Heaven Is a Playground was the first book on the uniquely American phenomenon of urban basketball. Rick Telander, a photojournalist and former high school basketball player, spent part of the summer of 1973 and all of the summer of 1974 in Brooklyn living the playground life with his subjects at Foster Park in Flatbush. He slept on the floor of a park regular’s apartment, observing, questioning, traveling, playing with, and eventually coaching a ragtag group of local teenagers who...

For more than twenty-five years, The Best American Sports Writing has curated the year's finest sports journalism. Continuing the tradition in a long line of notable guest editors is Rick Telander, acclaimed journalist, author, and champion of the written word . His choices are defined by one shared thread: effort, on the part of athletes and writers alike. The physical strength it takes to play professional hockey and football, or for a forty-two-year-old writer to learn...

A detailed expose on the corruption in college football by acclaimed sportswriter Rick Telander, with a foreword by Rick Reilly!In 1989, when Rick Telander first published The Hundred Yard Lie, he proposed that big-time college football should be professionalized.In doing so, Telander was ahead of his time, for the problems that he outlined more than thirty years ago are still relevant today—and in some cases are more severe. In The College Foot...

With 42 original poems by author Rick Telander and an equal number of full-page, full-color illustrations from 42 different artists from four countries, Sweet Dreams is a beautiful, easy-to-read poetry collection in the fashion of Robert Louis Stevenson’s century-old classic, A Child’s Garden of Verses.Started when Telander was sick in a bed many years ago and had begun writing the poems in his head, this bookis a work of caring for young boys and girls who must m...

"Sweet Dreams'' consists of 42 original poems with bedtime, sleep, and dreaming as their central themes. The poems are traditional in form and follow rhyme and meter, done in in the fashion of Robert Louis Stevenson’s century-old classic, A Child’s Garden of Verses.Topics include moonlit nights, snowy days, dreams of dinosaurs in the bedroom, annoyance at a Key West rooster crowing all night, what it would be like to wake up as a worm, the oddness of a fever ailment, gazing at autum...

The Divine Nature of Basketball: My Season Inside the Ivy League describes a season spent as a virtual coach in the Ivy League. Shadowing head coach of Yale men’s basketball James Jones and bird-dogging his team from first practice to final game, Ed Breslin fulfills every college basketball fan’s fantasy of being an NCAA Division I coach.It’s sports journalism in the tradition of George Plimpton. But above all, it’s a celebration of basketball, of participation in life, of...

The ultimate record of a great franchise's greatest season as told by none other than Da Coach himselfIn Ditka's own words, this 30th anniversary volume of The '85 Bears is packed with special features that make it the ultimate must-have treasure for every Bears fan. This updated edition features the authors' reflections on the incredible championship season as well as recaps and statistics for every regular- and post-season game, bringing the entire 1985 campaign ...

More than thirty years ago, acclaimed author and Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander was drafted out of Northwestern University by a Kansas City Chiefs team filled with future Pro Football Hall of Famers and coached by the legendary Hank Stram. In 2004, Telander found the tattered, spiral-bound journal he kept while in that training camp and, after rereading the entries he kept until being cut from the team, was amazed and moved by the life lessons he took away from t...

While searching in the weeds for the first ball he ever hit for a home run, ten-year old Billy Lawson finds instead a battered old baseball half-buried in the mud far beyond the outfield fence. Soon Billy realizes the ball is magic, that it talks out loud and can help him become a better player and person. With a mysterious connection to one of the most historic Major League players ever, the ball--which Billy has named "Buddy''-- also gives guidance to a pair of Billy's troubled teammates...

The '85 Bears: We Were the Greatest is Coach Mike Ditka's memoir of a season Chicago will never forget and opponents would rather erase from their minds. Packed with unforgettable behind-the-scenes stories and exhilarating moments including the dominating win over the Patriots in Super Bowl XX, Walter Payton phoning Ditka's office pretending to be a woman named Yolanda, Jim McMahon's enduring regard for the healing power of acupuncture, and how a rookie named William Perry turned ...