This book revisits the main performers of this illustrious team and weaves their stories into a cohesive narrative that captures all the drama and color of Detroit's 1968 season.

    Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, ESPN, has blazed a stunning path of achievement with its expansive coverage of broadcast sports-spinning off into ESPN2, ESPN Classic Sports, ESPNews, and ESPN Magazine-but has also experienced its share of controversy. Along the way, this American entrepreneurial triumph has alienated on-air talent, drawn charges of racial discrimination, and seen employees accused of blatant sexual harassment. ESPN's success story is no fairy tale. Among the colorful lore and amusing anecdotes lurk serious complications and controversies. Through information gleaned from internal documents, police and court records, and interviews with network employees, on-air talent, producers, and executives, ESPN: The Uncensored History probes the inside story of America's premiere sports network. Part corporate history, part media and cultural analysis, and part expose, the book examines both the positive developments effected by the network and the bad habits it has picked up from the business it covers. This paperback reveals the most recent developments at ESPN since the publication of the hardback, including the network's aggressive reactions to the book.

    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.

    In Beyond the Game, Gary Smith has brought together his greatest stories, from the inspiring account of basketball coach Jim Valvano's courageous battle against cancer, to an unforgettable tale of a remote valley in Bolivia that plays host to an unusual annual ritual in which the men of rival villages engage in a riotous all-day fistfight. Beyond the Game is not only a collection of great sportswriting; it is a collection of great writing, period. Each of Smith's stories -- of dreams and fears, failure and triumph, self-destruction and salvation -- will profoundly touch you and remain with you long after you have closed the pages of the book.

    With a completely unlikely but forever memorable cast of characters—including the slight, lisping coach Lou Holtz; the star quarterback, Tony Rice; five foot nothing Asian kicker, Reggie Ho; NFL-bound Ricky Watters; and a crazed and ferocious defensive line, among others—Notre Dame whipped millions of fans into a frenzy. This roller coaster season of football includes the infamous Catholics vs. Convicts game (Notre Dame vs. Jimmy Johnson's #1 ranked Miami Hurricanes). The two teams were undefeated when they met at Notre Dame Stadium, with the Irish winning in the final seconds by a final score of 31-30.With original reporting and interviews with everyone from the players to the coaches, detailed research, and access to the Notre Dame archives, Jerry Barca tells a gripping story of an unbelievable season and the players who would become legends. More than a Notre Dame book, Unbeatable is a compelling narrative of one of the most incredible sports stories of the last century—the unlikely tale of an underdog team coming together and making history.

    Even before their epic pitching duel, Marichal and Spahn already had a lot in common. Future Hall of Famers with high-kicking deliveries, they were shaped into winners by character-building experiences in the military. Spahn had been baseball's most winning pitcher in the 1950s, and Marichal would be equally dominant in the 1960s. The Braves' Spahn and the Giants' Marichal began their duel in San Francisco's cold and windy Candlestick Park. Four hours later, the two pitching legends were deadlocked in a scoreless tie when Willie Mays hit a walk-off home run to end the greatest game ever pitched. In between, Marichal and Spahn each threw more than 200 pitches and went 16 innings without relief. Considering today's culture of pitch counts and coddled arms, it was proved to be a legendary night that won't be repeated ever again.

    Among these guilty pleasures, almost-masterpieces, and undeniable classics in need of revival are unsung noirs (Murder by Contract), famous flops (Can’t Stop the Music, Joe Versus the Volcano), art films (L’ange), theatrical adaptations (The Iceman Cometh), B-movies (Killer Klowns from Outer Space), and even a few Oscar-winners (Some Came Running). In these conversations, the filmmakers defend their choices. These films, they argue, deserve a larger audience and for their place in movie history to be reconsidered. But the conversations’ tangents, diversions, and side trips provide as much insight into the directors’ own approach to moviemaking as into the film they’re discussing. The filmmakers are the perfect hosts, often setting the tone, managing expectations, and giving advice about how you should watch each movie. They’re often brutally honest about a film’s shortcomings or the reasons why it was lost in the first place. The Best Film You’ve Never Seen is not only a guide to some badly overlooked movies but a bold attempt to rewrite film history.

    With four World Series championships in five seasons and a deep bench of legends and comers -- Clemens, Rivera, Williams, Soriano, Jeter, O'Neill -- they dominated the major leagues.For the members of the team, though, baseball Yankees-style was a pressure cooker of anxiety, expectation, and infighting. As the spending and emotion spiraled, careers were made and broken, friendships began and ended, and a sports dynasty rose and fell.In The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, Buster Olney tracks the Yankees through these tumultuous seasons and into the scandals and disappointments of 2004, providing insightful portraits of the stars, the foot soldiers, the coaches, the manager, and the Boss himself. With unparalleled knowledge of the game and an insider's familiarity with the team, Olney also advances a compelling argument that the philosophy that made the Yankees great was inherently unsustainable, ultimately harmful to the sport, and led inevitably to that warm autumn night in Arizona -- the last night of the Yankee dynasty.

    Richard Ben Cramer, Pulitzer Prize winner and acclaimed biographer of Joe DiMaggio, decodes this oversized icon who dominated the game and finds not just a great player, but also a great man. In 1986, Richard Ben Cramer spent months on a profile of Ted Williams, and the result was the Esquire article that has been acclaimed ever since as one of the finest pieces of sports reporting ever written. Given special acknowledgment in The Best American Sportswriting of the Century and adapted for a coffee-table book called Ted Williams: The Seasons of the Kid, the original piece is now available in this special edition, with new material about Williams' later years. While his decades after Fenway Park were out of the spotlight -- the way Ted preferred it -- they were arguably his richest, as he loved and inspired his family, his fans, the players, and the game itself. This is a remembrance for the ages.

    The Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds have endured an excruciating three-day rain delay. Tonight, at last, they will play Game Six of the World Series. Leading three games to two, Cincinnati hopes to win it all; Boston is desperate to stay alive. But for all the anticipation, nobody could have predicted what a classic it would turn out to be: an extra-innings thriller, created by one of the Big Red Machine's patented comebacks and the Red Sox's improbable late-inning rally; clutch hitting, heart-stopping defensive plays, and more twists and turns than a Grand Prix circuit, climaxed by one of the most famous home runs in baseball history that ended it in the twelfth. Here are all the inside stories of some of that era's biggest names in sports: Johnny Bench, Luis Tiant, Sparky Anderson, Pete Rose, Carl Yastrzemski--eight Hall of Famers in all--as well as sportscasters and network execs, cameramen, umpires, groundskeepers, politicians, and fans who gathered in Fenway that extraordinary night.Game Six is an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at what is considered by many to be the greatest baseball game ever played--remarkable also because it was about so much more than just balls and strikes. This World Series marked the end of an era; baseball's reserve clause was about to be struck down, giving way to the birth of free agency, a watershed moment that changed American sports forever. In bestselling author Mark Frost's talented hands, the historical significance of Game Six becomes every bit as engrossing as its compelling human drama.

    Having narrowly dodged death by hiding for months in an attic near Budapest as thousands of fellow Jews in the neighbourhood were dragged off to be murdered, Guttmann later escaped from a slave labour camp. He was one of the lucky ones. His father, sister and wider family perished at the hands of the Nazis.But by 1961, as coach of Benfica, he had lifted one of football's greatest prizes: the European Cup - a feat he repeated the following year. Rising from the death pits of Europe to become its champion in just over sixteen years, Guttmann performed the single greatest comeback in football history.This remarkable story spans two visions of twentieth-century Europe: a continent ruptured by barbarism and genocide, yet lit up by exhilarating encounters in magnificent cities, where great players would strive to win football's holy grail. With dark forces rising once again, the story of Béla Guttmann's life asks the question: which vision of Europe will triumph in our times?

    He was the clutch second baseman for the dominant New York Yankees of the 1950s. He then spent sixteen seasons managing in the big leagues, and is considered by anyone who knows baseball to have been a true baseball genius, a field manager without peer. Yet he’s remembered more for his habit of kicking dirt on umpires, for being hired and fired by George Steinbrenner five times, and for his rabble rousing and public brawls. He was combative, fiery, intimidating, and controversial, yet beloved by the everyday fan. He was hard on his players and even harder on himself. He knew how to turn around a losing team like no one else—and how to entertain us every step of the way.   Now, with his definitive biography Billy Martin, Pennington finally erases the caricature of Martin. Drawing on exhaustive interviews with friends, family, teammates, and countless adversaries, Pennington paints an indelible portrait of a man who never backed down for the game he loved. From his shantytown upbringing in a broken home; to his days playing for the Yankees when he almost always helped his team find a way to win; through sixteen years of managing, including his tenure in New York in the crosshairs of Steinbrenner and Reggie Jackson, Billy Martin made sure no one ever ignored him. And indeed no one could. He was the hero, the antihero, and the alter ego—or some combination of all three—for his short sixty-one years among us.

    Nobody expected an afternoon game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs on May 17, 1979, to be much more than a lazy early-season contest matching two teams heading in opposite directions--the first-place Phillies and the Cubs, those lovable losers--until they combined for thirteen runs in the first inning. "The craziest game ever," one player called it. "And then the second inning started."Ten Innings at Wrigley is Kevin Cook's vivid account of a game that could only have happened at this ballpark, in this era, with this colorful cast of heroes and heels: Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt and Bruce Sutter, surly slugger Dave Kingman, hustler Pete Rose, unlucky Bill Buckner, scarred Vietnam vet Garry Maddox, troubled relief pitcher Donnie Moore, clubhouse jester Tug McGraw, and two managers pulling out what was left of their hair.It was the highest-scoring ballgame in a century, and much more than that. Bringing to life the run-up and aftermath of a contest The New York Times called "the wildest in modern history," Cook reveals the human stories behind the game--and how money, muscles and modern statistics were about to change baseball forever.

    He can use karate. This is serious. There’s $10 million involved. I wouldn’t pull a fraud on the public. This is real. There’s no plan. The blood. The holds. The pain. Everything is going to be real. I’m not here in this time of my life to come out with some phony action. I want you to know this is real."—Muhammad Ali, June 14, 1976, The Tonight ShowOn June 26, 1976, Muhammad Ali fought in a mixed-rules contest against iconic pro wrestling champion Antonio Inoki for the so-called “martial arts championship of the world.” Broadcast from Tokyo to a potential audience of 1.4 billion in 34 countries, the spectacle foreshadowed and, in many ways, led to the rise of mixed martial arts as a major sport.The unique contest was controversial and panned by wrestling and boxing supporters alike, but the real action was behind the scenes. Egos, competing interests, and a general sense of apprehension over what would happen in the ring led to hodgepodge rules thrown together at the last minute. Bizarre plans to “save” Ali if the fight got out of hand were even concocted.In Ali vs. Inoki, author Josh Gross gets inside Ali’s head leading up to the match by resurrecting pre-fight interviews. Gross also introduces us to Inoki, the most famous face in Japan who was instrumental in shaping modern mixed martial arts.

    Here, Dawidoff provides "a careful and sympathetic biography" (Chicago Sun-Times) of this enigmatic man. Photos.