A firsthand, behind-the-scenes account of the turmoil that pervaded the New York Yankee franchise in the late 1970s, this book discusses George Steinbrenner's purchase and continual rebuilding of the team--alongside a colorful cast of players and businessmen. Not merely a look at the time spent in Yankee Stadium, this chronicle also describes the team's public arguments, practical jokes, drunken excess, self-aggrandizing publicity efforts, and the ups and downs that accompanied the Yankees and George Steinbrenner through the 1970s and beyond.
A firsthand, behind-the-scenes account of the turmoil that pervaded the New York Yankee franchise in the late 1970s, this book discusses George Steinbrenner's purchase and continual rebuilding of the team--alongside a colorful cast of players and businessmen. Not merely a look at the time spent in Yankee Stadium, this chronicle also describes the team's public arguments, practical jokes, drunken excess, self-aggrandizing publicity efforts, and the ups and downs that accompanied the Yankees and George Steinbrenner through the 1970s and beyond.
New Englanders are always cursing. But a colorful profanity uttered by some stero-typically taciturn old Yankee is usually more humorous than menacing. Yet, true maledictions (the opposite of benedictions) have frequently been spoken on New England soil, curses intended to invoke evil, injury, or total destruction against other people. Stories about preternatural revenge are numerous in Yankee lore, with each New England state providing its favorites. You’ll read about curses that were followed by the strange disappearance of a father and daughter in Rhode Island, mysterious afflictions in Massachusetts, a river of death in Maine, an unaccountable blight in New Hampshire, unexplained madness in Connecticut, and other eerie happenings from New England’s colorful history. Some are well known, at least regionally. Others are nearly forgotten. Within these pages, storyteller Joseph A. Citro vividly brings these tales to life, letting us decide if these tales of woe were bad luck or . . . something else.
It was the perfect season. In 1998, baseball's fans thrilled to Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire's home run slugfest and the Yankees won more games in a season than any team in Major League history. Baseball boomed across the US but the biggest bang was in New York where millions celebrated at a victory motorcade along the Avenue of Heroes.
Winners of twenty-seven World Series titles, the New York Yankees are the quintessential sports dynasty. Love them or hate them, they cannot be ignored by anyone who professes to be a fan of the great game of baseball. With Damn Yankees, Rob Fleder, former Executive Editor for Sports Illustrated magazine, offers a timeless collection of original essays by some of the most prominent contemporary writers in America—from Pete Dexter to Jane Leavy, from Roy Blount Jr. to Colum McCann—each piece focusing on one uniquely colorful subject: the fanatically adored/resoundingly despised “Bronx Bombers.” Funny, moving, provocative, insightful appreciations and detractions—from Babe Ruth to Mickey Mantle to Derek Jeter—Damn Yankees offers twenty-four fascinating takes on the most storied franchise of baseball’s Major Leagues.
During the Civil War, southerners produced a vast body of writing about their northern foes, painting a picture of a money-grubbing, puritanical, and infidel enemy. Damn Yankees! explores the proliferation of this rhetoric and demonstrates how the perpetual vilification of northerners became a weapon during the war, fostering hatred and resistance among the people of the Confederacy. Drawing from speeches, cartoons, editorials, letters, and diaries, Damn Yankees! examines common themes in southern excoriation of the enemy. In sharp contrast to the presumed southern ideals of chivalry and honor, Confederates claimed that Yankees were rootless vagabonds who placed profit ahead of fidelity to religious and social traditions. Pervasive criticism of northerners created a framework for understanding their behavior during the war. When the Confederacy prevailed on the field of battle, it confirmed the Yankees' reputed physical and moral weakness. When the Yankees achieved military success, reports of depravity against vanquished foes abounded, stiffening the resolve of Confederate soldiers and civilians alike to protect their homeland and the sanctity of their women from Union degeneracy. From award-winning Civil War historian George C. Rable, Damn Yankees! is the first comprehensive study of anti-Union speech and writing, the ways these words shaped perceptions of and events in the war, and the rhetoric's enduring legacy in the South after the conflict had ended.
From the incipient sexual desire of young girls visiting Derek Jeter's online fansite to the boozy macho heart of the Yankee Nation in the now-endangered bleachers, this book offers a riveting and unconventional foray into the underworld of baseball. 16 photos.
Countering the myth of New York Yankee infallibility, Those Damned Yankees relates the trials and tribulations of baseball's most hated team and serves as the definitive guide for those who hate them. Author Clarke Canfield, a longtime New England journalist, relates every rich and juicy detail-the disastrous seasons, the blowout losses, the infantile behavior of players, the horrible trades, and all the crushing playoff and World Series defeats. It is a book to warm the hearts of Yankee haters and true baseball fans everywhere. Canfield has enlisted the help of some well-known media personalities and sports reporters to help him relate the intense emotions that are stirred by those who wear pinstripes. The book features essays by former Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee, Dale Arnold of WEEI radio, Tom Caron of NESN, Kevin Thomas of the Portland Press-Herald, John Holyoke of the Bangor Daily News, and Kevin Witt of the Times-Herald Record of Middletown, New York.
No owner has changed the landscape of sports more than New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. From the moment he bought the team in 1973 for $10 million, Steinbrenner's monomaniacal pursuit was to restore the most fabled franchise in baseball history to its former glory. Today the New York Yankees are worth more than $1 billion and are once again world champions. Award-winning sportswriter Bill Madden traces Steinbrenner from his early days in Cleveland through his years as a shipping magnate, a Nixon fund-raiser, and a champion horse breeder to the fateful moment when he bought the Yankees, even though his father disparaged George's desire to own a professional sports team as a "hobby." Over the next four decades, Steinbrenner's tumultuous reign included his epic battles with Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield, even beloved Yankee captain Derek Jeter. His ruthless and free-spending tactics made him a lightning rod for controversy but they also paid off: Steinbrenner's Yankees have won seven championships and remain the gold standard in all sports. In the last few years, with his health declining, the Boss ceded control of the team to his sons, but not before lording over the team's historic transition from the House That Ruth Built to the House That George Built. Throughout his three decades of covering the Yankees, Bill Madden has cultivated hundreds of sources at every level in the organization, from the many managers and front-office personnel Steinbrenner has fired to the bat boys who are ever present in the locker room. All of them have colorful stories about the man with whom they have enjoyed a love-hate relationship, but it is the Boss himself whose voice rises above the rest. And when Steinbrenner decided to give his final print interview, he spoke to Madden to set the record straight on his extraordinary life and career.
