They were the rank underdogs and they swept to victory on an unprecedented tide of goodwill that washed over the nation. Only Martin Flanagan could bring to life this particular miracle. The club's two guiding spirits - captain Bob Murphy and coach Luke Beveridge - welcomed him in, Beveridge making available his match diaries, pre-match notes and video highlights. Flanagan interviewed every player, watched every match, talked with the trainers, the women in the football department, the fans who never miss a training session, the cheer squad.What Flanagan shows is that the Bulldogs found a new way to play partly because they found a new way to be a team - a new way to support each other, even a new way to be. A Wink from the Universe takes us into the heart of the community Luke Beveridge and Bob Murphy dreamt into being with the support of the Bulldog people around them. This is a classic of sportswriting - a book for fans of the club, and of the game, but also a book for anyone who wants to know how a group of people can will a miracle to happen.

    Turning The Tables is the first published history of the company which grew from a run-down bingo hall to become a national pay-per-view competitor... then crashed in a sea of debt. John Lister (author of Slamthology) gives an independent, objective and informative account that reveals hidden secrets and shatters common myths. From a little-known truth about ECW's most famous feud to a blow-by-blow account of what really happened in Revere, this book will give you the true story behind America's most controversial wrestling group.

    John Smoltz was one of the greatest Major League pitchers of the late twentieth / early twenty-first century—one of only two in baseball history ever to achieve twenty wins and fifty saves in single seasons—and now he shares the candid, no-holds-barred story of his life, his career, and the game he loves in Starting and Closing.A Cy Young Award-winner, future Baseball Hall of Famer, and currently a broadcaster for his former team, the Atlanta Braves, Smoltz  delivers a powerful memoir with the kind of fascinating insight into game that made Moneyball a runaway bestseller, plus a heartfelt and truly inspiring faith and religious conviction, similar to what illuminates each page of Tim Tebow’s smash hit memoir, Through My Eyes.

    York reminds us of the true meaning of heroism. York's bravery on the battlefield made him famous, but it was his decision to turn down the easy riches of celebrity that secured his position as one of history's greatest Christian patriots. Based on new interviews with all of York's living children, and York's own diaries, this exhaustive biography follows the young soldier from the hills of Tennessee to the battlefields of France, down Broadway in a triumphant ticker-tape parade, and back home to his family farm where he spent the rest of his life in service to his community and his God.

    It helped in the American conquest of California, the launch of the Republican Party, and the ignition of the western Indian wars. And along the way, Lake Tahoe even found the time to invent the ski industry, spark the sexual revolution, and win countless Academy Awards. Tahoe beneath the Surface brings this hidden history of America s largest mountain lake to life through the stories of its most celebrated residents and visitors over the last ten thousand years. It mixes local Washoe Indian legends with tales of murderous Mafia dons, and Rat Pack tunes with Steinbeck novels. It establishes Tahoe as one of America s literary hot spots by tracing the steps of more than a dozen authors including Bertrand Russell, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Michael Ondaatje. Tahoe beneath the Surface reveals how the lake transformed the lives of conservationists like John Muir, humorists like Mark Twain, and Hollywood icons like Frank Sinatra. It even touches upon some of the darker aspects of American history, including anti-Chinese racism and the Kennedy assassination. Despite the impact Lake Tahoe has had on America, environmental threats loom large, and Tahoe Blue a term that Lankford uses to encompass the whole range of life, beauty, and meaning the lake represents grows increasingly vulnerable. In Tahoe beneath the Surface, human history and natural history combine in a most engaging way, one that will both inform and inspire all who would keep Tahoe blue.

    Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the fantastic scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation's leading gamblers to throw the Series in Cincinnati. Mr. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial. Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the motives and backgrounds of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Here, too, is a graphic picture of the American underworld that managed the fix, the deeply shocked newspapermen who uncovered the story, and the war-exhausted nation that turned with relief and pride to the Series, only to be rocked by the scandal. Far more than a superbly told baseball story, this is a compelling slice of American history in the aftermath of World War I and at the cusp of the Roaring Twenties.

    In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke that barrier, striking a crucial blow for racial equality and changing the world of sports forever. I Never Had It Made is Robinson's own candid, hard-hitting account of what it took to become the first black man in history to play in the major leagues.I Never Had It Made recalls Robinson's early years and influences: his time at UCLA, where he became the school's first four-letter athlete; his army stint during World War II, when he challenged Jim Crow laws and narrowly escaped court martial; his years of frustration, on and off the field, with the Negro Leagues; and finally that fateful day when Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers proposed what became known as the "Noble Experiment"—Robinson would step up to bat to integrate and revolutionize baseball.More than a baseball story, I Never Had It Made also reveals the highs and lows of Robinson's life after baseball. He recounts his political aspirations and civil rights activism; his friendships with Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, William Buckley, Jr., and Nelson Rockefeller; and his troubled relationship with his son, Jackie, Jr.Originally published the year Robinson died, I Never Had It Made endures as an inspiring story of a man whose heroism extended well beyond the playing field.

    Currently the play-by-play announcer for the Toronto Blue Jays, Martinez has witnessed enormous change in the game he loves, as it has morphed from a grassroots pastime to big business. Not all of the change has been for the better, and today’s fans struggle to connect to their on-the-field heroes as loyalty to club and player wavers and free agency constantly changes the face of every team’s roster.In Change Up, Martinez offers his unique insights into how Major League Baseball might reconnect with its fanbase, how the clubs might train and prepare their players for their time in “The Show,” and how players might approach the sport in a time of sagging fan interest. Martinez isn’t shy with his opinions, whether they be on pitch count, how to develop players through the minor-league system, and even if there should be a minor-league system at all. Always entertaining, ever insightful, Martinez shares brilliant insights and inside pitches about summer’s favourite game.

    Born to a father of Italian descent and an African- American mother, Campanella wanted to be a ballplayer from childhood but was barred by color from the major leagues. He dropped out of school to play professional ball with the Negro Leagues’ Washington (later Baltimore) Elite Giants, where he honed his skills under Hall of Fame catcher Biz Mackey. Campy played eight years in the Negro Leagues until the major leagues integrated. Ironically, he and not Jackie Robinson might have been the player to integrate baseball, as Lanctot reveals. An early recruit to Branch Rickey’s “Great Experiment” with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Campy became the first African-American catcher in the twentieth century in the major leagues. As Lanctot discloses, Campanella and Robinson, pioneers of integration, had a contentious relationship, largely as a result of a dispute over postseason barnstorming.Campanella was a mainstay of the great Dodger teams that consistently contended for pennants in the late 1940s and 1950s. He was a three-time MVP, an outstanding defensive catcher, and a powerful offensive threat. But on a rainy January night in 1958, all that changed. On his way home from his liquor store in Harlem, Campy lost control of his car, hit a utility pole, and was paralyzed below the neck. Lanctot reveals how Campanella’s complicated personal life (he would marry three times) played a role in the accident. Campanella would now become another sort of pioneer, learning new techniques of physical therapy under the celebrated Dr. Howard Rusk at his Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. As he gradually recovered some limited motion, Campanella inspired other athletes and physically handicapped people everywhere.Based on interviews with dozens of people who knew Roy Campanella and diligent research into contemporary sources, Campy offers a three-dimensional portrait of this gifted athlete and remarkable man whose second life after baseball would prove as illustrious and courageous as his first.

    An inside-the-dugout account, based on interviews with the key players among the Angels, Astros, Mets and Red Sox, of a remarkable season and arguably the most spectacular comeback in the history of the sport.

    Filled with Allen's wit and humor, the book includes many radio skits featuring Allen, his wife Portland, and stars such as Jack Benny and George Jessel, and provides a fascinating look at radio during its “Golden Age.” Prior to his radio career, Allen was a vaudeville star; those exploits are recounted in his book Much Ado About Me. Fred Allen died in New York City in 1956 at the age of 61.

    It's a sport that shows us what a human being might be capable of, with extreme dedication--whether we're eating hot dogs in the stands, waiting out a rain delay in our living rooms, or practising the lost art of catching a stray radio signal from an out-of-market broadcast.From learning about America through ball diamond visits to the most famous triple play that never happened on Canadian soil, Forbes invites us to witness the adult conversing with the O Pee-Chee baseball cards of his youth. Tender, insightful, and with the slow heartbreak familiar to anyone who's cheered on a losing team, The Utility of Boredom tells us a thing or two about the sport, and how a seemingly trivial game might help us make sense of our messy lives.

    But for the baseball cognoscenti, there are just a few "must-have" classics: BALL FOUR by Jim Bouton. THE LONG SEASON by Jim Brosnan. WILLIE'S TIME by Charles Einstein. And SEASONS IN HELL by Mike Shropshire, which was a hilarous first-person account of Mike's travails serving as a daily beat writer covering the hapless 1972 Texas Rangers. Now, in The Last Real Season, Shropshire captures the essence of a different time and different place in baseball, when the average salary for major leaguers was only $27,600...when the ballplayers' drug of choice was alcohol, not steroids...when major leaguers sported tight doubleknit uniforms over their long-hair and Afros...and on July 28th, 1975, the day that famed Detroit resident Jimmy Hoffa went missing, the Detroit Tigers started a losing streak of 19 games in a row. On the day that the Tigers blew a 4-run lead in the bottom of the ninth, Shropshire recalls: "I drank three bottles of Stroh's beer in less than a minute and wrote that 'Jimmy Hoffa will show up in the left field stands with Amelia Earhart as his date before the Tigers will win another game.'"And so it goes. Filled with just the kind of wonderful baseball stories that real fans crave, this is the funniest baseball book of the year.

    It follows the experiences of the author as she and her friends come to terms with the non-stop hustle and bustle of hospital life. This book treats the reader to a peep behind the scenes as we enter the hospital wards. As well as an insight into nurse training, hurry up nurse provides a glimpse into the social history of life in the 1970's and early 1980's.

    In Slap Shot Original, Dave Hanson gives readers not only a behind the scenes look at what life was like on the set during the filming of the classic movie, but also treats them to stories from the actors and players themselves.