Ultimate Cleveland Indians Time Machine Book
Ultimate Cleveland Indians Time Machine Book

Author: Martin Gitlin

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-04-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1493040235

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As the anchor titles in a new “Time Machine” Lyons Press baseball series, The Ultimate Cleveland Indians Time Machine presents a timeline format that not only includes the Indians’ greatest moments—including World Series appearances and individual achievements—but would focus also on some very unusual seasons and events, such as the team’s 20-134 season of 1899 (the absolute worst in baseball history), the "Crybabies" of 1940 (who received this nickname after complaining about their manager to such as extent that fans even turned on them), or the infamous “Ten Cent Beer Night of 1974” (when thousands of drunken fans stormed the field and forced the team to forfeit). Of course there are other events to recall, like 17-year-old Bob Feller making his debut and striking out 17 batters in 1936, or Albert Belle famously pointing at his muscle after a playoff opponent claimed (rightly) that he had corked his bat and one of his teammates sneaked into the umpire's room to steal it back so the umps could not find out that it was corked. There are dozens of impressive, wild, wacky and wonderful stories over the years regarding Indians history and Gitlin is the perfect person to write it with his trademark humor and thorough knowledge of Indians lore.

Our Team
Our Team

Author: Luke Epplin

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Published: 2021-03-30

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1250313805

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The riveting story of four men—Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige—whose improbable union on the Cleveland Indians in the late 1940s would shape the immediate postwar era of Major League Baseball and beyond. In July 1947, not even three months after Jackie Robinson debuted on the Brooklyn Dodgers, snapping the color line that had segregated Major League Baseball, Larry Doby would follow in his footsteps on the Cleveland Indians. Though Doby, as the second Black player in the majors, would struggle during his first summer in Cleveland, his subsequent turnaround in 1948 from benchwarmer to superstar sparked one of the wildest and most meaningful seasons in baseball history. In intimate, absorbing detail, Luke Epplin's Our Team traces the story of the integration of the Cleveland Indians and their quest for a World Series title through four key participants: Bill Veeck, an eccentric and visionary owner adept at exploding fireworks on and off the field; Larry Doby, a soft-spoken, hard-hitting pioneer whose major-league breakthrough shattered stereotypes that so much of white America held about Black ballplayers; Bob Feller, a pitching prodigy from the Iowa cornfields who set the template for the athlete as businessman; and Satchel Paige, a legendary pitcher from the Negro Leagues whose belated entry into the majors whipped baseball fans across the country into a frenzy. Together, as the backbone of a team that epitomized the postwar American spirit in all its hopes and contradictions, these four men would captivate the nation by storming to the World Series--all the while rewriting the rules of what was possible in sports.

Bill Veeck
Bill Veeck

Author: Paul Dickson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2012-04-24

Total Pages: 601

ISBN-13: 0802778313

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William Louis "Bill" Veeck, Jr. (1914-1986) is legendary in many ways-baseball impresario and innovator, independent spirit, champion of civil rights in a time of great change. Paul Dickson has written the first full biography of this towering figure, in the process rewriting many aspects of his life and bringing alive the history of America's pastime. In his late 20s, Veeck bought into his first team, the American Association Milwaukee Brewers. After serving and losing a leg in WWII, he bought the Cleveland Indians in 1946, and a year later broke the color barrier in the American League by signing Larry Doby, a few months after Jackie Robinson-showing the deep commitment he held to integration and equal rights. Cleveland won the World Series in 1948, but Veeck sold the team for financial reasons the next year. He bought a majority of the St. Louis Browns in 1951, sold it three years later, then returned in 1959 to buy the other Chicago team, the White Sox, winning the American League pennant his first year. Ill health led him to sell two years later, only to gain ownership again, 1975-1981. Veeck's promotional spirit-the likes of clown prince Max Patkin and midget Eddie Gaedel are inextricably connected with him-and passion endeared him to fans, while his feel for the game led him to propose innovations way ahead of their time, and his deep sense of morality not only integrated the sport but helped usher in the free agency that broke the stranglehold owners had on players. (Veeck was the only owner to testify in support of Curt Flood during his landmark free agency case). Bill Veeck: Baseball's Greatest Maverick is a deeply insightful, powerful biography of a fascinating figure. It will take its place beside the recent bestselling biographies of Satchel Paige and Mickey Mantle, and will be the baseball book of the season in Spring 2012.

Crooked River Burning
Crooked River Burning

Author: Mark Winegardner

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2021-11-23

Total Pages: 591

ISBN-13: 0358541328

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In 1948 Cleveland was America's sixth largest city; by 1969 it was the twelfth. For Easterners, Cleveland is where the Midwest begins; for Westerners, it is where the East begins. In the summer of 1948, fourteen-year-old David Zielinsky can look forward to a job at the docks. Anne O'Connor, at twelve, is the apple of her political boss father's eye. David and Anne will meet-and fall in love-four years later, and for the next twenty years this pair will be reluctant star-crossed lovers in a troubled and turbulent country. A natural-born storyteller, Mark Winegardner spins an epic tale of those twenty years, artfully weaving such real-life Clevelanders as Eliot Ness, Alan Freed, and Carl Stokes into the tapestry. His narrative gifts may bring the fiction of E. L. Doctorow to some readers' minds, but Winegardner is very much his own man, and his observations of Cleveland are laced with a loving skepticism. His masterful saga of this conflicted city is a novel that speaks a memorable truth.

The Little Red Book of Baseball Wisdom
The Little Red Book of Baseball Wisdom

Author: Roger Kahn

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.

Published: 2012-06-05

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1616087188

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Novelist W. P. Kinsella wrote that baseball is "a game where little gems of wisdom or whimsy can be created in the dugout, the bullpen, or the press box during long, hot afternoons and evenings of baseball." The Little Red Book of Baseball Wisdom unearths a treasury of quotes reflecting more than a century's worth of history from our national pastime. Featuring contributions from Hank Aaron to Walt Whitman, Yogi Berra to John Updike.

They Called Me God
They Called Me God

Author: Doug Harvey

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2014-03-25

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1476748810

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The incredible memoir from the man voted one of the “Best Umpires of All Time” by the Society of American Baseball Research—filled with more than three decades of fascinating baseball stories. Doug Harvey was a California farm boy, a high school athlete who nevertheless knew that what he really wanted was to become an unsung hero—a major league umpire. Working his way through the minor leagues, earning three hundred dollars a month, he survived just about everything, even riots in stadiums in Puerto Rico. And while players and other umps hit the bars at night, Harvey memorized the rule book. In 1962, he broke into the big leagues and was soon listening to rookie Pete Rose worrying that he would be cut by the Reds and laying down the law with managers such as Tommy Lasorda and Joe Torre. This colorful memoir takes you behind the plate for some of baseball’s most memorable moments, including Roberto Clemente’s three thousandth and final hit; the heroic three-and-two pinch-hit home run by Kirk Gibson in the ’88 World Series; and the nail-biting excitement of the ’68 World Series. But beyond the drama, Harvey turned umpiring into an art. He was a man so respected, whose calls were so feared and infallible, that the players called him “God.” And through it all, he lived by three rules: never take anything from a player, never back down from a call, and never carry a grudge. A book for anyone who loves baseball, They Called Me God is a funny and fascinating tale of on- and off-the-field action, peopled by unforgettable characters from Bob Gibson to Nolan Ryan, and a treatise on good umpiring techniques. In a memoir that transcends the sport, Doug Harvey tells a gripping story of responsibility, fairness, and honesty.

Cleveland Rocked
Cleveland Rocked

Author: Zack Meisel

Publisher: Triumph Books

Published: 2020-05-12

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1641253886

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In 1995, Cleveland rocked. With Montell Jordan's "This Is How We Do It," blaring in the locker room, the Indians racked up 100 wins in a strike-shortened season and reached the World Series for the first time in 41 years. Fans were on a first-name basis with the stars that lit up the city: Omar, Manny, The Thomeinator, A.B. Cleveland Rocked is the complete story of the team that brought sellout crowds and walk-off wins to the corner of Carnegie and Ontario. Author Zack Meisel traces the roots of the pennant winner, from trading All-Star Joe Carter for Sandy Alomar and Carlos Baerga in 1989 to the campaign to build a new stadium. Meisel introduces readers to a cast of characters that larger-than-life personalities, including Belle, Thome, Kenny Lofton, Eddie Murray, and manager Mike Hargrove, who managed to keep the clubhouse at peace. Thrilling come-from-behind wins jump off the page as the Indians race toward clinching the division. Then Meisel details the Indians' October to Remember, from thrilling playoff triumphs over Boston and Seattle to the first World Series games in Cleveland since the days of Bob Feller. Cleveland Rocked offers the story of a team that brought baseball back in Northeast Ohio.

Full Cleveland
Full Cleveland

Author: Les Roberts

Publisher: Gray & Company, Publishers

Published:

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1598510789

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#2 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series. Milan hunts for a con man who scammed the Mob. He's shadowed by mob flunky Buddy Bustamente, who sports a polyester leisure suit, white patent leather shoes, and matching white belt—that 1970s fashion statement once unkindly dubbed the “full Cleveland.”

Imperfect
Imperfect

Author: Jim Abbott

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2013-03-26

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0345523261

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“Honest, touching, and beautifully rendered . . . Far more than a book about baseball, it is a deeply felt story of triumph and failure, dreams and disappointments. Jim Abbott has hurled another gem.”—Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Man NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Born without a right hand, Jim Abbott dreamed of someday being a great athlete. Raised in Flint, Michigan, by parents who encouraged him to compete, Jim would become an ace pitcher for the University of Michigan. But his journey was only beginning: By twenty-one, he’d won the gold medal game at the 1988 Olympics and—without spending a day in the minor leagues—cracked the starting rotation of the California Angels. In 1991, he would finish third in the voting for the Cy Young Award. Two years later, he would don Yankee pinstripes and pitch one of the most dramatic no-hitters in major-league history. In this honest and insightful book, Jim Abbott reveals the challenges he faced in becoming an elite pitcher, the insecurities he dealt with in a life spent as the different one, and the intense emotion generated by his encounters with disabled children from around the country. With a riveting pitch-by-pitch account of his no-hitter providing the ideal frame for his story, this unique athlete offers readers an extraordinary and unforgettable memoir. “Compelling . . . [a] big-hearted memoir.”—Los Angeles Times “Inspirational.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer Includes an exclusive conversation between Jim Abbott and Tim Brown in the back of the book.