For more than fifty years Red Barber was the voice of baseball. The game was broadcast sporadically until the late 1930s, when Barber burst into prominence by bringing it home to radio listeners, play by play. More than half a century later, he could still be heard, broadcasting over National Public Radio from his retirement home in Tallahassee. Announcing for the Brooklyn Dodgers and later for the New York Yankees, he became a legend long before his death in 1992. Red s story reveals the growth and changes in baseball over the years, the demands of sportscasting, and the difference between...

One of the most endearing of American heroes, Casey Stengel guided the New York Yankees to ten pennants in twelve seasons. Here is the brilliant manager stripped naked-the person underneath all the clowning, mugging, and double-talking. Robert Creamer shows us Casey at twenty-two, famous from his very first day in the big leagues. We see Casey's playing career fall apart as he is traded, shunted to last-place teams, hampered by injuries, considered finished-until he bats a glorious home run in the 1923 World Series. Here are Casey's managing successes and failures-dismissed by the Yankees, he...

The ultimate umpire relives the good old days on the diamond. Jocko Conlan was an outfielder for the Chicago White Sox when, one afternoon in 1936, he became an umpire. Thus began a career lasting more than a quarter century, most of it with the National League. Through the skillful writing of Robert W. Creamer, the ebullient Jocko makes his many years of umpiring so real that the reader can smell the peanuts and hear the swat of the ball. Jocko is packed with funny stories about famous players and the beleaguered umpire's lot. Robert W. Creamer, who has contributed a new afterword to this...

"This is a baseball book, but whether Creamer intended it or not, it's much, much more."-Sports Illustrated. " Creamer] recalls this momentous year in baseball and world history. He reprises Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, Ted Williams's .406 batting average, Hank Greenberg and the draft, the furious Dodgers-Cardinals pennant fight, and the ensuing World Series. All this is portrayed against the looming U.S. entry into World War II."-Library Journal. Robert W. Creamer, one of the best and most perceptive writers on baseball, remembers the baseball-and other matters-of 1941 in a tribute...

As a man who played baseball brilliantly despite near-constant pain from a succession of injuries, Mickey Mantle knew something about courage. In The Quality of Courage we find Mickey's opinion on some of his widely-recognized associates including Jackie Robinson, Roger Maris, Casey Stengel, Joe DiMaggio, and Ted Williams. Here also are Mantle's opinions on some lesser known but equally meritorious candidates: war hero and pitcher Lou Brissie and umpire Bill Grieve. And then there is his opinion of those with whom he probably felt the strongest bond: players such as Roy Campanella, Don...

From the introduction of the reserve clause in 1879 to the lockout and new basic agreement of 1990, baseball players have been engaged in one of the longest and most colorful labor struggles in our nation s history. The Imperfect Diamond tells the stories of the players and their opponents, the powerful owners: how John Montgomery Ward led the Players League Rebellion of 1890; the rise and fall of David Fultz and the Baseball Players Fraternity (1912 18); the iron-fisted regime of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis; the case of Danny Gardella vs. Happy Chandler and the...