"The Emerald Diamond is a must read. It is a remarkable story about the achievements of the Irish throughout the history of baseball in America."-Jay P. DolanNew York Times bestselling sportswriter Charley Rosen, author of The Bullpen Diaries and More than Just a Game, delivers a one-of-a-kind instant classic perfect "for anyone who is Irish and loves baseball."The history of the Irish in ...

"Delightful and insightful." —John Thorn, author of Total BaseballBaseball is the only sport where the defense has the ball, and there is no lonelier in the world of sports than the pitcher's mound. Which makes Yankee relievers among the most scrutinized and intriguing group of athletes in the game. In Bullpen Diaries, Charley Rosen, lifelong Yankees fan and co-author of the bestseller More Than Just a Game, delivers a fun, insider's look at this rare bree...

A coming-of-age novel that takes us from a very tall boy’s discovery of his love of basketball to a young man who engages in point-shaving while a college player on his way to NBA brilliance with a shadow hanging over him—a book that sheds light on both the sheer beauty and some of the ugliness in the game.A bildungsroman and the most autobiographical yet of Charley Rosen’s many works of fiction, nonfiction and reportage on the subject of basketball, D...

"Charley Rosen has undertaken the challenge of documenting the latest and greatest history of the game professionally--and has done so to great success. . . . . When I finished the book it seemed as if I had gone through another season, injuries and all. . . . Rosen skillfully leads readers through the NBA's first steps along its journey toward what it has become today.”--Phil Jackson, from the Foreword"Rosen, a wonderful sportswriter . . . had forgotten mor...

In The Wizard of Odds, renowned and best-selling basketball writer Charley Rosen brings us for the first time the full life story of Jack Molinas, one of the greatest basketball players of his era, a man whose gambling addiction and hubris caused his ultimate demise. Drawing on numerous, previously unavailable first-person accounts, including Jack Molinas’s own journal and trial transcripts, Rosen presents the true saga of a man who perhaps better than anyone around him understood the weak...

Elliot Hersch is given a basketball on his tenth birthday and cuts a deal with his disapproving father: if he makes straight As, he is allowed to play. Modeling his game on the basketball heroes of his time--Clyde Frazier, Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson, and especially Larry Bird--Elliot becomes one of the finest high school basketball players in New York.Trying to steer clear of the corruption and sleaze in the big college programs, Elliott signs with the seemingly clean-cut Univer...

A few years after its invention by James Naismith, basketball became the primary sport in the crowded streets of the Jewish neighborhood on New York’s Lower East Side. Participating in the new game was a quick and enjoyable way to become Americanized. Jews not only dominated the sport for the next fifty‑plus years but were also instrumental in modernizing the game.Barney Sedran was considered the best player in the country at the City College of New York from 1909 to 1911. In 1927 ...

A scout's iconoclastic views of basketball, love, and American culture.Brimming with truth, humor, and humanity, bestselling author Charley Rosen lays bare the trials and tribulations of anyone who loves sports for the game of it, not the business.Naturally sarcastic, a touch disillusioned, but always the idealist, Rob Lassner is an NBA scout who must assess the potential of high school and college players while appeasing a "shit-for-brains" owner who would...

The 1980s were arguably the NBA’s best decade, giving rise to Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan. They were among the game’s greatest players who brought pro basketball out of its 1970s funk and made it faster, more fluid, and more exciting. Off the court the game was changing rapidly too, with the draft lottery, shoe commercials, and a style driven largely by excess.One player who personified the eighties excess is Micheal Ray Richardson. During his eight-year career in...

During the 1972–1973 basketball season, the Philadelphia 76ers were not just a bad team; they were fantastically awful. Doomed from the start after losing their leading scorer and rebounder, Billy Cunningham, as well as head coach Jack Ramsay, they lost twenty-one of their first twenty-three games. A Philadelphia newspaper began calling them the Seventy Sickers, and they duly lost their last thirteen games on their way to a not-yet-broken record of nine wins and seventy-three losses.

A New York Times Notable BookHere is the story of an all-Jewish basketball team traveling in a hearse through Depression-era America in search of redemption and big money. A hilarious road novel, The House of Moses All-Stars is also a passionate portrayal of a young Jewish man struggling to realize his dreams in a country struggling to recover its ideals. Charley Rosen gives us basketball as a metaphor for life.Aaron Steiner, the protagoni...

Jason Lewis is a star college basketball player just back from World War II. He’s a hero, missing two fingers on his shooting hand. He can’t play any longer, so he makes the ultimate ballplayer’s sacrifice: he becomes a referee. Set in postwar New York during the founding of what will eventually be the NBA, No Blood, No Foul is the story of a man who must come to terms with a debilitating injury and chase after dreams of perfection in a decidedly imperfect world. Charley Rosen gives us not...