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› Find signed collectible books: 'And the Crowd Goes Wild: Relive the Most Celebrated Sporting Events Ever Broadcast'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ball 4: The Final Pitch'
As a player, former hurler Jim Bouton did nothing half-way; he threw so hard he'd lose his cap on almost every pitch. In the early '70s, he tossed off one of the funniest, most revealing, insider's takes on baseball life in Ball Four, his diary of the season he tried to pitch his way back from oblivion on the strength of a knuckler. The real curve, though, is Bouton's honesty. He carves humans out of heroes, and shines a light into the game's corners. A quarter century later, Bouton's unique baseball voice can still bring the heat. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Boys of Summer'
This is a book about some young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s in such places as Reading, Pennsylvania; Anderson, Indiana; Plainfield, New Jersey; Woonsocket, Rhode Island; and then went on to play for one of the most exciting professional teams that the major leagues ever fielded--the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s--the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson and set many other records besides.
It is also a book by and about a once-young sportswriter for the Herald Tribune who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s within shouting distance of Ebbets Field, was nurtured on Joyce and Shakespeare and occasionally escaped to see his bumbling heroes play, and then had the miraculous good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodger team for the Tribune.
Finally, this is a book about what's happened since to Jackie Robinson, Carl Erskine, Preacher Roe, Pee Wee Reese, Billy Cox, Roy Campanella, Carl Furillo and the others, no longer boys but men in their middle years with their glories behind them. For some, they have been happy years; to others, fate has not been kind. In short, it is a book about America and how it has progressed from the 1930s to the 1970s, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and disaster. Told with warmth, humor, wit, candor and love, The Boys of Summer is delightful and exhilarating.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Deep End'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Eight Men Out: The Blacksox and the 1919 World Series'
The headlines proclaimed the 1919 fix of the World Series and attempted cover-up as the most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America! First published in 1963, Eight Men Out has become a timeless classic. Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the fantastic scandal in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nations leading gamblers to throw the Series in Cincinnati. Mr. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial. Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the motives and backgrounds of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Here, too, is a graphic picture of the American underworld that managed the fix, the deeply shocked newspapermen who uncovered the story, and the war-exhausted nation that turned with relief and pride to the Series, only to be rocked by the scandal. Far more than a superbly told baseball story, this is a compelling slice of American history in the aftermath of World War I and at the cusp of the Roaring Twenties.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Every Second Counts'
In the opening of Lance Armstrong's memoir, Every Second Counts (co-authored by Sally Jenkins), he reflects: "Generally, one of the hardest things in the world to do is something twice." While he is talking here about his preparation for what would prove to be his second consecutive Tour de France victory in 2000, the sentiment could equally be applied to the book itself. And just as Armstrong managed to repeat his incredible 1999 tour victory, Every Second Counts repeats--and, in some ways exceedsthe success of his bestselling first memoir, It's Not About the Bike.
Every Second Counts confronts the challenge of moving beyond his cancer experience, his first Tour victory, and his celebrity status. Few of Armstrong's readers will ever compete in the Tour de France (though cyclists will relish Armstrong's detailed recounting of his 2000-2003 tour victories), but all will relate to his discussions of loss and disappointment in his personal and professional life since 1999. They will relate to his battles with petty bureaucracies, like the French court system during the doping scandal that almost halted his career. And they will especially relate to constant struggles with work/life balance.
In the face of September 11--which arrives halfway through the narrative (just before the fifth anniversary of his diagnosis)--Armstrong draws from his experiences to show that suffering, fear, and death are the essential human condition. In so openly using his own life to illustrate how to face this reality, he proves that he truly is a hero--and not just because of the bike. In Every Second Counts he is to be admired as a human being, a man who sees every day as a challenge to live richly and well, no matter what hardships may come. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Faithful: Two Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them'
If you're a Harry Potter fan and are desperate to fill the gap between Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and the next instalment (sorry folks, no date as yet but as soon as we know we'll tell you), then this JK offering could be the answer to your Potter prayers.
JK Rowling takes her enviable ability to turn paper into gold to the next level by cleverly teaming up with Comic Relief 2001 to bring Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (a set text during Harry's first year at Hogwarts) and Quidditch Through the Ages (Harry's favourite book), to the masses--and all the money goes to charity.
To be one of the first to lay your hands on these books, simply order now. And on Friday, March 16 just watch as the money you pay goes into the Comic Relief coffers... --Susan Harrison [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fever Pitch'
In the States, Nick Hornby is best know as the author of High Fidelity and About a Boy, two wickedly funny novels about being thirtysomething and going nowhere fast. In Britain he is revered for his status as a fanatical football writer (sorry, fanatical soccer writer), owing to Fever Pitch--which is both an autobiography and a footballing Bible rolled into one. Hornby pinpoints 1968 as his formative year--the year he turned 11, the year his parents separated, and the year his father first took him to watch Arsenal play. The author quickly moved "way beyond fandom" into an extreme obsession that has dominated his life, loves, and relationships. His father had initially hoped that Saturday afternoon matches would draw the two closer together, but instead Hornby became completely besotted with the game at the expense of any conversation: "Football may have provided us with a new medium through which we could communicate, but that was not to say that we used it, or what we chose to say was necessarily positive." Girlfriends also played second fiddle to one ball and 11 men. He fantasizes that even if a girlfriend "went into labor at an impossible moment" he would not be able to help out until after the final whistle.
Fever Pitch is not a typical memoir--there are no chapters, just a series of match reports falling into three time frames (childhood, young adulthood, manhood). While watching the May 2, 1972, Reading v. Arsenal match, it became embarrassingly obvious to the then 15-year-old that his white, suburban, middle-class roots made him a wimp with no sense of identity: "Yorkshire men, Lancastrians, Scots, the Irish, blacks, the rich, the poor, even Americans and Australians have something they can sit in pubs and bars and weep about." But a boy from Maidenhead could only dream of coming from a place with "its own tube station and West Indian community and terrible, insoluble social problems."
Fever Pitch reveals the very special intricacies of British football, which readers new to the game will find astonishing, and which Hornby presents with remarkable humor and honesty--the "unique" chants sung at matches, the cold rain-soaked terraces, giant cans of warm beer, the trains known as football specials carrying fans to and from matches in prisonlike conditions, bottles smashing on the tracks, thousands of policemen waiting in anticipation for the cargo of hooligans. The sport and one team in particular have crept into every aspect of Hornby's life--making him see the world through Arsenal-tinted spectacles. --Naomi Gesinger [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Friday Night Lights'
Secular religions are fascinating in the devotion and zealousness they breed, and in Texas, high school football has its own rabid hold over the faithful. H.G. Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, enters into the spirit of one of its most fervent shrines: Odessa, a city in decline in the desert of West Texas, where the Permian High School Panthers have managed to compile the winningest record in state annals. Indeed, as this breathtaking examination of the town, the team, its coaches, and its young players chronicles, the team, for better and for worse, is the town; the communal health and self-image of the latter is directly linked to the on-field success of the former. The 1988 season, the one Friday Night Lights recounts, was not one of the Panthers' best. The game's effect on the community--and the players--was explosive. Written with great style and passion, Friday Night Lights offers an American snapshot in deep focus; the picture is not always pretty, but the image is hard to forget. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, a Dream'
Secular religions are fascinating in the devotion and zealousness they breed, and in Texas, high school football has its own rabid hold over the faithful. H.G. Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, enters into the spirit of one of its most fervent shrines: Odessa, a city in decline in the desert of West Texas, where the Permian High School Panthers have managed to compile the winningest record in state annals. Indeed, as this breathtaking examination of the town, the team, its coaches, and its young players chronicles, the team, for better and for worse, is the town; the communal health and self-image of the latter is directly linked to the on-field success of the former. The 1988 season, the one Friday Night Lights recounts, was not one of the Panthers' best. The game's effect on the community--and the players--was explosive. Written with great style and passion, Friday Night Lights offers an American snapshot in deep focus; the picture is not always pretty, but the image is hard to forget. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream'
Secular religions are fascinating in the devotion and zealousness they breed, and in Texas, high school football has its own rabid hold over the faithful. H.G. Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, enters into the spirit of one of its most fervent shrines: Odessa, a city in decline in the desert of West Texas, where the Permian High School Panthers have managed to compile the winningest record in state annals. Indeed, as this breathtaking examination of the town, the team, its coaches, and its young players chronicles, the team, for better and for worse, is the town; the communal health and self-image of the latter is directly linked to the on-field success of the former. The 1988 season, the one Friday Night Lights recounts, was not one of the Panthers' best. The game's effect on the community--and the players--was explosive. Written with great style and passion, Friday Night Lights offers an American snapshot in deep focus; the picture is not always pretty, but the image is hard to forget. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Good Walk Spoiled: Days And Nights On The PGA Tour'
On those magnificent days on which your drives split the fairway down the middle and your wedge shots leave you putting for birdie, you think: "I wonder if I could do this for a living." After all, guys in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, guys no one heard of until recently, are making planeloads of money on the various golf tours (and buying private planes to take them from one big-money tournament to the next). A Good Walk Spoiled is a bit of a reality check. John Feinstein chronicles the struggles of the top golfers in the game, as well as those trying to get onto the PGA Tour. These are gifted players who've devoted their lives to the game, and on any given day they could just flat out stink. A Good Walk Spoiled is a completely engaging book from first page to last, a wonderfully observed and masterfully told story of pain and profit in the world's most frustrating sport. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How Soccer Explains The World: An Unlikely Theory Of Globalization'
The global power of soccer might be a little hard for Americans, living in a country that views the game with the same skepticism used for the metric system and the threat of killer bees, to grasp fully. But in Europe, South America, and elsewhere, soccer is not merely a pastime but often an expression of the social, economic, political, and racial composition of the communities that host both the teams and their throngs of enthusiastic fans. New Republic editor Franklin Foer, a lifelong devotee of soccer dating from his own inept youth playing days to an adulthood of obsessive fandom, examines soccer's role in various cultures as a means of examining the reach of globalization. Foer's approach is long on soccer reportage, providing extensive history and fascinating interviews on the Rangers-Celtic rivalry and the inner workings of AC Milan, and light on direct discussion of issues like world trade and the exportation of Western culture. But by creating such a compelling narrative of soccer around the planet, Foer draws the reader into these sport-mad societies, and subtly provides the explanations he promises in chapters with titles like "How Soccer Explains the New Oligarchs", "How Soccer Explains Islam's Hope", and "How Soccer Explains the Sentimental Hooligan." Foer's own passion for the game gives his book an infectious energy but still pales in comparison to the religious fervor of his subjects. His portraits of legendary hooligans in Serbia and Britain, in particular, make the most die-hard roughneck New York Yankees fan look like a choirboy in comparison. Beyond the thugs, Foer also profiles Nigerian players living in the Ukraine, Iranian women struggling against strict edicts to attend matches, and the parallel worlds of Brazilian soccer and politics from which Pele emerged and returned. Foer posits that globalization has eliminated neither local cultural identities nor violent hatred among fans of rival teams, and it has not washed out local businesses in a sea of corporate wealth nor has it quelled rampant local corruption. Readers with an interest in international economics are sure to like How Soccer Explains the World, but soccer fans will love it. --John Moe [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life'
People around the world have found inspiration in the story of Lance Armstrong--a world-class athlete nearly struck down by cancer, only to recover and win the Tour de France, the multiday bicycle race famous for its grueling intensity. Armstrong is a thoroughgoing Texan jock, and the changes brought to his life by his illness are startling and powerful, but he's just not interested in wearing a hero suit. While his vocabulary is a bit on the he-man side (highest compliment to his wife: "she's a stud"), his actions will melt the most hard-bitten souls: a cancer foundation and benefit bike ride, his astonishing commitment to training that got him past countless hurdles, loyalty to the people and corporations that never gave up on him. There's serious medical detail here, which may not be for the faint of heart; from chemo to surgical procedures to his wife's in vitro fertilization, you won't be spared a single x-ray, IV drip, or unfortunate side effect. Athletes and coaches everywhere will benefit from the same extraordinary detail provided about his training sessions--every aching tendon, every rainy afternoon, and every small triumph during his long recovery is here in living color. It's Not About the Bike is the perfect title for this book about life, death, illness, family, setbacks, and triumphs, but not especially about the bike. --Jill Lightner [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Last Amateurs: Playing for Glory and Honor in Division I College Basketball'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Men at Work'
In Men at Work, political pundit George Will breaks baseball down, parsing it into essential tasks: hitting, fielding, pitching, and managing. Why do some succeed grandly while others are more apt to whiff? By analyzing the way Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken, Orel Hershiser, and Tony LaRussa approach the game and do what they do, he finds striking similarities in intelligence, dedication, drive, and desire. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game'
Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans.
Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Natural'
Considered by many to be the greatest baseball novel ever written, this classic morality tale features one of the most memorable characters in all of literature, Roy Hobbs -- a talented athlete whose promising career is derailed by a youthful indiscretion. When Roy makes a comeback as an aging player, his struggle to achieve greatness in the midst of recreant temptations becomes the subject of an epic story about our national need for heroes and our simultaneous desire to see them fail. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract: The Classic'
In 1985, when Bill James, by then already baseball's "Sultan of Stats" "(The Boston Globe)" and author of a bestselling annual compendium entitled "The Baseball Abstract," wrote a 700-page book entitled "The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract," he produced an immediate classic. Lawrence Ritter, author of "The Glory of Their Times," called it one of the three greatest baseball books ever written. Jonathan Yardley of "The Washington Post" wrote, "My own shelf of genuinely first-rate baseball books is very small, but a place will have to be found on it for this one." It's back. "The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract," like the original, is really several books in one. The Game is a history of baseball, decade by decade, from the 1880s through the 1990s. For each decade, the "New Abstract" offers a bulleted summary incorporating the obvious -- highest batting average, best won-lost record by team -- and the eccentric. Included in the latter are such categories as Heaviest Player (for the 1930s: Jumbo Brown, a 6'4" 295-lb. pitcher), Most Admirable Superstar (for the 1960s: Roberto Clemente), Worst-Hitting Pitcher, Best Minor League Player, innovations in equipment, and dozens more. Also in each decade/chapter are essays on How, Where, and by Whom the game was played; uniforms; Best Minor League Teams; articles on forgotten achievements such as Wally Moses's remarkable 1936 campaign, or Jim Baumann's 72 home runs for Roswell, Texas (the minor league home-run record) in 1954. In The Players, James ranks -- and writes about -- the top 100 players at each position in major league baseball history. To support these rankings, he introduces a remarkable newstatistic called "Win Shares," a way of quantifying individual performance and equalizing the offensive "and" defensive contributions of catchers, pitchers, infielders, and outfielders. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL'
An up-close look inside an NFL powerhouse, from the onlywriter in America who players and coaches would trust with theirsecrets. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Now I Can Die in Peace: How Espn's Sports Guy Found Salvation, With a Little Help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank and the 2004 Red Sox'
ESPN's beloved Sports Guy replays the years leading up to the Boston Red Sox historic championship season and says goodbye to a lifetime of suffering. At least for now.
"The Red Sox won the World Series." To Citizen No. 1 of Red Sox Nation, those seven words meant "No more 1918 chants. No more smug glances from Yankee fans. No more worrying about living an entire life -- that's 80 years, followed by death without seeing the Red Sox win a Series."
But once he was able to type those life-changing words, Bill Simmons decided to look back at his Sports Guy columns for the last five years to find out how the miracle came to pass. And that's where the trouble began. Why didnt he see it coming? Why didn't it happen sooner? What was the key deal, the lucky move, the funny bounce, the sign from above that he failed to spot? Pretty soon, The Sports Guy was second-guessing himself, rewriting history, sniping at his own past predictions, pounding the table -- that's what sports guys do, right And doing so, he let himself get sidetracked by the suffering of the Boston Bruins, frustrated by the false promise of the Celtics -- and driven into a state of ecstasy by the dynastic New England Patriots.
The result is Now I Can Die in Peace, a hilarious and fresh new look at some of the best sportswriting in America, with sharp critical commentary (and fresh insights) from the guy who wrote it in the first place.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'October 1964'
Heroes have a habit of growing larger over time, as do the arenas in which they excelled. The 1964 World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals was coated in myth from the get-go. The Yankees represented the establishment: white, powerful, and seemingly invincible. The victorious Cards, on the other hand, were baseball's rebellious future: angry and defiant, black, and challenging. Their seven-game barnburner, played out against a backdrop of an America emerging from the Kennedy assassination, escalating the war in Vietnam, and struggling with civil rights, marked a turning point--neither the nation, nor baseball, would ever be quite so innocent again. Halberstam, one of the great reporters of the '60s, looks back in this marvelous and spirited elegy to the era, the game, and players such as Mantle, Maris, Ford, Gibson, Brock, and Flood with a clear eye in search of the truth that time has blurred into legend. His confident prose, diligent reporting, and deft analysis make it clear how much more interesting--and forceful--the truth can be. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Quidditch Through the Ages'
Grade 4-8-These slim paperbacks are made to look like actual Hogwarts tomes, complete with creased covers and plenty of marginalia scribbled by Harry and other students. Fabulous Beasts, a facsimile of Harry Potter's very own textbook, contains descriptions of 75 magical beasts, written in a wonderfully dry yet droll style by a renowned magizoologist. Quidditch is the facsimile of a Hogwarts library book, which had to be literally pried from the hands of librarian Madam Pince. It gives a comprehensive history of the game and its rules, as well as a rundown of each of the 13 league teams of Britain and Ireland. Harry Potter fans who pride themselves on knowing every minute bit of Hogwarts trivia will devour both books. From Professor Dumbledore's introductions to the price listed on the back cover (14 Sickles 3 Knuts), readers will find a wealth of detailed magical lore and laugh-out-loud humor. Neither book is as gripping as the actual series, of course, but fans who are waiting for the fifth installment will be entertained by these volumes in the meantime. Eva Mitnick, Los Angeles Public Library Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Quidditch Through the Ages'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Seabiscuit: Library Edition'
He didn't look like much. With his smallish stature, knobby knees, and slightly crooked forelegs, he looked more like a cow pony than a thoroughbred. But looks aren't everything; his quality, an admirer once wrote, "was mostly in his heart." Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of the horse who became a cultural icon in Seabiscuit: An American Legend.
Seabiscuit rose to prominence with the help of an unlikely triumvirate: owner Charles Howard, an automobile baron who once declared that "the day of the horse is past"; trainer Tom Smith, a man who "had cultivated an almost mystical communication with horses"; and jockey Red Pollard, who was down on his luck when he charmed a then-surly horse with his calm demeanor and a sugar cube. Hillenbrand details the ups and downs of "team Seabiscuit," from early training sessions to record-breaking victories, and from serious injury to "Horse of the Year"--as well as the Biscuit's fabled rivalry with War Admiral. She also describes the world of horseracing in the 1930s, from the snobbery of Eastern journalists regarding Western horses and public fascination with the great thoroughbreds to the jockeys' torturous weight-loss regimens, including saunas in rubber suits, strong purgatives, even tapeworms.
Along the way, Hillenbrand paints wonderful images: tears in Tom Smith's eyes as his hero, legendary trainer James Fitzsimmons, asked to hold Seabiscuit's bridle while the horse was saddled; critically injured Red Pollard, whose chest was crushed in a racing accident a few weeks before, listening to the San Antonio Handicap from his hospital bed, cheering "Get going, Biscuit! Get 'em, you old devil!"; Seabiscuit happily posing for photographers for several minutes on end; other horses refusing to work out with Seabiscuit because he teased and taunted them with his blistering speed.
Though sometimes her prose takes on a distinctly purple hue ("His history had the ethereal quality of hoofprints in windblown snow"; "The California sunlight had the pewter cast of a declining season"), Hillenbrand has crafted a delightful book. Wire to wire, Seabiscuit is a winner. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Seabiscuit: An American Legend'
He didn't look like much. With his smallish stature, knobby knees, and slightly crooked forelegs, he looked more like a cow pony than a thoroughbred. But looks aren't everything; his quality, an admirer once wrote, "was mostly in his heart." Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of the horse who became a cultural icon in Seabiscuit: An American Legend.
Seabiscuit rose to prominence with the help of an unlikely triumvirate: owner Charles Howard, an automobile baron who once declared that "the day of the horse is past"; trainer Tom Smith, a man who "had cultivated an almost mystical communication with horses"; and jockey Red Pollard, who was down on his luck when he charmed a then-surly horse with his calm demeanor and a sugar cube. Hillenbrand details the ups and downs of "team Seabiscuit," from early training sessions to record-breaking victories, and from serious injury to "Horse of the Year"--as well as the Biscuit's fabled rivalry with War Admiral. She also describes the world of horseracing in the 1930s, from the snobbery of Eastern journalists regarding Western horses and public fascination with the great thoroughbreds to the jockeys' torturous weight-loss regimens, including saunas in rubber suits, strong purgatives, even tapeworms.
Along the way, Hillenbrand paints wonderful images: tears in Tom Smith's eyes as his hero, legendary trainer James Fitzsimmons, asked to hold Seabiscuit's bridle while the horse was saddled; critically injured Red Pollard, whose chest was crushed in a racing accident a few weeks before, listening to the San Antonio Handicap from his hospital bed, cheering "Get going, Biscuit! Get 'em, you old devil!"; Seabiscuit happily posing for photographers for several minutes on end; other horses refusing to work out with Seabiscuit because he teased and taunted them with his blistering speed.
Though sometimes her prose takes on a distinctly purple hue ("His history had the ethereal quality of hoofprints in windblown snow"; "The California sunlight had the pewter cast of a declining season"), Hillenbrand has crafted a delightful book. Wire to wire, Seabiscuit is a winner. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Season on the Brink: A Year With Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers'
Why is A Season on the Brink the bestselling sports book of all time? The answer is easy: Bobby Knight. Audaciously brilliant, exasperatingly volatile, and never boring, the Indiana University basketball coach is Greek drama and comedy neatly wrapped in a red sweater. Like all high-strung people, Knight is particularly interesting when things don't go according to his playbook. John Feinstein had the good fortune to follow Knight and his Hoosiers through a difficult 1985-86 campaign; that Feinstein could watch that season attached to Knight's hip gives A Season on the Brink its sights and its sounds. That such closeness allowed entry into Knight's heart gives the book its fury. The combination is irresistible. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shoeless Joe'
W. P. Kinsella plays with both myth and fantasy in his lyrical novel, which was adapted into the enormously popular movie, Field of Dreams. It begins with the magic of a godlike voice in a cornfield, and ends with the magic of a son playing catch with the ghost of his father. In Kinsella's hands, it's all about as simple, and complex, as the object of baseball itself: coming home. Like Ring Lardner and Bernard Malamud before him, Kinsella spins baseball as backdrop and metaphor, and, like his predecessors, uses the game to tell us a little something more about who we are and what we need. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Summer of '49'
With the airwaves saturated with so much sporting choice, it's hard to imagine how, not that long ago, baseball so completely dominated the landscape and captured imaginations. Given the 1949 season that veteran journalist David Halberstam meticulously recreates, maybe it's not so hard after all. It was a season of great public and personal drama for the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, with the conflict finally resolving itself in a Yankee pennant following a head-to-head showdown on the final day of the season. Each team was led by a star of the highest magnitude: Joe DiMaggio spurred the Yankees despite missing half the season with a foot injury; Ted Williams virtually carried the Sox on his back, missing an unprecedented third Triple Crown by mere decimal points on his batting average. Halberstam focuses much of his narrative on the trials of these two individual sporting giants, adding fine supporting performances by Yogi Berra, Ellis Kinder, Dom DiMaggio, even restaurateur Toots Shoor. Both on and off the field, Halberstam beautifully captures the ethos of a more innocent game that no longer exists, played by heroes far more driven by their pride than by their salaries. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Whale Talk'
T. J. Jones is black, Japanese, and white; his given name is The Tao (honest!), and he's the son of a woman who abandoned him when she got heavily into crack and crank. As a child he was full of rage, but now as a senior in high school he's pretty much overcome all that. With the help of a good therapist and his decent, loving, ex-hippie adoptive parents, he's not only fairly even-keeled, he has turned out to be smart and funny.
Injustice, however, still fills him with fury. So when big-deal football star Mike Barbour bullies brain-damaged Chris Coughlin for wearing his dead brother's letter jacket, T.J. hatches a scheme for revenge. He assembles a swim team (in a school with no pool) made up of the most outrageous outsiders and misfits he can find and extracts a conditional promise of those sacred letter jackets from the coach. After weeks of dedicated practice at the All Night Fitness pool, the seven mermen get good enough not to embarrass themselves in competition. The really important thing, though, turns out to be the long bus rides to meets, a safe place to share the hurts that have made them who they are. Meanwhile, T.J.'s father, who has taken in a battered little girl to ease his lifelong guilt over his role in the accidental death of a baby, tangles with another bully--her stepfather--and his growing murderous rage.
Chris Crutcher, therapist and author of seven prize-winning young adult books, here gives his many fans another wise and compassionate story full of the intensity of athletic competition and hair-raising incidents of child abuse. (Ages 12 and older) --Patty Campbell [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vivir Casa Segundo'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Quidditch Travers a Les Ages / Quidditch Through the Ages'
Il a fallu toute la persuasion d'Aldous Dumbledore, directeur de l'école des sorciers, pour persuader Mme Pince, la bibliothécaire, de lui confier un exemplaire de ce livre pour le diffuser auprès des Moldus. Et encore& Même après lui avoir expliqué que le produit de la vente des ouvrages serait entièrement versé à l'organisation caritative anglaise Comic Relief, qui finance des projets destinés à aider les enfants des pays les plus pauvres du monde, il a fallu lui arracher des mains. Enfin, c'est chose faite, ce qui nous permet aujourd'hui d'avoir accès à un livre qui ne traîne pas souvent sur les rayons de la bibliothèque de Poudlard, comme le prouve d'ailleurs la liste des emprunteurs qui figure en première page. Il faut avouer que c'est passionnant, car on y apprend absolument tout sur le sport préféré des sorciers : ses origines, ses règles, ses figures& On y découvre aussi l'histoire du balai volant, indispensable accessoire pour pratiquer cette discipline aérienne, le nom des principales équipes de Grande-Bretagne et d'Irlande, la pratique du Quidditch à travers le monde, et comment les sorciers s'y prennent pour tenir les Moldus à l'écart des matchs. Quelques schémas et dessins permettent de mieux suivre. Comme le dit très bien Balai-Magazine : "Les passionnés de Quidditch le trouveront aussi instructif que divertissant." À partir de 9 ans. --Pascale Wester [via]
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