Sport

His trainer said that managing him was like holding a tiger by the tail. His owner compared him to "chain lightning." His jockeys found their lives transformed by him, in triumphant and distressing ways. All of them became caught in a battle for honesty.
Born in 1917, Man o' War grew from a rebellious youngster into perhaps the greatest racehorse of all time. He set such astonishing speed records that The New York Times called him a "Speed Miracle." Often he won with so much energy in reserve that experts wondered how much faster he could have gone. Over the years, this and other...

If you want to prove you're a good poker player, you don't have to battle against the best. Nobody really cares if you ever bluffed Phil Ivey or got Daniel Negreanu to make a bad call. You're at the table for the money, not stories of conquest. A disciplined player, one who's playing for the right reasons, would rather sit with the worst, those he's sure to outplay. He's looking for donkeys and donors. He's hunting fish.
In Hunting Fish author Jay Greenspan sets out on a cross-country drive---from Connecticut to Los Angeles---looking for players he can outclass. In casinos,...

Little-known facts, statistics, stories, quotes, nicknames, all-time leaders, rosters, puzzles, and more from over one hundred years of Red Sox history

The Boston Red Sox were originally named the Pilgrims--but for over one hundred years they have always been Beantown's favorite team, with a history that has been celebrated and mourned by generations of fans.

If you love the Red Sox, you'll find hours of challenging trivia in this book. Packed with text and information, it includes: *A history of the Red Sox from their origins to the present * Trvia questions designed to test...

LeBron James is a six-foot-eight gift from the basketball heavens. He was the undisputed finest high school player in America. He was the one NBA scouts drooled over, corporations dreamed of, event promoters begged for, and now fans clamor after. Never before had a high school basketball player been so highly touted or an eighteen-year-old athlete been the subject of such fascination. Maybe no basketball player in the world has had that level of attention.
Now with the Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron has become a certified NBA all-star. Love him or hate him, there is no denying that LeBron...

An explosive look at the NFL Draft from the inside out that exposes the multilayered feeding frenzy that swarms around America's top college players.

The Draft follows a handful of NFL hopefuls through the ups and downs of the 2004 college football season and the predraft process, culminating with the 2005 draft. Among the prospects are Virginia defensive end Chris Canty, who overcomes a devastating early-season knee injury to reestablish himself as a top draft hopeful, only to suffer a detached retina in a nightclub skirmish; and Fred Gibson, a talented but rail-thin...

Woody Hayes was one of the greatest football coaches in history---and one of the most fascinating. More than a brilliant coach, he was a complicated, contradictory man. The former history teacher ran his football empire as an absolute monarchy, but had a surprisingly altruistic side, hidden from the public, . and author John Lombardo uses his extensive sports-writing experience to craft an accurate portrait of one of the most complex and fascinating figures in football.
First and foremost, Woody Hayes was a coach---and his achievements are stunning. While at Ohio State, he won five...

All In is the story of the greatest tournament in the world---the World Series of Poker--- from its humble beginnings in 1970 as a mere gathering of Texas road gamblers to its present status as a cultural phenomenon, attracting exhaustive national television coverage, legions of fans, and thousands of players.
Professional poker players themselves, authors Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback take an entertaining look at this unique experience, recounting its history through the breathtaking and sometimes brutal hands played at the Horseshoe's tables. They introduce the...

Tiger Woods, the world's greatest golfer, has switched teachers and everybody is talking about his new swing. There have been numerous changes to his technique since renowned author and golf instructor John Andrisani's bestselling The Tiger Woods Way hit the shelves in 1997. And the overall improvement in Woods' game has everyone asking the same question: what is he doing differently since switching to teaching guru Hank Haney and how can I use these lessons to improve my own game?

Drawing from interviews with golf instructors familiar with Tiger's swing, professional golfers...

"Keith Dunnavant's triumph is that he takes us into the heart of Alabama, into the darkness and the light, and there we see Joe Namath, Kenny Stabler, Ray Perkins, and their band of brothers play football for Bear Bryant the way life should be lived, at full throttle, indomitably."
---Dave Kindred, author of Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship

The Missing Ring is more than a football book. It is both a story of a changing era and of an extraordinary team on a championship quest.

Very few institutions in American sports can match the...

In The Fish's Eye: Essays About Angling and the Outdoors, Ian Frazier explores his lifelong passion for fishing, fish, and the aquatic world. He sees the angler's environment all around him--in New York's Grand Central Station, in the cement-lined pond of a city park, in a shimmering bonefish flat in the Florida Keys, in the trout streams of the Rocky Mountains. He marvels at the fishing in the turbid Ohio River by downtown Cincinnati, where a good bait for catfish is half a White Castle french fry. The incidentals of the angling experience, the who and the where of it, interest him...

In the spring of 2000, Harper's Magazine sent James McManus to Las Vegas to cover the World Series of Poker, in particular the progress of women in the $23 million event, and the murder of Ted Binion, the tournament's prodigal host, purportedly done in by a stripper and her boyfriend. But when McManus arrives, the lure of the tables compels him to risk his entire Harper's advance in a long-shot attempt to play in the tournament himself. This is his deliciously suspenseful account of the tournament--the players, the hand-to-hand combat, his own unlikely progress in it--and the...

Why do fans live and die with their teams? For Yankee, Cowboy, and Laker fans the answer is fairly clear: the return on investment is relatively high. But why do people root so passionately for tragically inept teams like the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, and the Philadelphia Phillies? Why do people organize their emotional lives around lackluster franchises such as the Cleveland Cavaliers, the San Diego Padres, and the Phoenix Suns, none of whom have ever won a single championship in their entire history? Is it pure tribalism? An attempt to maintain contact with one's vanished...

"Sullivan has found the transcendent in the horse."--Sports Illustrated

Winner of a 2004 Whiting Writers' Award

One evening late in his life, veteran sportswriter Mike Sullivan was asked by his son what he remembered best from his three decades in the press box. The answer came as a surprise. "I was at Secretariat's Derby, in '73. That was ... just beauty, you know?"

John Jeremiah Sullivan didn't know, not really-but he spent two years finding out, journeying from prehistoric caves to the Kentucky Derby in pursuit of what Edwin Muir called "our long-lost archaic...

A passionate and dramatic account of a year in the life of a city, when baseball and crime reigned supreme, and when several remarkable figures emerged to steer New York clear of one of its most harrowing periods.

By early 1977, the metropolis was in the grip of hysteria caused by a murderer dubbed "Son of Sam." And on a sweltering night in July, a citywide power outage touched off an orgy of looting and arson that led to the largest mass arrest in New York's history. As the turbulent year wore on, the city became absorbed in two epic battles: the fight between Yankee slugger...

The obvious audience for this book is professionals, scholars, and students in the recreation field. However, many of these entries relate to other fields of interest. . . . T]his work should find a place in academic libraries supporting curricula in recreation and related leisure studies. Reference Books Bulletin

The vocabulary and major concepts of the new field of recreation and leisure studies are just developing and this dictionary is the first major attempt to describe and systematize those concepts. Although university departments devoted to the study of...

Despite the increasing importance and politicization of sport, Western scholars have only recently begun to consider it as a subject worthy of serious study and research. Martin Vinokur contends that sport has become an increasingly pervasive and visibly central element in Western culture and that its function as a political tool is likely to grow still more in the 1990s, as governments realize the full value of sports to the political socialization process. He shows how the German Democratic Republic and Romania in particular have used sports to help achieve their political goals. This...

This volume expands the debate over the origins and purposes of sports records. Developing the thesis of Allen Guttmann, Carter and Kruger explore the history and meaning of quantitative sports records in several pre-modern societies. After introductions by Guttmann and the editors, the book proceeds on a chronological study of evidence of sports records in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, medieval England, the Renaissance, Tudor and Elizabethan England, pre-modern Hawaii, and pre-modern Japan. The chapters that follow are thematic essays on various aspects of sports records and Ritual and...