured from the previous season. With chapters on controversial managerial decisions Hall-of-Fame manager profiles and oddball managerial situations, humorous and sometimes poignant anecdotes, and many useful tables listing managers alphabetically, by teams, and by winning percentages,Baseball Managersis a fascinating compilation of statistics, trivia, and memories. Author note:Bob Blossis a freelance baseball journalist who began his writing career in 1960. He has played the role of announcer as well as reporter and is a member of the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association and SABR, the Society of American Baseball Research. Once a slow, second-string high school outfielder in Erie, PA, who could hit a curve ball only when he knew it was coming—and then not very far—Bloss now chronicles baseball and baseball managing.
Author: Bill James
Publisher: Diversion Books
ISBN: 1626812632
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 411
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Book Description
The man Newsweek once called “the guru of baseball” offers profiles of top managers, sidebars, statistics, and snapshots of each decade. Widely considered to be one of the greatest minds in the history of the game, Bill James has changed the way we think about the sport of baseball. In this chronicle of field generals, strategists, and occasional cannon fodder, James writes with piercing insight about the men who hold what may be the most important spot in the dugout. For nearly forty years, James has led the vanguard of how we measure the game. From sabermetrics to his Baseball Abstracts, James has influenced even the casual fan all the way up to the top brass. Somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, however, is the manager, and Bill James has penned a guide on some of the most innovative and renowned men to ever hold that position. Some of the game’s greatest managers have been Hall of Fame players who put down a bat and picked up a lineup card: Frank Robinson, Mel Ott, Joe Cronin, Tris Speaker, and Rogers Hornsby. Others have achieved greatness from their ability to assemble legendary teams: Billy Martin, Tommy Lasorda, Connie Mack, Joseph McCarthy, Dick Williams, and Leo Durocher. Here, Bill James explores the history of the manager, and its evolution from 1870–1990, in a decade-by-decade chronicle, examining the successes, the failures, and what baseball fans can learn from both. The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is a thought-provoking, entertaining, and seminal guide to a vital part of the national pastime, written by one of its most groundbreaking iconoclasts. “A delightful collection that will satisfy baseball fans of all ages.” —Library Journal
