Best of
Sports

1973

The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading And Bubblegum Book


Brendan C. Boyd - 1973
    This New York Times Notable Book of the Year is a trip down memory lane to the days when baseball was king and baseball cards ruled the schoolyard. In fuller-than-living-color, the authors present more than two hundred baseball cards with outrageously funny bios, accompanied by definitive observations on trading, hoarding, collecting, flipping, "and other aberrations of the baseball card life." With a new introduction, this irreverent and affectionate look at baseball in the halcyon days of the 1950s ("before the graphics got better and the game got worse") is sure to appeal to even the most sober of baseball fans.

Face-off at the Summit


Ken Dryden - 1973
    The Russians were unknowns, victors ad nauseum over Olympians from Sweden, Finland, Czechoslovakia, et al., but untested against NHL competition. Cocksure predictions of an 8-game sweep were not only the norm in Canada, but a national right (and rite). When the Canadians scored the first two goals of the series almost before the first puck dropped, all seemed right in Saskatchewan. But after that came debacle: Canada lost the game, 7-3, and therein lies Ken Dryden’s tale. Dryden was one of the top NHL goalies of the 1970s. He led the Montreal Canadiens to six Stanley Cups, won Rookie of the Year in 1972, and earned five Vezina Trophies as the best goalie in an NHL season. That he started four of the eight games against the Russians came as no surprise. The shock was that a star of Dryden’s magnitude was forced to change his entire goaltending style after losing his first two starts. Nor was he alone. His teammates were just as unprepared for a style of hockey they had never seen before. (I still recall the baffled expressions of the Canadian TV hockey “experts” after one of the losses.).. Today's hockey fans know a lot of National Hockey League players whose names end in “ov”--Afinogenov, Kozlov, Federov, Antropov, Chistov, Samsonov, etc. Most are Russian. Forty years ago, such a statement would be unheard of. The Cold War was on, and while Canadians and Russians played the same game, they did so in two hostile worlds. Their only hockey contact occurred in the Olympic Games when the Soviets played Canadian amateurs, not professionals from the NHL..Until this landmark beginning!

In This Corner . . . !: Forty-two World Champions Tell Their Stories


Peter Heller - 1973
    Including two never-before-published interviews with Roberto Durán and Alexis Argüello, this newly expanded and updated edition of In This Corner. . . ! is undoubtedly the best one-volume history of boxing ever written.

The Pro Football Experience


David Boss - 1973
    

The Best of Sports Illustrated


Sports Illustrated - 1973
    In this compendium, the editors of the magazine take a journey through the past - a pictorial overview of athletic highlights, plus excerpts from the stories that accompanied them.

Dealing with Cheats: Illustrated Methods of Cardsharps, Dice Hustlers, and Other Gambling Swindlers


A.D. Livingston - 1973
    

Way to Go, Teddy


Donald Honig - 1973
    

None against!


Keith Magnuson - 1973
    

great teams great years cleveland browns


Jack Clary - 1973