Babe Ruth, perhaps the greatest slugger ever, was sold by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees for $100,000 in 1919. The Yankees built a dynasty around Ruth; on the other hand, the "cursed" Red Sox have yet to win another World Series title. A few years after winning the National League's Most Valuable Player award in 1961, Cincinnati's Frank Robinson was dealt to the Baltimore Orioles in 1965 for three no-name players. The next year, the future Hall-of-Famer captured the elusive Triple Crown and became the only player ever to capture the MVP in both leagues. The Ruth and Robinson "steals" are two of the 25 most memorable big league trades explored in this work. Using newspaper stories, wire service accounts, interviews with the principals, and other reference sources, the authors analyze the impact of such trades on the teams involved and on the overall game. The careers of the players involved are also compared.
Setting / LocationNew York City
Story EraContemporary / Future
Protagonist / CoreBaseball's most memorable trades Lead Character
Marvin Miller was the first executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. The story of his experiences in baseball is a compelling one. No one else can take fans into the conference room where headline-making deals of the past quarter century were hammered out. Many can cite the career statistics of such stars as Willie Mays, Tom Seaver and Reggie Jackson; no one but Miller can reveal how these players and other greats behave in their business suits, when facing their toughest opponents: the owners, general managers and commissioners who kept the wealth of major league baseball out of the player's pockets for a century.
With the possible exception of Babe Ruth, there are more myths and legends about Leroy "Satchel" Paige than about anyone in baseball history. A slender, loose-limbed, slow-walking, hard-thrower from baseball's late pre-integration era, Paige was considered by many to be the greatest pitcher who ever lived. The claim is hard to dispute, since Paige was at least in his forties by the time the major leagues were willing to admit men of color, so his record is more anecdotal than statistical. (Even Satch's exact age is a figure of controversy, and some say he may have been fifty by the time he joined the Cleveland Indians.) His reputation is based on his years in the Negro leagues, and on the times he pitched for barnstorming teams that played against major leaguers. Satch's feats were legendary. He could warm up by throwing strikes not over home plate but over a matchbook. On a signal from Satch all his fielders would gather in the infield and sit and watch while he struck out the side, usually on nine pitches. He could pitch both ends of a doubleheader, and then do it again the next day in another city a couple of hundred miles down the road. He threw a blazing fastball with pinpoint control, a hesitation pitch that left hitters half-corkscrewed into the ground, and a baffling breaking ball he called the "Bat Dodger." His famous rules for living, published in Collier's magazine in the 1950s, included the advice to "Avoid fried foods, which angry up the blood" and "Don't look back, something might be gaining on you." All this describes the legend of Satchel Paige. But who was the man? At his peak, Satch was a star on a par with the great black entertainers such as Cab Calloway, Bill Bojangles Robinson, and Louis Armstrong. But he was never popular among his teammates and opponents; he insisted on the prerogatives of a star, he could not be counted on to show up on time, and he insisted on being paid top dollar, never hesitating to jump from one team to another if the price was right. When Satch was finally brought to the big leagues by Bill Veeck, it was hardly the culmination of a lifelong dream; Satch was mostly concerned that he not have to take a pay cut to do it, and that he could protect his right to barnstorm during the winter months. Mark Ribowsky strips away the caricature that has grown up around this great athlete, and shows the real Satchel Paige in the context of his times. In doing so, he gives the best picture yet of life in the Negro leagues, free of the well-meaning but overly romantic visions of recent historians and resurrectionists. Ribowsky shows us the gangsters and shady characters for whom Paige and all the others played for most of their careers, and the battles and cutthroat dealings among them that make today's sports structure like a tea party. By honoring Paige's greatness without shrouding him in condescending myth, Ribowsky does justice to the man who, yes, may well have been the greatest pitcher ever. In Don't Look Back, Ribowsky puts real flesh on the bones of a legend no smaller in stature than that of Babe Ruth - and does so in a book to rank with the best of baseball biography.
Somewhere between incarceration and sainthood stands Joe Rice, a man who relishes peace, painkillers, and his Friday-night baseball league. When his shady business partner Gene dies rounding the bases, Joe knows this isn't going to be an ordinary season. Soon enough, a suburban ex-mobster, his entrepreneurial son, and a gun-toting minister have Tasered, maced and harassed Joe over the location of a three-million-dollar Babe Ruth baseball bat he doesn't know anything about. Joe just wants to save his car-detailing/ticker brokerage business from Gene's mountain of debt, crime and craziness. (Winning a game of Madden NFGL against his ex-girlfriend's twelve-year-old son would also be a relief.) But first, he must confront the ghosts of his past - namely, his murdered uncle and his mentally unstable mother. He must also deal with the present, navigating the space between the two women he cares about. And finally, he must face the future, every man's least favorite obstacle. Dallas Hudgens, the acclaimed author of Drive Like Hell, blends Guatemalan chicken, online pharmaceuticals, and unforgettable characters in a raucous but moving story of love and baseball. Season of Gene is a wild ride of a novel about a troubled man, the troubled women who love him and a legendary baseball bat that could either save their lives or get them killed.
The Bailey Flanigan series begins with Bailey leaving Bloomington for the adventure of a lifetime. She has won an audition for the ensemble of a Broadway musical in New York City. She s determined to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but is she really ready to leave family and friends for the loneliness of the city? And what of Cody? His disappearance has her worried about their future and praying that their love can survive. In order to be closer to his mother in jail, Cody takes a coaching job in a small community outside Indianapolis. New friends, distance, and circumstances expose cracks in his relationship with Bailey Flanigan. Love, loneliness, big opportunities, and even bigger decisions highlight the first book in the new Bailey Flanigan series that features members of the popular Baxter family and finally completes the Bailey Flanigan/Cody Coleman story."
Baseball's most memorable trades by Fred Eisenhammer and Jim Binkley | Literally Just Books
