Bücher von William J. Ryczek

Major League Baseball was in crisis in 1968. The commissioner was inept, professional football was challenging the sport's popularity and the game on the field was boring, with pitchers dominating hitters in a succession of dull, low-scoring games. The major league expanded for the 1969 season but the muddled process by which new franchises were selected highlighted the ineffective management of the sport. This book describes how baseball reached its nadir in the late 1960s and how it survived and began its slow comeback. The lack of offense in the game is examined, taking in the great pitching performances of Denny McLain, Bob Gibson, Don Drysdale and others. Colorful characters like Charley Finley and Ken Harrelson are covered, along with the effects that dramatic changes in American society and the war in Vietnam had on the game.

It was a novel experiment as baseball's leading men formed the National Association, bringing order to the hodgepodge of professional and amateur clubs that made up the sport up to 1870. Now in its second edition, this book covers all the action - both on and off the field - of the NA's early years, providing the definitive history of the first professional sports league in the US.

Based on interviews with more than one hundred former players, and extensive media research, this book traces the history of the New York Mets from their infamous first sea-son - they finished at 40-100, 60.5 games back - through the miraculous championship season of 1969.

This narrative history of minor league football teams in Connecticut in the 1960s and 1970s is based on extensive newspaper and periodical research and interviews with nearly 70 former players, broadcasters and journalists. Only a few players--like Marv Hubbard, Lou Piccone and Bob Tucker--made it to the NFL, but many more played for as little as $25 per game in their quest to make it big or just have fun. Wealthy men like Pete Savin and Frank D'Addario owned teams in Hartford and Bridgeport. In the days before cable television saturated the media with live sports, small town fans turned out to support their local heroes, often men who worked on construction crews during the week and stopped by the diner Sunday morning to talk football. Now in their 60s, 70s and 80s, these men share their stories of a simpler era; the good times, like the Hartford Knights' 1968 ACFL championship season, and the long bus rides and missed paydays that were as much a part of minor league ball as first downs and interceptions.