The Great Bambino, The Sultan of Swat, The Titan of Terror...Babe Ruth was larger than life! Here is an illustrated history of baseball's most iconic figure. Try to sum up the career of baseball legend Babe Ruth in fewer than 20 words, and the first two sentences on the Hall of Fame plaque that hangs in Cooperstown does so quite succinctly: Greatest drawing card in history of baseball. Holder of many home run and other batting records.The man known as the Great Bambino, however, represented far more than just numbers. As former teammate Joe Dugan once stated, “To understand him you had to understand this: He wasn’t human.” Offering the definitive look at Ruth’s life both on and off the field, from his rough childhood through the larger-than-life persona he would eventually become, The Great Bambino is an intimate and beautifully illustrated portrait of a true American icon.
Traces his mischievous childhood in Baltimore before his life-changing enrollment in Saint Mary's Industrial School for Boys, where a strict code of conduct and his introduction to baseball inspired his historic career.
A unique look at the inner workings of a major league baseball team and how the Red Sox went from perennial losers to baseball's next dynasty. When the Boston Red Sox defeated the Colorado Rockies in the 2007 World Series, they did more than win their second world championship in four seasons---they changed forever the identity of a franchise once defined by its spectacular failures. If winning the 2004 World Series permanently buried Boston’s tragic past, the team’s 2007 championship reinforced its promising future while changing the culture, mentality, and mind-set of the Red Sox and their followers. But the team's meteoric rise was not without controversy, and behind-the-scene clashes and infighting within the organization are revealed here in detail for the first time: The wildly popular pitcher Pedro Martinez and outfield sensation Johnny Damon were allowed to depart as free agents, and the Red Sox had to endure the temporary resignation of General Manager Theo Epstein. Author Tony Massarotti has been covering the Red Sox since the 1991 season and in Dynasty, Massarotti provides an in-depth and probing look at how the Red Sox became the most successful franchise in baseball.
The author of the sports classic "The Curse of the Bambino" relates the history and lore of one of the world's most celebrated sports franchises, the Boston Red Sox, and their beloved and venerable home, Fenway Park.
“A true insider’s perspective on the 2004 Red Sox” and their World Series win, from the bestselling author of Curse of the Bambino (USA Today). On October 27, 2004, the Red Sox won their first World Series Championship in eighty-six years—breaking the infamous Curse of the Bambino and giving diehard fans the thrill of a lifetime. Reversing the Curse preserves one of the greatest stories in sports history with an absorbing account of the team—a raggedy lineup of motorcycle-riding, whiskey-drinking rogues—and the key events that led to their incredible championship victory. A more epic sports saga could not have been invented: Here we have the curse that began with Babe Ruth; a team of comeback kids determined to prove their mettle; the perennial rivalry against the Yankees; and a historic win that was celebrated around the world. Dan Shaughnessy captures the Sox triumph in all its drama and euphoria with penetrating insight, a keen sense of history, and unparalleled insider access. With photographs by the Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer Stan Grossfeld, Reversing the Curse is the definitive record of a landmark moment in baseball history. “[Shaughnessy is] adept at capturing the mood, the emotion, the palpable feel of the Boston-New York showdown.” —The New York Times “In story after story of near-triumph, the book should delight the team’s most fanatically loyal followers.” —Publishers Weekly
Shut Out is the compelling story of Boston's racial divide viewed through the lens of one of the city's greatest institutions - its baseball team, and told from the perspective of Boston native and noted sports writer Howard Bryant. This well written and poignant work contains striking interviews in which blacks who played for the Red Sox speak for the first time about their experiences in Boston, as well as groundbreaking chapter that details Jackie Robinson's ill-fated tryout with the Boston Red Sox and the humiliation that followed.
Inspired by Chairman Mao's infamous Little Red Book, "Spaceman" Bill Lee offers an off-the-wall revisionist history of baseball's most colorful franchise, the Boston Red Sox. In addition to rewriting Red Sox history, Lee offers up his unique views on today's and yesteryear's game. With this hilarious take on Red Sox history, the Spaceman proves he's the true MVP in helping the Red Sox win the 2004 World Series and lift the Curse of the Bambino.
Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?