Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, the Lies, and Everything Else

Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, the Lies, and Everything Else Review

The latest and greatest in ESPN.com baseball guru Rob Neyer's
Big Book series, Legends is a highly entertaining guide to baseball fables that
have been handed down through generations.

The well-told baseball story has long been a staple for baseball fans. In Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends, Neyer breathes new life into both classic and obscure stories throughout twentieth-century baseball -- stories that, while engaging on their own, also tell us fascinating things about their main characters and about the sport's incredibly rich history. With his signature style, Rob gets to the heart of every anecdote, working through the particulars with careful research drawn from a variety of primary sources. For each story, he asks: Did this really happen? Did it happen, sort of? Or was the story simply the wild invention of someone's imagination? Among the scores of legends Neyer questions and investigates...

• Did an errant Bob Feller pitch really destroy the career of a National League All-Star?
• Did Greg Maddux mean to give up a long blast to Jeff Bagwell?
• Was Fred Lynn the clutch player he thinks he was?
• Did Tommy Lasorda have a direct line to God?
• Did Negro Leaguer Gene Benson really knock Indians second baseman Johnny Berardino out of baseball and into General Hospital?
• Did Billy Martin really outplay Jackie Robinson every time they met?
• Oh, and what about Babe Ruth's "Called Shot"?

Rob checks each story, separates the truths from the myths, and places their fascinating characters into the larger historical context. Filled with insider lore and Neyer's sharp wit and insights, this is an exciting addition to a superb series and an essential read for true fans of our national pastime. Read more...

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Standard Catalog of Vintage Baseball Cards

Standard Catalog of Vintage Baseball Cards Review

This is the most comprehensive and respected vintage baseball card price guide on the market--considered to be the "bible" of the hobby.

The Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards (2012), 21st Edition, contains thousands of card values covering cards from approximately 5,000 sets released between 1863-1981.

In the 21st Edition, you'll find more than 5,000 photos, explanations for each set, unique features, size, and many additional details. Detailed pricing information and values are included.

The Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards has been, and continues to be, a core title produced by Krause Publication…going on 21 years! If you collect baseball cards, this is a must-have annually!

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Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball

Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball Review

The campaign to desegregate baseball was one of the most important civil rights stories of the 1930s and 1940s. But most of white America knew nothing about this story because mainstream newspapers said little about the color line and less about the efforts to end it. Even today, as far as most Americans know, the integration of baseball revolved around Branch Rickey’s signing of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers’ organization in 1945. This book shows how Rickey’s move, critical as it may well have been, came after more than a decade of work by black and left-leaning journalists to desegregate the game.

Drawing on hundreds of newspaper articles and interviews with journalists, Chris Lamb reveals how differently black and white newspapers, and black and white America, viewed racial equality. He shows how white mainstream sportswriters perpetuated the color line by participating in what their black counterparts called a “conspiracy of silence.” Between 1933 and 1945, black newspapers and the Communist Daily Worker published hundreds of articles and editorials calling for an end to baseball’s color line. The efforts of the alternative presses to end baseball’s color line, chronicled for the first time in Conspiracy of Silence, constitute one of baseball’s—and the civil rights movement’s—great untold stories.

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Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards

Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards Review

Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Cards chronicles the history of baseball cards from the latter part of the 19th century up until WWI. Prior to the popularity of “bubble gum cards,” which refers to baseball cards issued in packs of bubble gum throughout the mid to late 20th century, there were a great deal of baseball cards issued alongside other products. This book covers those cards that came packaged with tobacco, cigarettes, caramels, clothing, and other products. Compared to the famed Topps and Bowman sets of the 1950’s, little to nothing is known about these early cards. This book touches on the more well-known sets, such as the T206’s and Cracker Jack cards, and also delves into the lesser known sets, such as the Boston Store or Tango Egg cards. Regardless as to whether you’re an avid card collector or just a general history buff, this book will surely educate you on a fascinating group of sports cards. The author, Dean Hanley, is an authority on vintage sports and has written many articles on the topic. Mr. Hanley is the founder DeansCards.com, and with well-over one million vintage cards in inventory, DeansCards.com is the largest seller of vintage cards on the web. Read more...

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The Meaning Of Sports

The Meaning Of Sports Review

In The Meaning of Sports, Michael Mandelbaum, a sports fan who is also one of the nation's preeminent foreign policy thinkers, examines America's century-long love affair with team sports. In keeping with his reputation for writing about big ideas in an illuminating and graceful way, he shows how sports respond to deep human needs; describes the ways in which baseball, football and basketball became national institutions and how they reached their present forms; and covers the evolution of rules, the rise and fall of the most successful teams, and the historical significance of the most famous and influential figures such as Babe Ruth, Vince Lombardi, and Michael Jordan.

Whether he is writing about baseball as the agrarian game, football as similar to warfare, basketball as the embodiment of post-industrial society, or the moral havoc created by baseball's designated hitter rule, Mandelbaum applies the full force of his learning and wit to subjects about which so many Americans care passionately: the games they played in their youth and continue to follow as adults. By offering a fresh and unconventional perspective on these games, The Meaning of Sports makes for fascinating and rewarding reading both for fans and newcomers.

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The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy

The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy Review

New York Times Ten Best Books of 2012

“Riveting…The Patriarch is a book hard to put down.”  – Christopher Buckley, The New York Times Book Review

In this magisterial new work The Patriarch, the celebrated historian David Nasaw tells the full story of Joseph P. Kennedy, the founder of the twentieth century's most famous political dynasty. Nasaw—the only biographer granted unrestricted access to the Joseph P. Kennedy papers in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library—tracks Kennedy's astonishing passage from East Boston outsider to supreme Washington insider. Kennedy's seemingly limitless ambition drove his career to the pinnacles of success as a banker, World War I shipyard manager, Hollywood studio head, broker, Wall Street operator, New Deal presidential adviser, and founding chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His astounding fall from grace into ignominy did not come until the years leading up to and following America's entry into the Second World War, when the antiwar position he took as the first Irish American ambassador to London made him the subject of White House ire and popular distaste.

The Patriarch is a story not only of one of the twentieth century's wealthiest and most powerful Americans, but also of the family he raised and the children who completed the journey he had begun. Of the many roles Kennedy held, that of father was most dear to him. The tragedies that befell his family marked his final years with unspeakable suffering.

The Patriarch looks beyond the popularly held portrait of Kennedy to answer the many questions about his life, times, and legacy that have continued to haunt the historical record. Was Joseph P. Kennedy an appeaser and isolationist, an anti-Semite and a Nazi sympathizer, a stock swindler, a bootlegger, and a colleague of mobsters? What was the nature of his relationship with his wife, Rose? Why did he have his daughter Rosemary lobotomized? Why did he oppose the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, and American assistance to the French in Vietnam? What was his relationship to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI? Did he push his second son into politics and then buy his elections for him?

In this pioneering biography, Nasaw draws on never-before-published materials from archives on three continents and interviews with Kennedy family members and friends to tell the life story of a man who participated in the major events of his times: the booms and busts, the Depression and the New Deal, two world wars and a cold war, and the birth of the New Frontier. In studying Kennedy's life, we relive with him the history of the American Century.
 

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T.J. My 26 Years In Baseball

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