Showing titles in Sports History

He was The Kid. The Splendid Splinter. Teddy Ballgame. One of the greatest figures of his generation, and arguably the greatest baseball hitter of all time. But what made Ted Williams a legend – and a lightning rod for controversy in life and in death? What motivated him to interrupt his Hall...

Perfect for fans of Moneyball and The Book of Basketball, this vivid, thoroughly entertaining, and well-researched book explores the NBA’s surge in popularity in the 1970s and 1980s and its transformation into a global cultural institution. Far beyond simply being a sports league, the NBA has...

The story of Sir Alex Ferguson's success at Manchester United is one of the most compelling in the history of world sport. Everyone knows how it went. Alex Ferguson came to Manchester United from Aberdeen; he overcame a tough start and created a dynasty where he won thirteen league titles, two European Cups, and a knighthood. That story has been told through books penned by Ferguson and his former players. Now, though, this story is told with a difference.

Writer Harry Pearson takes a warm and witty journey around Britain in pursuit of the lost folk sports that somehow still linger on in the glitzy era of the Premier League and Sky Sports to find out how and why they have survived and to meet the characters who keep them going. When Victorian...

“From foot-binding to corsets, patriarchal societies have found ways to immobilize women, but now, marathoners and Olympians are proving that women can run like the wind!” —GLORIA STEINEM "A look behind the curtain that all women who love running and sport should read.” —KARA GOUCHER...

This wide-ranging history synthesizes scholarship and media sources to give the listener an inside view of the television contracts, labor issues, and other off-the-field forces that shaped the National Football League. Historian Richard Crepeau shows how Commissioner Pete Rozelle's steady leadership guided the league's explosive growth during the era of Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl's transformation into a mid-winter spectacle.

Who won the first Daytona 500? Fans still debate whether it was midwestern champion Johnny Beauchamp, declared the victor at the finish line, or longtime NASCAR driver Lee Petty, declared the official winner a few days after the race. Author John Havick interviewed scores of people, analyzed film of the race, and pored over newspaper accounts of the event. He uses this information and his deep knowledge of the sport as it worked then to determine what probably happened. But he also tells a much bigger story.

The iconic Sydney to Hobart Race, a 723-mile deepwater challenge - often called the “Everest” of offshore ocean racing - is considered one of the toughest in the world. Unpredictable weather and seas make each race demanding, but in 1998, an unexpected “weather bomb” hit the fleet, creating 80-foot waves and 100-mile-per-hour winds. Many bigger, better-equipped boats tried to maneuver around the storm, but the crew of the AFR Midnight Rambler chose to head directly into its path.

Baseball explores the history of organized baseball during the mid-twentieth century, examining the sport on and off the field and contextualizing its development as both sport and business. Steven P. Gietschier begins with the Great Depression, looking at how those years of economic turmoil shaped the sport and how baseball responded. Gietschier covers a then-burgeoning group of owners, players, and key figures whose stories figure prominently in baseball's past and some of whom are still prominent in its collective consciousness.

Nominated for the 2019 Toronto Heritage Book Award We may never see a playoff series like it again. Before Gary Bettman, and the lockouts. Before all the NHL's old barns were torn down to make way for bigger, glitzier rinks. Before expansion and parity across the league, just about anything...

This audiobook will take you on a journey along with American fencing from the beginnings in the times of the founding fathers, all the way through the lackluster first decades of American competition in the Olympic Games, and on to today where American fencing stands poised to build on its success and become a major player on the world stage. It’s been a complicated road for the United States, one that’s intertwined with world politics and changing social structures.The American story is one of immigration and tenacity.

In 11 seasons with the Buffalo Bills, the diminutive 5-foot-9, 175-pound Steve Tasker was a huge contributor as the Bills strung together an unprecedented four consecutive Super Bowl appearances in the early 1990s. Along the way, Tasker earned seven invitations to the Pro Bowl, and during the National Football League’s 75th anniversary celebration, he was named the greatest special-teams player of all time.

A lively jog through the British Sporting Calendar as we eavesdrop on some of the most memorable and fascinating events of the British at play. From marble games to water speed records, from fox hunting to ballooning and from cock fighting to the very British sport of...hopping, told entirely in the words of those who were there.

*A New York Times Notable Book* *A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year* From the bestselling National Book Award finalist and author of The Big House comes “a well-blended narrative packed with top-notch reporting and relevance for our own time” (The Boston Globe) about the young athletes...

Go behind the scenes with John Feinstein as he tells for the first time the full story of how the 2002 U.S. Open Championship came into being—how a public course was transformed into one of the most difficult and surprising in the tournament's history, and how the greatest golfers in the world...

As a new decade dawned, 2020 was supposed to be the best year to be a wrestling fan. Few in the industry realized that in China, a mysterious virus had begun to spread. By the time a pandemic was declared in March, the business—and the world—was in disarray. Still, when everything else shut down, wrestling never went away. The entire time, New York Times bestselling author and historian Keith Elliot Greenberg was chronicling the scene, juxtaposing pro wrestling developments with actual news events like the U.S. presidential election and Brexit. 

Professional cycling has been around for more than 100 years, more than enough time for nearly anything imaginable to have happened. Whether it's the Tour de France racer who thought the worst thing that could happen to him was being forced to wear the Yellow Jersey, or the communist team director who insisted, on a whim, that a rider have a toe amputated or the fit of jealousy that started the Giro d'Italia, the sport has an endless supply of examples of human folly.

Millions follow the F1 racing season from March to November, but few realise the enormity and complexity of a sport that encompasses so much more than 20 or so Sunday afternoons in the year. With access to drivers, pit crews, backroom operations, strategists, journalists, PR executives and promoters, journalist Phillip Horton shares his extensive knowledge and experience, and provides an up-close-and-personal insight into the world and workings of Formula One.

From one of Outside magazine’s “Literary All-Stars” comes the thrilling true tale of the fastest boat ride ever through the Grand Canyon, atop the legendary Colorado River flood of 1983. In the spring of 1983, massive flooding along the length of the Colorado River confronted a team of...

The pro football season of 1963 was dominated by the unexpected. In April, months prior to the beginning of play, it was revealed that two All-Star players, Paul Hornung and Alex Karras, were gambling on the sport and would be suspended from play for at least a year. Even worse, in May, one of the league’s bigger-than-life personalities, Big Daddy Lipscomb, was found dead, with police saying he perished from a heroin overdose, something those who knew him best still dispute.