Sports Audiobooks | Biography & Memoir

Irish Thunder: The Hard Life & Times of Micky Ward

Mickey Ward is the The Fighter that inspired the major motion picture. Welcome to Lowell, where anything can happen. Rocky Marciano fought at the Auditorium in 1947. Mike Tyson fought there in his Golden Gloves days. Sugar Ray Leonard won there, as did Marvin Hagler. Each of them prepared for his battle downstairs in the boiler room, just like thousands of other kids. 'Irish' Micky Ward grew up in the 1970s and 80s as a tough kid from Lowell, Massachusetts'a town where boxers were once bred as a means of survival. A hard worker who overcame bad luck, bad management, and chronic pain in his hands, he avoided the pitfall of poverty and dead-end work that plagued Lowell to become a Golden Gloves junior welterweight. Ward participated in street fights from an early age and was forever known by his opponents and spectators as the underdog. But with his incredible ability to suddenly drop an opponent late in a fight with his trademark left hook, he kept proving everyone wrong. After fifteen years of boxing, a string of defeats, and three years of retirement, Micky battled Arturo Gatti in 2002 in the battle that was later named 'Fight of the Year' by Ring magazine and dubbed 'Fight of the Century' by boxing writers and fans across the country. Ten rounds of brutal action ended with Micky winning by decision, and reviving enthusiasm for a sport that had been weighted down by years of showboating and corruption. ESPN and Boston television reporter Bob Halloran recounts Micky's rise to hero status, his rivalry with his imprisoned brother, and the negotiations, betrayals, and drugs that ultimately shaped a wild youth into a nationally respected boxer. 'Bob Halloran does a remarkable job in describing the actual key bouts of Lowell's champion boxer. You can almost feel the punches and intensity of the brutal sport.''Sun (Lowell, Massachusetts)

Bob Halloran (Author), Bronson Pinchot (Narrator)

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The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood

Jane Leavy, the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, returns with a biography of an American original, number 7, Mickey Mantle. Drawing on more than five hundred interviews with friends and family, teammates, and opponents, she delivers the definitive account of Mantle's life, mining the mythology of The Mick for the true story of a luminous and illustrious talent with an achingly damaged soul. Meticulously reported and elegantly written, The Last Boy is a baseball tapestry that weaves together episodes from the author's weekend with The Mick in Atlantic City, where she interviewed her hero in 1983, after he was banned from baseball, with reminiscences from friends and family of the boy from Commerce, Oklahoma, who would lead the Yankees to seven world championships, be voted the American League's Most Valuable Player three times, win the Triple Crown in 1956, and duel teammate Roger Maris for Babe Ruth's home run crown in the summer of 1961, the same boy who would never grow up. As she did so memorably in her biography of Sandy Koufax, Jane Leavy transcends the hyperbole of hero worship to reveal the man behind the coast-to-coast smile, who grappled with a wrenching childhood, crippling injuries, and a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. In The Last Boy she chronicles her search to find out more about the person he was and, given what she discovers, to explain his mystifying hold on a generation of baseball fans, who were seduced by that lopsided, gap-toothed grin. It is an uncommon biography, with literary overtones: not only a portrait of an icon, but an investigation of memory itself. How long was the Tape Measure Home Run? Did Mantle swing the same way right-handed and left-handed? What really happened to his knee in the 1951 World Series? What happened to the red-haired, freckle-faced boy known back home as Mickey Charles? "I believe in memory, not memorabilia," Leavy writes in her preface. But in The Last Boy, she discovers that what we remember of our heroes, and even what they remember of themselves, is only where the story begins. **Please Contact Customer Service For Additional Documents**

Jane Leavy (Author), Jane Leavy, John Bedford Lloyd (Narrator)

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Thanks, Johnners

READ BY JONATHAN AGNEW AND FOREWORD READ BY THE MAGNIFICIENT STEPHEN FRY WITH SURPRISE CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JONATHAN'S TEST MATCH SPECIAL COLLEAGUES!! Perfect for cricket fans everywhere, Thanks Johnners is a warm and witty tribute to Brian Johnston and his time at the helm of Test Match Special. The Test Match Special on-air incident, in which Jonathan Agnew's comment on Ian Botham's attempt to avoid stepping on his stumps - 'He just couldn't quite get his leg over' provoking prolonged fits of giggles, most notably from Brian Johnston, has been voted the greatest piece of sporting commentary ever. The friendship between 'Aggers' and 'Johnners' became immortalised through that broadcasting classic, but there was a far deeper bond between the two men, as this fascinating book reveals.Jonathan Agnew had grown up to the sound of Johnston, Arlott, and a young Martin-Jenkins et al on TMS as he followed his father around on the family farm, ear glued to the transistor radio, but the two men met formally only when Agnew joined the BBC team at Headingley in 1991. Thus began a great working partnership which, fuelled by a mutual passion for the noble game, bridged the generation gap and ended only with Johnston's sudden death in 1994. As this book demonstrates so convincingly, Johnners's wit, warmth and sense of fun was a feature not only of his cricket commentaries, but also in the way he lived his life. His influence on 'Aggers' is clearly recognisable in the same amiable and informal manner in which his successor presents Test Match Special today. Thanks, Johnners is a rich blend of biography and anecdote, of antics and dramas on and off the pitch, in and out of the commentary box, its pages filled with stories about the great names of cricket including Fred Trueman, Geoffrey Boycott, Vivian Richards, Michael Holding and Ian Botham. Just as TMS is the sound of summer, so Thanks, Johnners is the fresh breeze rippling the long grass of remembered pleasures.

Jonathan Agnew (Author), Jonathan Agnew (Narrator)

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The Long Run

On the morning of December 22, 2005, New York City firefighter Matt Long was cycling to work when he was struck by and sucked under a 20-ton bus making an illegal turn. The injuries he sustained pushed him within inches of death. Miraculously, after five months in the hospital and more than 40 operations, Matt was able to start his recovery. In addition to his physical injuries, Matt found the psychological consequences of the accident nearly as hard to process. In the 18 months before the accident, he had competed in more than 20 premier athletic events and had qualified for running's most prestigious race, the Boston Marathon. After the accident, one doctor told him he'd be lucky if he could even walk without a cane. The Long Run is the emotional and incredibly honest story of Matt's determination to fight through fear, despair, loneliness, and intense physical and psychological pain to regain the life he once had. It chronicles Matt's road to recovery as he teaches himself to walk again and, a mere three years later, to run in the 2008 New York City Marathon.

Charles Butler, Matthew Long (Author), Charles Butler, Matthew Del Negro (Narrator)

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Shattered: Struck Down, But Not Destroyed

Cincinnati Reds pitcher Frank Pastore stepped onto the mound in Dodger Stadium to throw another fastball—something he’d done thousands of times since childhood. But this time was different. The batter connected and the ball came rocketing back to the mound, shattering not only Frank’s pitching elbow—but also his dream of getting “rich and famous” through Major League Baseball.™ As he walked to the training room, Frank found himself asking a God he didn’t believe in, “Why is this happening to me?” There was no answer—at least not then. It was this injury that sent Frank, a lifelong atheist, on a journey that would change not only his mind but also his whole life—as a husband, father, friend, and troubled son. We all know the pain of shattered dreams. We’ve all wondered how to pick up the broken pieces after a crisis. We’ve all wondered, “Where is God?” when life hurts so bad. This is a story of how the fragments of broken dreams can be reassembled into even bigger and better things. A story of how, when life’s disasters and difficulties knock us down, they don’t have to destroy us. This is a story that shows how all of us can come to know we’re in God’s good hands. Even when we’re shattered.

Ellen Vaughn, Frank Pastore (Author), Frank Pastore (Narrator)

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God and Football

At the age of 8, Chad Gibbs attended his first Southeastern Conference football game. Since then he has been in a constant battle to not let his love of all things pigskin consume him. As a Christian, Gibbs knows he cannot serve two masters, but at times his faith is overwhelmed by his fanaticism. He is not alone. In 2008 over six million people attended an SEC football game. They spend thousands on season tickets, donate millions to athletic departments, and for three months a year order their entire lives around the schedule of their favorite team. Gibbs and his six million friends do not live in a spiritually void land where such borderline idol worship would normally be accepted. They live in the American South, where according to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, 84 percent identify themselves as Christians. This apparent contradiction that Gibbs sees in his own life, and in millions of others, has led him to journey to each of the twelve schools to spend time with rabid, Christian fans of various ages and denominations. Through his journey he hopes to learn how others are able to balance their passion for their team with their devotion to God. And if Gibbs learns others are just as messed up as he is, at least he will know he is not alone.

Chad Gibbs (Author), Chad Gibbs (Narrator)

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Carboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told through Baseball Cards

Cardboard Gods is the memoir of Josh Wilker, a brilliant writer who has marked the stages of his life through the baseball cards he collected as a child. It also captures the experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what it means to be a fan of the game. Along the way, as we get to know Josh, his family, and his friends, we also get Josh's classic observations about the central artifacts from his life'the baseball cards themselves. Josh writes about an imagined correspondence with his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski; he uses the magical bubble-blowing powers of journeyman Kurt Bevacqua to shed light on the weakening of the powerful childhood bond with his older brother; he considers the doomed utopian back-to-the-land dreams of his hippie parents against the backdrop of inimitable 1970s baseball figures such as 'Designated Pinch Runner' Herb Washington and Mark 'The Bird' Fidrych. Cardboard Gods is more than just the story of a man who can't let go of his past, it's proof that'to paraphrase Jim Bouton'as children we grow up holding baseball cards but in the end we realize that it's really the other way around. 'Josh Wilker writes as beautifully about baseball and life as anyone ever has.''Rob Neyer, ESPN

Josh Wilker (Author), Jim Meskimen (Narrator)

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Coming Back Stronger

When a potentially career-ending shoulder injury left quarterback Drew Brees without a team, and facing the daunting task of having to learn to throw a football all over again, coaches around the NFL wondered, Will he ever come back? After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, leaving more than 80 percent of the city underwater, many wondered, Will the city ever come back? And with their stadium transformed into a makeshift refugee camp, forcing the Saints to play their entire 2005 season on the road, people questioned, Will the Saints ever come back? It takes a special person to turn adversity into success and despair into hope, yet that is exactly what Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees has done, and with the weight of an entire city on his shoulders. Coming Back Stronger is the ultimate comeback story, not only of one of the NFL's top quarterbacks, but also of a city and a team that many had all but given up on. Brees's inspiring message of hope and encouragement proves that with enough faith, determination, and heart, you can overcome any obstacle life throws your way and not only come back, but come back stronger.

Drew Brees (Author), Chris Fabry (Narrator)

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Still a Legend: The Story of Roger Maris

This book recounts the slugger Roger Maris's life before, during, and after his headline season of 1961, when the taciturn North Dakota native topped Babe Ruth's all-time record by hitting sixty-one homers. From his youth as a star high-school athlete and American Legion baseball player, Maris went on to big-time sports with the Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Athletics, New York Yankees, and St. Louis Cardinals. Author Rosenfeld argues that Roger's treatment by the press was both shabby and tragic and that Maris's midwestern modesty and his strength, his need for privacy, and his straightforward bluntness were often wrongly interpreted as arrogance and sullenness, a factor that led many to downplay his claim on the record books.

Harvey Rosenfeld (Author), Ian Esmo (Narrator)

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Rogers Hornsby

In the 1920s, Rogers Hornsby was the National League's foremost star, its biggest since Honus Wagner-and its principal answer to the American League's Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. He was a seven-time National League batting champion, and his 1924 average remains the major-league high for this century. From his Texas childhood until his death in 1962, Hornsby lived his entire life in the world of baseball, building a legend through his remarkable involvement in every phase of the sport. His career as a player, manager, and instructor was spectacular in its unpredictability, and the story of his life chronicles the golden age of baseball. "The long-overdue study of one of baseball's most important and most enigmatic figures....Anyone seriously interested in the history of baseball...will want to add this soundly researched and very readable volume to his library."-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Charles C. Alexander (Author), Ian Esmo (Narrator)

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Honus Wagner

Honus Wagner, whose career in baseball stretched from 1895 to 1917, was the first American sports superstar of the twentieth century. One of the first five players to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in its first year (1939), he was arguably the best shortstop in baseball history. His great career and the dawn of baseball as a popular entertainment occurred simultaneously, and he has become an icon of the early game; his 1909 baseball card, one of which sold for $451,000, is a holy grail of American memorabilia. This first major biography shows why Wagner was America's favorite image of sport during baseball's transition to the modern era.

Dennis Devaleria, Jeanne Burke Devaleria (Author), Ian Esmo (Narrator)

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Still a Legend: The Story of Roger Maris

This book recounts the slugger Roger Maris' life before, during, and after his headline season of 1961, when the taciturn North Dakota native topped Babe Ruth's all-time record by hitting sixty-one home runs. From his youth as a star high-school athlete and American Legion baseball player, Maris's went on to play for the Cleveland Indians, the Kansas City Athletics, the New York Yankees, and the St. Louis Cardinals. Author Rosenfeld argues that Maris's treatment by the press was both shabby and tragic, and that the famous player's Mid-western modesty, need for privacy, and straightforward nature were often wrongly interpreted as arrogance and sullenness—a factor that led many to downplay his claim on the record books. Rosenfeld makes a forceful case for awarding Maris a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame, three decades after his record-breaking 1961 season with the New York Yankees.

Harvey Rosenfeld (Author), Ian Esmo (Narrator)

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Sports Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir