The Athletics spent thirteen seasons in Kansas City before moving to Oakland--a colorful history despite one of the worst records in baseball history. Even so, many of the players who were part of the world championship teams in Oakland in the 1970s began their careers in Kansas City. This work presents the relatively short history of the Kansas City franchise from 1954, when Arnold Johnson purchased the Philadelphia Athletics and moved the team to Kansas City because of the financial bene...

Since 1950, Omaha's Rosenblatt Stadium (formerly Municipal Stadium) has hosted the nation's top college baseball programs in the College World Series. Baseball fans from every corner of the country have taken the annual "Road to Omaha" and packed the seats to see championship baseball at its best. In 1954 thousands saw Jim Ehrler of Texas toss the tourney's first no-hitter en route to the Longhorns winning back-to-back CWS championships. Fans at the 1970 tournament saw Southern Cal defeat ...

From the perspective of 2007, the unintentional irony of Chance's boast is manifest—these days, the question is when will the Cubs ever win a game they have to have. In October 1908, though, no one would have laughed: The Cubs were, without doubt, baseball's greatest team—the first dynasty of the 20th century.Crazy '08 recounts the 1908 season—the year when Peerless Leader Frank Chance's men went toe to toe to toe with John McGraw and Christy Mathewson's New York Giants an...

The definitive biography of one of baseball's most enduring and influential characters, from New York Times bestselling author and baseball writer Marty Appel.As a player, Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel's contemporaries included Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, and Christy Mathewson . . . and he was the only person in history to wear the uniforms of all four New York teams: the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees, and Mets. As a legendary manager, he formed indelible, compli...

The legendary NPR sports commentator and Sports Illustrated journalist retells the story of an unusual friendship between two towering figures in baseball history.At the turn of the twentieth century, Christy Mathewson was one of baseball's first superstars. Over six feet tall, clean cut, and college educated, he didn't pitch on the Sabbath and rarely spoke an ill word about anyone. He also had one of the most devastating arms in all of baseball. New York ...

The extraordinary story of the 1968 baseball season--when the game was played to perfection even as the country was being pulled apart at the seamsFrom the beginning, '68 was a season rocked by national tragedy and sweeping change. Opening Day was postponed and later played in the shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral. That summer, as the pennant races were heating up, the assassination of Robert Kennedy was later followed by rioting at the Democratic National...

From Zack Hample’s The Baseball, this is the definitive, always-entertaining, never-fail guide to successfully snagging baseballs at Major League games.Luck—or hard work and skill? Zack Hample has caught more than 7,600 baseballs from the stands of 51 major league stadiums. His snags include Mike Trout’s first career home run and Barry Bonds’s 724th; the last homer hit by a Met at Shea Stadium; and a regular old Cubs-Reds contest from which Hample walked a...

Jam-packed with cool baseball trivia, history-making records, unforgettable moments, and wacky true tales of your favorite games, players and events. This book hits a grand slam right out of the park!A perfect gift for the die-hard fan of America's favorite pasttime. Baseball is rich in anecdotes about team superstitions (from the black cat that haunted the Cubs to the "Curse of the Babe"), the antics of the superstars, and other facts that come out of left field. Think today's ump...

" Field of Dreams was only superficially about baseball. It was really about life. So is The Baseball Whisperer . . . with the added advantage of being all true." —MLB.comFrom an award-winning journalist, this is the story of a legendary coach and the professional-caliber baseball program he built in America's heartland, where boys would come summer after summer to be molded into ballplayers—and men.Clarinda, Iowa, population 5,000, sits t...

"I CONSIDER MYSELF THE LUCKIEST MAN ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH."On July 4, 1939, baseball great Lou Gehrig delivered what has been called "baseball's Gettysburg Address" at Yankee Stadium and gave a speech that included the phrase that would become legendary. He died two years later and his fiery widow, Eleanor, wanted nothing more than to keep his memory alive. With her forceful will, she and the irascible producer Samuel Goldwyn quickly agreed to make a film based o...

The 1911 New York Giants stole an astonishing 347 bases, a record that still stands more than a century later. That alone makes them special in baseball history, but as Maury Klein relates in Stealing Games they also embodied a rapidly changing America on the cusp of a faster, more frenetic pace of life dominated by machines, technology, and urban culture.Baseball, too, was evolving from the dead-ball to the live-ball era--the cork-centered ball was introduced in 1910 and ...

In 2010 twenty American women were selected to represent Team USA in the fourth Women’s Baseball World Cup in Caracas, Venezuela; most Americans, however, had no idea such a team even existed.A Game of Their Own chronicles the largely invisible history of women in baseball and offers an account of the 2010 Women’s World Cup tournament. Jennifer Ring includes oral histories of eleven members of the U.S. Women’s National Team, from the moment each player picked up a bat and ...