The 1972 Washington Redskins were dubbed the Over the Hill Gang by the media, who considered the team of aging veterans too old, too slow, and too ornery to succeed. The day-to-day story of how that team went to the Super Bowl is told in this book, which is the diary of Brig Owens, the team's safety and now a member of the Redskins Ring of Fame. It's all here--the competition, the battles for starting positions, coach George Allen's relentlessly thorough preparations, the humor, the tensio...

The ten stories in this collection have many scenes, actions, settings, conflicts, moments. Different characters create awakenings--sometimes without knowing it--for one another, for themselves, and for others.We all have those moments. It could be a word, a phrase, a look, an event, or just a thought that passes and then returns and then grows and then...we awaken! Many times, we do not realize the moments that made that impact until time has passed. And sometimes we do not see th...

When pro football players formed a union to stand up against the NFL for their own interests, they chose lawyer Ed Garvey as their Executive Director. The NFL Players Association (NFLPA), would take on the NFL over player contracts, collective bargaining agreements, and antitrust suits. It lobbied for players’ free agency, contract rights, and impartial arbitration of disciplinary disputes. Garvey navigated strikes, lockouts, scabs, stooges, lies, as well as the sports media complex—to mai...

A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the YearNCAA football is big business. Every Saturday millions of people file into massive stadiums or tune in on television as "athlete-students" give everything they've got to make their team a success. Billions of dollars now flow into the game. But what is the true cost? The players have no share in the oceans of money. And once the lights go down, the glitter doesn't shine so brightly. Filled with mind-blowing details of major NCAA football scand...

With a labour fight looming, and the NHL's participation in the Olympics hanging in the balance, The Instigator looks at how two decades of lockouts, soaring ticket prices, and on-ice tinkering have convinced many hard-core fans that the NHL's long-time commissioner Gary Bettman is the devil in disguise. In 1992, the gross revenue of the National Hockey League was US$400 million. This season, the figure will be closer to $2.8 billion-a seven-fold increase. Even if that were the only criter...

New York Times**-Bestselling Author: Folks love spending the holidays in this sunny California town—but a sudden death has cast a cloud of suspicion…**As owner of Coffee, Books, and More in South Cove, California, Jill Gardner looks forward to the hustle and bustle of holiday shoppers. But when the mayor ropes her into being liaison for a new work program, ’tis the season to be wary. Local businesses are afraid the interns will be delinquents, punks, or wo...

If baseball is America's national religion, then the Hall of Fame is its High Church. Being named among its 286 inductees makes you the closest thing our country has to an undisputed hero - even a secular saint. But the men in the Hall of Fame are no angels. Among their number are gamblers, drunks, race-baiters, at least one murderer, and perhaps the greatest collection of bona fide characters ever to be dignified by an honor of any kind.This is the book the Hall of Fame deserves. ...

The National Hockey League -- born in a Montreal hotel room on November 26, 1917 -- has much to celebrate as it approaches its centenary. Millions of fans from Montreal to Miami and Edmonton to Anaheim attend NHL games leach year, millions more watch on TV and the league pays its best players multi-million annual salaries.Over the course of its first century, the NHL's fortunes have ebbed and flowed. It has experienced setbacks and triumphs and innumerable crises. The league has awa...

The incredible inside story of power, money, and some of the most important moments in the history of baseball.In the fall of 1992, America's National Pastime is in crisis and already on the path to the unthinkable: cancelling a World Series for the first time in history. The owners are at war with each other, their decades-long battle with the players has turned America against both sides, and the players' growing addiction to steroids will threaten the game's ver...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERNamed a Best Book of the Year by: Time * Kirkus Reviews * USA Today * Entertainment Weekly * Garden & Gun * Vox * Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionA Most Anticipated Book of Fall from: Associated Press * Atlanta Journal-Constitution * BookPage * Book Riot * The Boston Globe * Entertainment Weekly * Esquire * Garden & Gun * LitHub * St. Louis Post-Dispatch * Sunset Magazine * Time * Town & Country * The Millions * USA T...

"The ultimate chronicle of the games behind the game."—The New York Times Book ReviewBaseball has always inspired rhapsodic elegies on the glory of man and golden memories of wonderful times. But what you see on the field is only half the game.In this fascinating, colorful chronicle—based on hundreds of interviews and years of research and digging—John Helyar brings to vivid life the extraordinary people and dramatic events that shaped America's fa...

“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...