Professional baseball came to the Twin Territories in 1904 with Oklahoma City, Guthrie, Enid, Chickasha, and Shawnee appearing in the Southwestern League and Ardmore, I.T. making a brief appearance in the Texas League. Twenty-eight Oklahoma cities and towns fielded teams in eleven different leagues between 1904 and 1919. This book tells the story of those leagues and scores of the ball clubs from Altus to Vinita along with hundreds of photos of towns, teams, and players.
“An ace of a novel, an ace of a writer.” —Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter Red Dirt is the story of Jaxie Skinner, an unlikely professional tennis player from a blue-collar family in the sticks of rural Georgia who takes up the game at the age of three when his father scrapes a court out of the red clay behind their farmhouse. He is a natural, rising to the top of junior tennis, and at eighteen has great success at the French Open. He falls as quickly as he rose, however, when troubles back home and injuries arise. He quits the game for years, but then mounts a comeback, struggling for almost a decade in the unglamorous, low-paying minor leagues of tennis, often living out of his van, before getting one last big shot. A fascinating study of tennis, its demands and tactics, as well as a look at the insular and often selfish character required to reach the pinnacle of the sport, Red Dirt is the Rocky of tennis novels. PRAISE FOR RED DIRT “Starnes spins a tale with the pace and power of a Rafael Nadal forehand.” —Jay Jennings, editor of Tennis and the Meaning of Life: A Literary Anthology of the Game “Alright, literate tennis fans, it’s time to put down the remote and set aside those stat sheets and take an alternately amusing and inspiring trip from the top of the pro tennis barrel to the bottom—and back again. Joe Samuel Starnes’s book radiates an aficionado’s understanding of not just how the game is played (on and off the court) but what it takes to triumph in the hyper-competitive pro game.” —Peter Bodo, Tennis magazine senior writer, ESPN columnist, and co-author of Pete Sampras’s autobiography, A Champion’s Mind “Red Dirt is solid pleasure. Starnes knows what it is to compete, to hope to be made whole by competition, to overcome not just your opponent but your own unquiet. This is a tennis novel, but any athlete—no, any reader—will learn a lot and enjoy the learning.” —John Casey, author of Spartina, winner of the National Book Award “Red Dirt isn’t just a terrific sports novel; it’s a terrific novel, period. Jaxie Skinner is a complex and compelling character, and Starnes gives him a clear, fresh, lively voice.” —Michael Griffith, author of Spikes
Connie Mack was the Grand Old Man of baseball. This book, spanning first fifty-two years of Mack's life, covers his experiences as player, manager, and club owner. It tells how Mack, a school dropout at fourteen, created strategies for winning baseball and principles for managing men long before there were notions of defining such subjects.
From the New York Times columnist, a portrait of a family and the cycles of joy and grief that mark the natural world: “Has the makings of an American classic.” —Ann Patchett Growing up in Alabama, Margaret Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents—her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father—and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child’s transition to caregiver. And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds—the natural one and our own—“the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love’s own twin.” Gorgeously illustrated by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut. “Magnificent . . . Readers will savor each page and the many gems of wisdom they contain.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
This book is well-illustrated with photographs of old and new Greenville. Many color photographs are included. The first 87 pages cover the history of Greenville from frontier times through the present. The remainder of the book has overviews of businesses and organizations that have contributed to the development of Greenville and Greenville County.
Growing up in a poor family, a poor community, and a poor state is no unusual set of circumstances that has produced many positive and unfortunate outcomes in the lives of people everywhere. What is rare is to have these never-ending hardships remembered in detail with an innocence that makes one wonder why such an obvious lack of resentment, but this is precisely what the author has done. How this was achieved is due to an innate drive to overcome and a conviction that surely this is not the way growing up need be. No matter the depth of depravity, there are assets that can be taken advantage of. With maybe just a little more than average intelligence, and exceptional physical coordination that included the ability to run fast, a deprived father s sports background, and a wonder and curiosity that developed out of necessity and a love for nature, Williams left for the military life that ultimately answered many of these deep questions that even the Creek Bank School of Learning could not provide answers to.
This biography of Tris Speaker is the first to tell the full story of Speaker's turbulent life and to document in sharp detail the grit and glory of his pivotal role in baseball's dead-ball era.
The Original San Francisco Giants is a nostalgic look at the team that brought Major League Baseball to San Francisco, the 1958 Giants. Author Steve Bitker, who attended his first big-league game in 1958 at age five at a charming little downtown ballpark called Seals Stadium, traveled as far as the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands to interview virtually every surviving member of the team.
No other high school in Nebraska evokes as much pride, passion, inspiration, and devotion as Pius X High School. The school that was started in 1956 and remains today Nebraska's largest co-educational parochial school, is a beacon for success and leadership. Thunderbolt athletics has been a bench mark for programs to follow, and only those privileged few student athletes who have had the opportunity to don the Pius X uniform can begin to understand why that is so. Pius X's undeniably rich tradition and success over the past fifty years are enough to separate it from other schools: 54 state titles in both boy and girl sports, 12 all sports awards, nine state football championships, and countless academic all state athletes. Coaches such as Aldrich, Kelley, Aylward, Moore, and Forycki, as well as many others, have set the standard of excellence, and have created the feelings of honor and utmost pride associated with Pius X and being a Thunderbolt. Travel back with us as we take a look at Past great athletes and teams and why they make Pius X such a special and magical place. This is a must read for all past and present Thunderbolt athletes, and for Pius X fans and foes alike. Now read the stories and accounts of past Pius X athletes as they attempt to define the significance of being a part of the storied tradition that is a Pius X Thunderbolt.
Annotation Through an exploration of a boys' baseball league in a gentrifying neighbourhood of Philadelphia, this book reveals the accommodations and tensions that characterize multicultural encounters in contemporary US public life. Protecting Home offers an account for racial accommodation in a space that was previously known for conflict and exclusion.
