Sports & Recreation : Baseball

From the perspective of 2007, the unintentional irony of Chance's boast is manifest—these days, the question is when will the Cubs ever win a game they have to have. In October 1908, though, no one would have laughed: The Cubs were, without doubt, baseball's greatest team—the first dynasty of the 20th century. Crazy '08 recounts the 1908 season—the year when Peerless Leader Frank Chance's men went toe to toe to toe with John McGraw and Christy Mathewson's New York Giants and Honus Wagner's Pittsburgh Pirates in the greatest pennant race the National League has ever seen. The American League has its own three-cornered pennant fight, and players like Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and the egregiously crooked Hal Chase ensured that the junior circuit had its moments. But it was the National League's—and the Cubs'—year. Crazy '08 , however, is not just the exciting story of a great season. It is also about the forces that created modern baseball, and the America that produced it. In 1908, crooked pols run Chicago's First Ward, and gambling magnates control the Yankees. Fans regularly invade the field to do handstands or argue with the umps; others shoot guns from rickety grandstands prone to burning. There are anarchists on the loose and racial killings in the town that made Lincoln. On the flimsiest of pretexts, General Abner Doubleday becomes a symbol of Americanism, and baseball's own anthem, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," is a hit. Picaresque and dramatic, 1908 is a season in which so many weird and wonderful things happen that it is somehow unsurprising that a hairpiece, a swarm of gnats, a sudden bout of lumbago, and a disaster down in the mines all play a role in its outcome. And sometimes the events are not so wonderful at all. There are several deaths by baseball, and the shadow of corruption creeps closer to the heart of baseball—the honesty of the game itself. Simply more...

Price: $11.95

No sport has mattered more to Americans than baseball--and no team has had a greater impact on baseball than the New York Yankees. Now Neil Sullivan delivers a narrative worthy of his fabled subject, in this marvelous history of Yankee Stadium. Fans have a box-seat at the Stadium's first Opening Day: The stunning visual impact of the baseball's first true stadium, the festivities, the players (including Babe Ruth who christened the Stadium with its first home run), and the game in which the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4-1. The Stadium was immediately known as "The House That Ruth Built," but Sullivan takes us behind the scenes to meet the politicians, businessmen and fixers who were even more responsible for the Stadium than the Babe was: Colonel Jacob Ruppert, the beer baron and Tammany Hall insider who bought the Yankees and built the Stadium; Mayors like Jimmy Walker who reigned during the Yankees first Golden Age, John Lindsay who fought hard for liberal causes in the 1960s but even harder for a refurbished Stadium, and Rudy Giuliani, who has taken a hard-nosed approach to most welfare but who supports a stadium subsidy for the Yankees. Here too are the great seasons including the cross town World Series rivalries with the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Sullivan looks at the legendary players like Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle as well as lesser lights like Jake Powell to see their impact beyond the diamond. Along the way, Sullivan uses the story of the Stadium to examine issues ranging from racial integration and urban renewal to the reasons why New York City, even during tough times, has come to adopt the Stadium as a public obligation. Neil Sullivan knows baseball and city politics and the connections between the two. In these pages, he tells how Yankee Stadium is not just the most revered venue in American sports, but also a part of urban history as compelling as the grandest baseball legend.   more...

Price: $35.00

HALL OF FAMER DAVE WINFIELD:. ''THE GAME I LOVE IS HURTING.''. Revenue has never been higher, attendance has never been better, and baseball has never had a stronger international presence. Yet, with all of the prosperity, the game has rarely faced more significant problems, both in the headlines and deep within our communities. Steroid scandals, labor strife, self-centered superstars, a dramatic decline in the number of African American players and fans, constraints on Little League facilities and resources, and competition from trendier sports and entertainment options all threaten the foundations of our national pastime. more...

Price: $17.99

A fan's notes for the ages, Faithful grew from an email exchange last summer. Filled with the heady mix of exhilaration and frustration familiar to all Boston Red Sox fans, Stewart O'Nan fired off a note to fellow Sox fan, Stephen King, who responded with his thoughts on Pedro, Nomar, Manny, Mueller, and Theo. more...

Price: $11.99

Every spring, millions of Americans prepare to take part in one of the oddest, most obsessive, and most engrossing rituals in the sports pantheon: Rotisserie baseball, a fantasy game where armchair fans match wits by building their own teams. In 2004, Sam Walker, a sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal, decided to explore this phenomenon by talking his way into Tout Wars, a league reserved for the nation’s top experts. The result is one of the most sheerly entertaining sports books in years and a matchless look into the heart and soul of our national pastime. more...

Price: $15.00