Sports Illustrated, the most respected voice in sports journalism, has covered Major League Baseball for over seven decades, documenting its heroes, villains, great characters, and iconic moments. A wide-ranging portrait of America's pastime, this anthology features the best baseball writing from the SI archives by nationally renowned journalists including Frank Deford, Mark Kram, George Plimpton, Peter Gammons, and Tom Verducci.
In the last 15 years as a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, Reilly has covered every aspect of the sporting life, from tennis moms to Lakers-obsessed Jack Nicholson. This collection presents the best of Reilly: unforgettable sporting moments, favorite columns, and unpublished pieces.
Pete Rose holds more Major League Baseball records than any other player in history. He stands alone as baseball's hit king having shattered the previously "unbreakable" record held by Ty Cobb. He is a blue-collar hero with the kind of old-fashioned work ethic that turned great talent into legendary accomplishments. Pete Rose is also a lifelong gambler and a sufferer of oppositional defiant disorder. For the past 13 years, he has been banned from baseball and barred from his rightful place in the Hall of Fame-- accused of violating MLB's one taboo. Rule 21 states that no one associated with baseball shall ever gamble on the game. The punishment is no less than a permanent barring from baseball and exclusion from the Hall of Fame. Pete Rose has lived in the shadow of his exile. He has denied betting on the game that he loves. He has been shunned by MLB, investigated by the IRS, and served time for tax charges in the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. But he's coming back. Pete Rose has never been forgotten by the fans who loved him throughout his 24-year career. The men he played with have stood by him. In this, his first book since his very public fall from grace, Pete Rose speaks with great candor about all the outstanding questions that have kept him firmly in the public eye. He discloses what life was like behind bars, discusses the turbulent years of his exile, and gives a vivid picture of his early life and baseball career. He also confronts his demons, tackling the ugly truths about his gambling and his behavior. My Prison Without Bars is Pete Rose's full accounting of his life. No one thinks he's perfect. He has made mistakes--big ones. And he is finally ready to admit them.
Plimpton continues the astounding and (almost) true story of baseball's craziest legend--Sidd Finch, a name every sports fan will remember from Sports Illustrated's 1985 April Fool's issue. Sidd Finch cannot hit, field or steal bases, but with a 168-mph fastball, he's the best pitcher in the sport.
A collection of classic essays by legendary sports journalist Mark Kram, Great Men Die Twice covers Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, George Best, Cool Papa Bell, and other memorable subjects. Imagine Mad Men set not in the advertising world but at 1960s Sports Illustrated, a place where the finest sports staff of any generation was attended by an open bar and almost unlimited expense account. This was the world Mark Kram lived and wrote in, along with his peers including Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins and other major talents. A high school graduate with a gift for revealing the hearts of his subjects, Kram would become one of the greatest sports writers of all time, covering the famed rivalry between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Negro League baseball star Cool Papa Bell, doomed soccer legend George Best, Olympic gold medal sprinter Edwin Moses, and others. The New York Times obituary of Kram in June, 2002 saluted his work in SportsIllustrated by calling him one of its "most lyrical writers of the 1960s and 1970s." Great Men Die Twice selects his best work with a moving introduction by his son, Mark Kram Jr., the PEN/ESPN Award-winning author of Like Any Normal Day.
In an artful pastiche of observation, personal narrative, interviews, and investigative reporting, S.L. Price, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, describes sports and athletes in today's Cuba. On his journeys to the island, Price finds a country that celebrates sports like no other and a regime that uses games as both symbol and weapon in its dying revolution. He finds Olympic and world champion boxers, track stars, volleyball and baseball players, but he also finds that with Castro's revolution staggering beneath the weight of a great depression, Cuba's famed sports system is imploding. Athletes are defecting by plane and raft. Superstars bike to games and legends like boxer Teofilo Stevenson are forced to lost themselves in a bottle of rum. Beyond an examination of sports in the hothouse of revolution, Pitching Around Fidel presents a vibrant and realistic portrait of Cuba today, complete with sex-happy tourists, blackouts, Fidel's famous former lover, and a black-power fugitive wanted in the U.S. for murder and hijacking. At once a biting travelogue and a meditation on sports in both America and Cuba, Pitching Around Fidel is a valuable document about a time and place that is close to fading away.
Celebrate the championship glory, Hall of Fame personalities, and passionate fans that make the Boston Celtics one of the most revered teams in basketball Sports Illustrated™ celebrates basketball greatness with The Boston Celtics at 75, an extraordinary collection of classic stories and photographs from the pages of SI. This commemorative book salutes hall of famers like Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Bob Cousy, Paul Pierce, and coach Red Auerbach. Fans will unearth countless gems from the Celtics' past on each page of this diamond celebration.
The history of basketball has always belonged to champions like the Celtics, the Lakers, and the Bulls. Yet the game's history cuts much deeper than that. The bottom line, the record books and retired jerseys, can never fully do justice to this wild, chaotic, and energetic game. In between the championships, there's the sight of Earl Monroe, spinning and cajoling his way to every corner of the court; or Allen Iverson, driving headlong into players twice his size. The real history of the game is not its championships, which are indisputable, but the personalities of its heroes, which are, at least, undisputed. It's in the larger-than-life pathos of Wilt, the secret ties that bind Larry Bird to the flashy ABA, and Michael Jordan when he flew a little too high. From the prehistoric teachings of Dr. James Naismith to pioneering superstars such as LeBron James and Kevin Durant, you'll never see roundball the same way again.
