A Dog Named Slugger
A Dog Named Slugger

Author: Leigh Brill

Publisher: BelleBooks

Published: 2010-04-01

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1935661086

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"Irresistible . . . Slugger is the heart and soul of the book, and his dedication, devotion, and love make him an unforgettable character." --Booklist "Brill has written a fitting tribute to her special friend named Slugger." --Southern Lit Review "A wonderful read for teens and adults." --School Library Journal With him by her side, there were no limits. With hundreds of stellar reviews, including Booklist and School Library Journal, this heart-wrenching and heart-warming book (winner of the Epic nonfiction award) tells the inspiring story of cerebral palsy sufferer Leigh Brill and her service dog, Slugger. As a college student, Brill's battle with her affliction seemed lost. The pain and lack of mobility made an independent life seem impossible. But then she discovered the world of service dogs, and met Slugger. The big Labrador retriever transformed her life. Leigh Brill published her first story at the age of 15; since then her writing has reached national and international audiences through publications including Chicken Soup to Inspire the Body & Soul, the Guideposts book Soul Menders, and the magazines, Just Labs: A Celebration of the Labrador Retriever, and Ability. Leigh has shared more than a decade of her life in the company of service dogs and continues to do so. She serves on the Board of Directors for Saint Francis Service Dogs, and lives with her family in rural Virginia. Find her on Facebook.

The Kid
The Kid

Author: Ben Bradlee Jr.

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2013-12-03

Total Pages: 804

ISBN-13: 0316084484

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From acclaimed journalist Ben Bradlee Jr. comes the epic biography of Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams that baseball fans have been waiting for. Williams was the best hitter in baseball history. His batting average of .406 in 1941 has not been topped since, and no player who has hit more than 500 home runs has a higher career batting average. Those totals would have been even higher if Williams had not left baseball for nearly five years in the prime of his career to serve as a Marine pilot in WWII and Korea. He hit home runs farther than any player before him -- and traveled a long way himself, as Ben Bradlee, Jr.'s grand biography reveals. Born in 1918 in San Diego, Ted would spend most of his life disguising his Mexican heritage. During his 22 years with the Boston Red Sox, Williams electrified crowds across America -- and shocked them, too: His notorious clashes with the press and fans threatened his reputation. Yet while he was a God in the batter's box, he was profoundly human once he stepped away from the plate. His ferocity came to define his troubled domestic life. While baseball might have been straightforward for Ted Williams, life was not. The Kid is biography of the highest literary order, a thrilling and honest account of a legend in all his glory and human complexity. In his final at-bat, Williams hit a home run. Bradlee's marvelous book clears the fences, too.

My Home Team
My Home Team

Author: Dave Kindred

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2023-09-12

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1541702220

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In this poignant memoir, a legendary sports journalist writes about the team that changed his life: the Morton High School Lady Potters basketball team. Dave Kindred has covered dozens of Super Bowls and written about stars like Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan. But a high-school girls basketball team—the Lady Potters of Morton, Illinois—stands apart from the rest. In this moving and intimate story, Kindred writes about his rise to professional success and the changes that brought him back to his hometown late in life. As he dealt with personal hardship, his urge to write sustained him. For years, he has recapped the games of the Lady Potters, including their many runs to state championships. He attended game after game, sitting in the stands and making notes, paid nothing but Milk Duds. And the team and their community were there for him as he lost a grandson to addiction and his wife to long-term illness. Tender and honest, Kindred’s story reminds readers what sports are really about. He trades in the exhausting spectacle of Super Bowl Sunday for the joy of togetherness, the fire of competition, and the inexhaustible hope for victory tomorrow.

Crack of the Bat
Crack of the Bat

Author: Bob Hill

Publisher: Sports Publishing LLC

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9781582614342

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Crack of the Bat is a comprehensive and entertaining look at the most famous icon in the history of baseball, the Louisville Slugger bat. It includes the evolution of bats from pioneer wagon tongues to the sleek aluminum models of today. It examines the amazing physics involved in hitting a baseball, where .003 seconds means the difference between a home run and a foul ball. It tells the fascinating history of the still family-owned Hillerich & Bradsby Company, which in just 80 years went from making butter churns to making seven million bats a year. Reinforcing this are dozens of stories about the bats themselves, and the personal idiosyncracies of the most famous hitters in baseball history, including Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken Jr. and Derek Jeter. The book explains why the players picked the bats they did, the amazing lengths they would go to to protect them, and how valuable these bats have now become in the hands of collectors. Illustrated with hundreds of archival photographs, baseball decals, and icons, many in color, this book will become as much a cherished keepsake as some of the bats it describes.

Don't Look Now, But Your Attitude is Showing
Don't Look Now, But Your Attitude is Showing

Author: Raymond Barber

Publisher: Sword of the Lord Publishers

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 9780873981811

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Scriptures clearly explain that our human problems are heart problems. It might be possible to "cover" yourself for a while, but eventually your inner attitudes will reveal themselves. An uncontrolled thought life will produce visibly wrong choices. That's why the Scriptures warn in Philippians 4:8: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; ... think on these things."--Jacket flap.

The Wingmen
The Wingmen

Author: Adam Lazarus

Publisher: Citadel Press

Published: 2023-08-22

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0806542527

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The untold story of the unique fifty-year friendship between two American icons: John Glenn, the unassailable pioneer of space exploration and Ted Williams, indisputably the greatest hitter in baseball history. It was 1953, the Korean War in full throttle, when two men—already experts in their fields—crossed the fabled 38th Parallel into Communist airspace aboard matching Panther jets. John Glenn was an ambitious operations officer with fifty-nine World War II combat missions under his belt. His wingman was Ted Williams, the two-time American League Triple Crown winner who, at the pinnacle of his career, was inexplicably recalled to active service in the United States Marine Corps. Together, the affable flier and the notoriously tempestuous left fielder soared into North Korea, creating a death-defying bond. Although, over the next half century, their contrasting lives were challenged by exhilarating highs and devastating lows, that bond would endure. Through unpublished letters, unit diaries, declassified military records, manuscripts, and new and illuminating interviews, The Wingmen reveals an epic and intimate portrait of two heroes—larger-than-life and yet ineffably human, ordinary men who accomplished the extraordinary. At its heart, this was a conflicted friendship that found commonality in mutual respect—throughout the perils of war, sports dominance, scientific innovation, cutthroat national politics, the burden of celebrity, and the meaning of bravery. Now, author Adam Lazaraus sheds light on a largely forgotten chapter in these legends’ lives—as singular individuals, inspiring patriots, and eventually, however improbable, profoundly close friends.

Ted Williams
Ted Williams

Author: Leigh Montville

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2005-03-15

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 0767913205

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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? Still a gangly teenager when he stepped into a Boston Red Sox uniform in 1939, Williams’s boisterous personality and penchant for towering home runs earned him adoring admirers and venomous critics. In 1941, the entire country followed Williams's stunning .406 season, a record that has not been touched in over six decades. Then at the pinnacle of his prime, Williams left Boston to train and serve as a fighter pilot in World War II, missing three full years of baseball, making his achievements all the more remarkable. Ted Willams's personal life was equally colorful. His attraction to women (and their attraction to him) was a constant. He was married and divorced three times and he fathered two daughters and a son. He was one of corporate America's first modern spokesmen, and he remained, nearly into his eighties, a fiercely devoted fisherman. With his son, John Henry Williams, he devoted his final years to the sports memorabilia business, even as illness overtook him. And in death, controversy and public outcry followed Williams and the disagreements between his children over the decision to have his body preserved for future resuscitation in a cryonics facility--a fate, many argue, Williams never wanted. With unmatched verve and passion, and drawing upon hundreds of interviews, acclaimed best-selling author Leigh Montville brings to life Ted Williams's superb triumphs, lonely tragedies, and intensely colorful personality, in a biography that is fitting of an American hero and legend.

Finding Agate
Finding Agate

Author: Rose Hannon

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2010-04-20

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1449089860

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An Epic Story of a Poodle's Heart and His Will to Survive. A wonderful "human" story as it can only be seen through a dog's eyes. Together and apart, man and dog face betrayal, lost love, and hardship. Only through deep devotion and perseverance do the windows open to each of their hearts, allowing them the strength to endure and face the future unknowns.

Fenway 1946
Fenway 1946

Author: Michael Connelly

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-02-14

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1493046381

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Boston writer Michael Connelly captures the magic of America’s return to normalcy after World War II in this intimate portrait of a city and the baseball team it loves. Fenway 1946 celebrates the city, the team, and the spirit of that wonderful 1946 season in Boston—a season, as usual, that broke fans’ hearts—as America returned to return to peacetime pastimes. And none was more American than baseball. Along the way, Connelly brings out the stories and personalities that made that year so special in the Hub. For returning veterans like Ted Williams, young Congressman John F. Kennedy, and thousands of others and their families who worried while they were in Europe or the Pacific, the 1946 Red Sox season was a celebration. It was catharsis. It was what made America great. Husbands and sons were coming home to the open arms of a grateful nation. This included five hundred major leaguers who fought in World War II. The homecoming of America’s best sparked a spirit of collective pride from coast to coast—and New England was not exempt. For the previous five years, America sat around its radio listening to war reports. Now they would gather in the parlors to enjoy baseball once again. Baseball had always been a thread that connected the country—a sport that linked generations. Opening Day 1946 was a tangible reminder that the country was at peace—back to the way things were. Nowhere was this more relevant than in Boston. From Scollay Square to South Boston to the North End, veterans in their uniforms, kids with bats over their shoulder, and housewives were talking about the return of Ted Williams and a roster that was considered the best in the league. Expectations were high—as always, at Fenway Park. Fans somehow knew this would be their year. The 1946 Boston Red Sox finished first in the American League with a record of 104 wins and 50 losses. And they wouldn’t disappoint (until October).

Tapestry:
Tapestry:

Author: Judith Elizabeth Bowen

Publisher: Balboa Press

Published: 2016-10-27

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1504365178

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Tapestry, poignant at times, at once heartbreaking and courageous, promises to deepen the understanding of what it takes for two people who love each other to remain a we, even as one of them is dying and the decline threatens to rock the strength and center of the other. Where is loving in all this? How am I to be loving in the face of despair, mood swings, anger? How am I to feel sexual, sensual, when I am living through fear and fatigue? How am I to switch from support person for a man who is in misery, to lover, eager for his caress? Tapestry, about the changing nature of love, is told through a voice of gentle wisdom as the author searches for equilibrium and spiritual strength. Her voice guides one through the challenges that threaten at every turn to make a good marriage vanish before your eyes. At the heart of the book is the question of restoration: How does one restore oneself when so many years have been given to another? How does one stay intact when the partner you love and rely on is declining? How does one stay on the path with decline, knowing that at some point, the fork in the road will come? judithebowen.com