The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly includes the best and worst teams and players of all time, the most clutch performances and performers, the biggest choke jobs and chokers, great comebacks and blown leads, plus overrated and underrated players and coaches.

Genuine fans take the best team moments with the less than great, and know that the games that are best forgotten make the good moments truly shine. This monumental book of the San Francisco 49ers documents all the best moments and personalities in the history of the team, but also unmasks the regrettably awful and the unflinchingly ugly. In entertaining—and unsparing—fashion, this book sparkles with 49ers highlights and lowlights, from wonderful and wacky memories to the famous and infamo...

Genuine fans take the best team moments with the less than great, and know that the games that are best forgotten make the good moments truly shine. This monumental book of the Los Angeles Lakers documents all the best moments and personalities in the history of the team, but also unmasks the regrettably awful and the unflinchingly ugly. In entertaining—and unsparing—fashion, this book sparkles with Lakers highlights and lowlights, from wonderful and wacky memories to the famous and infamo...

In 1975, after his two Godfather epics, Francis Ford Coppola went to the Philippines to film Apocalypse Now. He scrapped much of the original script, a jingoistic narrative of U.S. Special Forces winning an unwinnable war. Harvey Keitel, originally cast in the lead role, was fired and replaced by Martin Sheen, who had a heart attack. An overweight Marlon Brando, paid a huge salary, did more philosophizing than acting. It rained almost every day and a hurricane wiped out t...

Forget Ring Lardner, Grantland Rice, and Jerome Holtzman. According to author Steven Travers, Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times was the greatest sports columnist who ever lived—period. Known for his highly descriptive metaphors and phrasing—a strike zone the size of Hitler's heart, so painfully honest he could spot George Washington two answers in a lie detector test, the only pitcher I know who thinks of Homer as a Greek poet and not a lucky swing by a banjo hitter—Murray was a p...

Nineteen sixty-two—it's been called “the end of innocence,” as America witnessed the Cuban Missile Crisis and the following year saw the Kennedy assassination and the early stirrings of Vietnam.In baseball, 1962 was a thrilling season. Five years prior the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants had migrated west to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, leaving New York to the Yankees. In 1962, those same Giants and Dodgers faced off to see who would advance to the World Serie...

From their origins as the Brooklyn Atlantics in 1884, through their departure from their beloved borough in 1957, to their record-breaking popularity in sunny Los Angeles, the Dodgers baseball team has been an unstoppable force in professional baseball for well over a century. The franchise has captured a record 21 National League titles, won six World Series championships, and produced dozens of Hall-of-Famers. The Dodgers revolutionized the sports landscape with the signing of Jackie Rob...

Douglas Brinkley presents the definitive, revealing biography of an American legend: renowned news anchor Walter Cronkite.An acclaimed author and historian, Brinkley has drawn upon recently disclosed letters, diaries, and other artifacts at the recently opened Cronkite Archive to bring detail and depth to this deeply personal portrait.He also interviewed nearly two hundred of Cronkite’s closest friends and colleagues, including Andy Rooney, Leslie Stahl, Barbara Walters, Da...

The team that won the first World Series in baseball's modern era is now officially a part of the Sports by the Numbers franchise!THE TEAM: The Boston Red Sox dominated the early 20th century, winning five World Series titles before the Evil Empire tasted postseason success for the first time. With the 86-year nightmare that followed now firmly in the past, Boston is dominant once again, having become the first team to win multiple World Series titles in the 21st century. The Sport...

“The incomparable and mysterious Sandy Koufax is revealed…. This is an absorbing book, beautifully written.” —Wall Street Journal“Leavy has hit it out of the park…A lot more than a biography. It’s a consideration of how we create our heroes, and how this hero’s self perception distinguishes him from nearly every other great athlete in living memory… a remarkably rich portrait.” — TimeThe instant New York Times bes...

"Having covered the Yankees for thirty years, and with access to previously unavailable material, Madden provides a definitive and captivating biography." — Kirkus Reviews2010 Winner of the Baseball Hall of Fame J. G. Taylor Spink AwardIf you love the New York Yankees, arguably the most storied franchise in all of sports—or even if you're just a fan of baseball history, or big business bios—this biography of the larger-than-life team...

“Football is force and fanatics, basketball is beauty and bounce. Baseball is everything: action, grace, the seasons of our lives. George Vecsey’s book proves it, without wasting a word.”—Lee Eisenberg, author of The NumberIn Baseball, one of the great bards of America’s Grand Old Game gives a rousing account of the sport, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day. George Vecsey casts a fresh eye on the game, illuminates its foibles a...