On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met under the lights of Yankee Stadium for that season's NFL Championship game. Football, growing in popularity amid America's post-war economic boom, was still greatly over-shadowed by the country's favored pastime - baseball - but the 1958 championship proved to be the turning point for pro football. On the field and roaming the sidelines were seventeen future Hall of Famers, including Colts stars Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, and Gino Marchetti, and Giants greats Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, and assistant coaches Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry. Played on a freezing Sunday evening in front of 64,000 fans and an estimated forty-five million television viewers around the country - at that time the largest crowd to have ever watched a football game - the championship would become the first sudden-death contest in NFL history. With two minutes left in regulation, Baltimore had possession deep in its own territory, and the ball in the hands of the still unproven quarterback Johnny Unitas. The Best Game Ever is a brilliant portrait of how a single game changed the history of American sports. Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the championship, it is destined to be a sports classic.
'Oh, the game was very different in my day from what it's like today. I don't mean just that the fences were further back and the ball was deader and things like that. I mean it was more fun to play ball then.' - Davy JonesFirst published in 1966, The Glory of Their Times is a universally hailed classic. A loving look back at the way baseball used to be, and the legends who played the game--immortals like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, and many others--it's a delightfully evocative work full of fascinating characters and wonderful anecdotes.This is also the story of author Lawrence S. Ritter's six year quest to find the heroes of a bygone era. He interviewed more than two dozen players from the turn of the century and the decades shortly thereafter, including many now in the Baseball Hall of Fame, then let them tell their own stories, in their own words. The scorecard includes Rube Marquard, Chief Meyers, Goose Goslin, Smoky Joe Wood, Wahoo Sam Crawford, and many more. This new audio compilation of the original interviews is great news for baseball fans and anyone who loves old-time tales of America's national pastime.
Journalist Kodas has written a disturbing account of stupidity and greed on the slopes of Mount Everest. On assignment for the Hartford Courant in 2004, Kodas joined an expedition led by a couple who had summited the mountain more than a dozen times between them. As he moved up Everest, Kodas watched his expedition disintegrate in a mess of recriminations, thefts, lies and violence. At the same time, a sociopathic guide was leading a 69-year-old doctor to his death on the unforgiving slopes. The twin disasters led Kodas to delve into the commercialization of Mount Everest, and to discover that such experiences were becoming a depressing norm. A thorough reporter, Kodas does an excellent job exposing the ways in which money and ego have corrupted the traditional cultures of both mountaineers and their Sherpa guides. He also brings a painful focus to the delusions, misunderstandings and indifference that allow climbers to literally step over the bodies of dying people on their way to the top. Oddly enough, Kodas writes less ably about himself, and the reasons for his own expedition's collapse remain unclear; the sequencing of story lines is confusing as well. Nevertheless, his narrative is as hard to turn away from as a slow-motion train wreck.
The Inner Game of Tennis is a revolutionary program for overcoming the self-doubt, nervousness, and lapses of concentration that can keep a player from winning. Now available in a revised paperback edition, this classic bestseller can change the way the game of tennis is played.
If you think a gang of real-life geeks can't take on the world and win big...think again. And whatever you do, don't sit down across a gaming table from Jon Finkel, better known as Jonny Magic. Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids is his amazing true story: the jaw-dropping, zero-to-hero chronicle of a fat, friendless boy from New Jersey who found his edge in a game of cards'and turned it into a fortune!
When Joe Torre was fired as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1995, he thought his career in baseball was over. After more than three decades and 4,200 games as a player and manager, one thing had always eluded him: winning a World Series.
He had all but given up his dream when the New York Yankees made him an offer to manage their 1996 club. Encouraged by his wife and others, he accepted. And so began one of the greatest seasons in the fabled history of the New York Yankee franchise and one of the most inspiring, heartwarming stories in all of baseball.
Here is the ultimate insider's record of that unforgettable season by the man whose personal struggles captured the hearts and imaginations of fans everywhere. Tough, gritty, but always fair and honest, Torre vividly reveals how he turned a potentially volatile mix of talented youngsters such as Andy Pettitte and Derek Jeter, seasoned veterans like Wade Boggs and Paul O'Neill, and so-called "problem" players like Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden into a cohesive unit that cared more about winning than personal egos. He explains how he played his hunches and earned his team's confidence and respect as he focused his players from spring training on toward one goal: the World Series. And he did it all in a pressure-filled sports city that expects nothing less than a champion.
Here is Joe Torre's own story, told for the first time in his own words, from his early childhood in Brooklyn, to his celebrated baseball career playing with the likes of Hank Aaron and Bob Gibson, to his stint as the first native New Yorker ever to manage the Yankees. Offering a rare, behind-the-scenes look at a season to remember and a man who went through so much to reach the pinnacle of his profession, Chasing the Dream is more than just another sports story. It is a poignant reminder of why we love the game - and how, sometimes, nice guys do finish first.
In diesem akustischen Portrait spricht Max Schmeling über die verschiedenen Abschnitte seines Lebens: er berührt Themen wie seine Kindheit im Brandenburgischen, seine Freundschaft zum amerikanischen Boxprofi Joe Louis und die Liebe zu seiner Frau Anny Ondra.
Von Angelika Waller gelesene Gedichte verschiedener Autoren wie Goethe oder Ringelnatz runden die einzelnen Themen literarisch ab.
Golf My Own Damn Way is a different golf instructional book, as only John Daly can write. Funny, irreverent, and crude, this book is perfect for the everyday golfer looking to improve his or her game or nongolfers looking for a laugh.
This is the latest hilarious collection of folksy, humorous, and wonderfully wise stories about country life from the bestselling author of The Blight Way.
Each week, when Sports Illustrated's 21 million readers open up their magazine, many turn right to the last page because that's where to find SI's most popular feature: the Life of Reilly column written by bestselling author Rick Reilly. A twenty-one-year veteran of the magazine and ten-time Sportswriter of the Year, Reilly took over SI's back page in 1998, and his column immediately attracted a devoted audience who helped make his 1990 book, The Life of Reilly, a New York Times bestseller.
This new collection includes 100 of Reilly's favorite columns from the last six years, along with an introduction by Lance Armstrong. The title of the book signifies the strong reader response his columns typically generate (he wrote a column saying that cheerleading isn't a sport, and there was a light-hearted backlash). Alternately side-splitting and heart-warming, but always opinionated and provocative, this book brings together the best work by the best columnist in the business.
On the evening of July 27, 1985, five hikers made a fateful choice to climb Yosemite's Half Dome, even as the sky darkened and thunder rolled. By night's end, two would be dead from a lightning strike, three gravely wounded, and desperate EMTs would be overseeing a harrowing midnight helicopter rescue.
"[A] well-written and thoroughly investigated account....[Madgic's] contribution to the adventure category is at once a terrifying story and an urgent cautionary tale."-Publishers Weekly
New York Times and Washington Post contributor Richard Louv is the widely respected author of seven previous books. In Last Child in the Woods, Louv illustrates how the alienation of today's children from nature can lead to a host of childhood disorders-and he offers effective methods for healing this rift.
