With its iconic stars and gleaming ballparks, baseball has been one of the most captivating forms of modern popular culture. In Expanding the Strike Zone, Daniel A. Gilbert examines the history and meaning of the sport's tumultuous changes since the mid-twentieth century, amid Major League Baseball's growing global influence. From the rise of ballplayer unionism to the emergence of new forms of scouting, broadcasting, and stadium development, Gilbert shows that the baseball world ...

GOOOAAAAAL! Get ready for a front-row seat at the world's most-watched sporting event--the World Cup.Every four years, thirty-two of the best men's soccer teams from across the globe compete for the title of FIFA World Cup winner. Over one billion people tuned in worldwide to watch the final game of the 2014 competition, making the World Cup the most widely viewed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Summer Olympics! This book takes a look back at what h...

“How can the NCAA blithely wreck careers without regard to due process or common fairness? How can it act so ruthlessly to enforce rules that are so petty? Why won’t anybody stand up to these outrageous violations of American values and American justice?”In the four years since Joe Nocera asked those questions in a controversial New York Times column, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has come under fire. Fans have begun to realize that the athl...

Ecstasy to Agony:The 1994 Montreal Expos: How the Best Team in Baseball Ended up in Washington Ten Years Later traces the fortunes of the Expos from that day in 1989 when the organization's original owner Charles Bronfman decided to sell the team and step away from baseball, through to the team's climb to glory in 1994 and then its final descent into oblivion ten years later.Written by Danny Galagher and Bill Young, authors of the best-selling Remembering the Montreal ...

A Home on the Field is about faith, loyalty, and trust. It is a parable in the tradition of Stand and Deliver and Hoosiers—a story of one team and their accidental coach who became certain heroes to the whole community.For the past ten years, Siler City, North Carolina, has been at the front lines of immigration in the interior portion of the United States. Like a number of small Southern towns, workers come from traditional Latino enclaves across the Uni...

"A fantastic social history" from the author of Salt and Cod (USA Today)In the Dominican Republic town of San Pedro de Macorís, baseball is often seen as the only way to a better life. For those who make it, the million-dollar paychecks from Major League Baseball mean that not only they, but their entire families as well, have been saved from grinding poverty. The successful few set an example that dazzles the neighbors they left behind. ...

"Enlightening" essays on athletes, activism, and the important role sports plays in our society ( Publishers Weekly).Sportscaster Howard Cosell dubbed it "rule number one of the jockocracy": sports and politics just don't mix. But in truth, some of our most important debates about class, race, religion, sex, and the raw quest for political power are played out both on and off the field. From the NFL lockout and the role of soccer in the Arab Spring to the ...

From an award-winning writer, the first linked history of African Americans and Latinos in Major League BaseballAfter peaking at 27 percent of all major leaguers in 1975, African Americans now make up less than one-tenth--a decline unimaginable in other men's pro sports. The number of Latin Americans, by contrast, has exploded to over one-quarter of all major leaguers and roughly half of those playing in the minors. Award-winning historian Rob Ruck not only explain...

Essential reading for soccer fans as the 2022 World Cup approaches, this lively and lyrical book is "an ideal guide to the world's most popular sport" (Simon Kuper, coauthor of Soccernomics).Soccer is not only the world's most popular game; it's also one of the most widely shared forms of global culture. The Language of the Game is a passionate and engaging introduction to soccer's history, tactics, and human drama. Profiling soccer's full cast of...

The story of Texas’s impact on American sports culture during the civil rights and second-wave feminist movements, this book offers a new understanding of sports and society in the state and the nation as a whole.In the 1960s and 1970s, America experienced a sports revolution. New professional sports franchises and leagues were established, new stadiums were built, football and basketball grew in popularity, and the proliferation of television enabled people across...

“Dave Zirin is the best young sportswriter in America.”—Robert LipsyteThis much-anticipated sequel to What’s My Name, Fool? by acclaimed commentator Dave Zirin breaks new ground in sports writing, looking at the controversies and trends now shaping sports in the United States—and abroad. Features chapters such as “Barry Bonds is Gonna Git Your Mama: The Last Word on Steroids,” “Pro Basketball and the Two Souls of Hip-Hop,” “An Icon’s Redemption: The Great Roberto Clemente,...

"As part of the acclaimed Sports Virtues series, Roberto Clemente: Dedication discusses the struggles and triumphs of Roberto Clemente's life. As with each story in the Sports Virtues series, this book assigns a virtue to a celebrated athlete or coach, and uses that person's story to help the reader achieve that virtue for him or herself.What emerges after reading these stories is not only a greater understanding and appreciation of the virtues that these icons needed to g...