The 1954 Cleveland Indians were one of the most remarkable baseball teams of all time. Their record for most wins (111) fell only when the baseball schedule expanded, and their winning percentage, an astounding .721, is still unsurpassed in the American League. Though the season ended with a heartbreaking loss to the New York Giants in the World Series, the 1954 team remains a favorite among Cleveland fans and beyond. Pitching to the Pennant commemorates the ’54 Indians with a biographical sketch of the entire team, from the “Big Three” pitching staff (Mike Garcia and future Hall of Famers Bob Lemon and Early Wynn), through notable players such as Bobby Avila, Bob Feller, Larry Doby, and Al Rosen, to manager Al Lopez, his coaches, and the Indians’ broadcast team. There are also stories about Cleveland Stadium and the 1954 All-Star Game (which the team hosted), as well as a season timeline and a firsthand account of Game One of the World Series at the Polo Grounds. Pitching to the Pennant features the superb writing and research of members of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), making this book a must for all Indians fans and baseball aficionados.
“Brosnan obviously knows his baseball, writes about it wittily, informally and with irony. He is a cynical, tough professional athlete and his book makes wonderful reading.”—New Yorker From the author of The Long Season—considered by many to be the greatest baseball book of all time—comes another classic sports memoir by legendary pitcher Jim Brosnan, which chronicles how his team, the Cincinnati Reds, went on to win the 1961 National League pennant. In Pennant Race, Brosnan—with his trademark wise-guy wit and plain-spoken practicality—once again offers a refreshingly candid alternative to hackneyed baseball mythologizing. Day by day, game by game, Brosnan reveals the real lives of professional ballplayers: their exhilaration and frustration, hope and despair, chronic worry over job security, playful camaraderie, world-weary cynicism, and boyish—if cautious—optimism. Although the Reds would ultimately lose the World Series to the Yankees, for Brosnan and his teammates, this was a winning season. Pennant Race vividly captures a remarkable year in the life of a ball club and the golden age of one of Major League Baseball’s most memorable eras.
Every generation or so, a team comes along whose march toward victory is so improbable that you can't help but root them along. The 1950 Philadelphia Phillies was that kind of team; young and spirited, the Whiz Kids played a raw, emotional brand of baseball, nipping the Brooklyn Dodgers on the final day of the season to bring the National League's perennial doormat its first title in 35 years. Hall-of-Fame member Robin Roberts, the team's ace starter, peppers his recollections with snippets of oral history from his teammates to produce a book as lively as the team itself.--
The renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist delivers dramatic descriptions of fifteen suspense-filled pennant races from 1908 to 1993, in this insightful look at the drama of America's pastime.
"In a year in which no team ever led the league by as many as four games, these three teams, [the Cleveland Indians, the Boston Red Sox, and the New York Yankees], eventually found themselves in a tie with just nine days to go, and the season had to be extended to decide the race."--Cover.
He pitched to Ted Williams and Tony Gwynn. His career spanned three commissioners, four decades and five times in six cities. Before he becomes elected to the baseball Hall of Fame, learn about the fascinating career of one of the most unheralded hurlers.
The 1936 Yankees, the 1963 Dodgers, the 1975 Reds, the 2010 Giants—why do some baseball teams win while others don’t? General managers and fans alike have pondered this most important of baseball questions. The Moneyball strategy is not the first example of how new ideas and innovative management have transformed the way teams are assembled. In Pursuit of Pennants examines and analyzes a number of compelling, winning baseball teams over the past hundred-plus years, focusing on their decision making and how they assembled their championship teams. Whether through scouting, integration, instruction, expansion, free agency, or modernizing their management structure, each winning team and each era had its own version of Moneyball, where front office decisions often made the difference. Mark L. Armour and Daniel R. Levitt show how these teams succeeded and how they relied on talent both on the field and in the front office. While there is no recipe for guaranteed success in a competitive, ever-changing environment, these teams demonstrate how creatively thinking about one’s circumstances can often lead to a competitive advantage.
The Big Red Machine dominated major league baseball in the 1970s, but the Cincinnati franchise began its climb to that pinnacle in 1961, when an unlikely collection of cast-offs and wannabes stunned the baseball world by winning the National League pennant. Led by revered manager Fred Hutchinson, the team featured rising stars like Frank Robinson, Jim O’Toole, and Vada Pinson, fading stars like Gus Bell and Wally Post, and a few castoffs who suddenly came into their own, like Gene Freese and 20-game-winner Joey Jay. In time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their pennant-winning season, the amazing story of the “Ragamuffin Reds” is told from start to finish in Before the Machine. Written by long-time Reds Report editor Mark J. Schmetzer and featuring dozens of photos by award-winning photographer Jerry Klumpe of the Cincinnati Post & Times Star, this book surely will be a winner with every fan in Reds country and coincides with an anniversary exhibit at the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum. Through interviews and research, Before the Machine captures the excitement of a pennant race for a team that had suffered losing seasons in 14 of the past 16 years. Schmetzer also beautifully evokes the time and place—a muggy Midwestern summer during which, as the new song of the season boasts, “the whole town’s batty for that team in Cincinnati.” Led by regional talk-show star Ruth Lyons (the Midwest’s “Oprah”) fans rallied around the Reds as never before. The year didn’t begin well for the team. Budding superstar Frank Robinson was arrested right before spring training for carrying a concealed weapon, and long-time owner Powel Crosley Jr., died suddenly just days before the start of the season. Few experts—or fans—gave the Reds much of a chance at first place anyway. With powerhouse teams in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Milwaukee, the National League pennant was unlikely to fly over Cincinnati’s Crosley Field. But manager Hutchinson somehow galvanized his motley crew and led them to victory after victory. Joey Jay, who had languished with the Braves, mowed down hitters while his rotation mates O’Toole and knuckleballer Bob Purkey did the same. The team also featured a dynamic duo in the bullpen in Bill Henry and Jim Brosnan, whose book about the season, Pennant Race, became a national bestseller the following year. As the rest of the league kept waiting for the Reds to fade, Hutch’s boys kept winning—and finally grabbed the pennant. Though they couldn’t continue their magic in the World Series against the Yankees, the previously moribund Reds franchise did continue to their success throughout the decade, winning 98 games in 1962 and falling just short of another pennant in 1964. They established a recipe for success that would lead, a few years later, to the emergence of the Big Red Machine.
Babe Ruth, in his first season with the Yankees in 1920, was on pace to break the single-season home run record. In August Indians shortstop Ray Chapman was beaned by a pitch thrown by the Yankees? Carl Mays during a game in New York and died the next day. In September a grand jury convened in Chicago, and four White Sox players were called to testify about fixing the 1919 World Series. ø Focusing on the Cleveland Indians, the Chicago White Sox, and the New York Yankees, this book takes us back to a pivotal season when baseball was shaken by tragedy and scandal and when power shifted irretrievably from the teams? owners to a single commissioner. The struggle for the soul of baseball, both on the field and off, is the story of how the entire American League structure changed. Following the fortunes of baseball?s stars of 1920, Under Pallor, Under Shadow shows us how a unique opportunity for reform was squandered and how the result was the transfer of authority from one powerful dictator (Ban Johnson) to another (Judge K. M. Landis). The first book to tie together the disparate elements of the 1920 pennant race, Under Pallor, Under Shadow shows us America?s pastime at a critical moment in the nation?s cultural history.
An inside baseball memoir from the game’s first superstar, with a foreword by Chad Harbach Christy Mathewson was one of the most dominant pitchers ever to play baseball. Posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of the “Five Immortals,” he was an unstoppable force on the mound, winning at least twenty-two games for twelve straight seasons and pitching three complete-game shutouts in the 1905 World Series. Pitching in a Pinch, his witty and digestible book of baseball insights, stories, and wisdom, was first published over a hundred years ago and presents readers with Mathewson’s plainspoken perspective on the diamond of yore—on the players, the chances they took, the jinxes they believed in, and, most of all, their love of the game. Baseball fans will love to read first-hand accounts of the infamous Merkle’s Boner incident, Giants manager John McGraw, and the unstoppable Johnny Evers and to learn how much—and just how little—has really changed in a hundred years. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
