Sportbiographien

A legend during the Golden Era of the 1950s, Brooklyn Dodgers baseball player and New York Mets manager Gil Hodges is at the center of this masterful sports biography, which delves into the life, achievements, and sterling character of one of baseball’s most overlooked stars.Gil Hodges was the Brooklyn Dodgers’ powerful first baseman who, alongside Jackie Robinson, helped drive his team to six pennants and a thrilling World Series victory in 1955.Dutifully following the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1958, Hodges longed to return to New York City, and in 1962, joined the original Mets. He took over the manager’s spot on their bench in 1968 and transformed the team from a joke to World Champions in 1969—thus creating the Miracle Mets. Yet behind his stoic demeanor lay a man prone to anxiety and scarred by combat during World War II. His sudden death in 1972 shocked his friends and family and left a void in the hearts of baseball fans everywhere.Acclaimed authors Tom Clavin and Danny Peary deliver a thoroughly researched and poignant view of  one of baseball’s hidden treasures, shedding light on a fascinating life and career that even his most ardent fans never knew.

Part memoir, part sports adventure, Not Dead Yet tells the inspirational story of Phil Southerland's battle with Type 1 diabetes and how from diagnosis to sheer determination, he beat all odds and turned his diagnosis and his passion for cycling into a platform. From leading a Race Across America to managing a world-class cycling program, Southerland's journey on and off the bike has helped changed the way the world views diabetes.When Phil Southerland was seven-months-old, he lost ten pounds in a week, his body was limp and his breathing slowed to what his mother called a "death rattle." Rushing him to the ER, she was informed that tiny Phil displayed the youngest case of diabetes on record in the world at that time.Blindness, kidney failure and death were all predicted for him by age twenty-five. Decades later, not only is Phil alive and well but as the founder of Team Type 1, he and his team of championship cyclists - many of them diabetics-have become health and fitness role models for people the world over.Together, they took on some of the most challenging endurance events in the world, including winning the Race Across America-a grueling 3,000-mile endurance competition-twice. Today, Phil continues to lead Team Type 1 as CEO.Not Dead Yet is Phil's powerful story: his account of his relationship with his mother, and how she struggled to keep him alive; growing up quickly in the New-Old South of the 1990s, learning at the tender age of 6 years old how to check his glucose and give himself injections; of how he fulfilled his dream of becoming a professional athlete using his team and the bike as a platform, inspiring thousands of individuals and families around the world who are battling diabetes to not just chase, but catch, their dreams.

From the deep South to the PGA Tour, the hilarious and inspiring memoir of golfer Boo WeekleyEver since his breakout performance at the 2008 Ryder Cup, professional golfer Thomas Brent Weekley, known affectionately as "Boo," has captivated fans with his eccentric, Southern-fried country humor and incredible path to the top of the PGA Tour.True Boo is the candid and often hilarious memoir of a larger-than-life athlete, and a wild behind-the-scenes look at life on the PGA Tour. Boo takes readers on a rollicking journey that begins with his humble childhood growing up in Milton, Florida. Called "a nobody from nowhere" and the "Crocodile Dundee of golf," Boo had to earn respect on the Tour. His game ascended in record time, culminating in his now legendary Ryder Cup victories-going 2-0-1 in his three matches-and his back-to-back Verizon Heritage wins.With stories of his personal relationships with other players on tour including Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, frequent down-home phrases, figures of speech, locker-room language, plenty of "Booisms" and never-before-seen photos, this is a golf book unlike any other.

Dans son ouvrage, Jean-Pierre Egger livre à coeur ouvert ses expériences du sport de haut niveau, notamment en tant que coach de Werner Günthör et Valérie Adams, deux athlètes parvenus au sommet de leur art. Préparateur physique, il contribue au succès du team Alinghi vainqueur de la Coupe de l'America en 2003 et à celui de l'équipe de France de basketball, médaillée d'argent aux JO 2000. Plus récemment, il accompagne Matthias Sempach jusqu'au titre très convoité de roi de la lutte suisse. D'autres athlètes et entraîneurs ont bénéficié de ses précieux conseils et de ses grandes compétences techniques et humaines. Son livre s'adresse à un large public, Madame et Monsieur tout le monde, pour leur développement personnel et à tous les cadres du monde du sport ou de l'entreprise, qui y découvriront les clés du succès et les outils qui leur permettront de bâtir leurs propres stratégies, techniques et méthodologies dans leur existence et leur rôle de leader.

Das Buch stellt anhand von Kurzbiographien der berühmtesten deutschen Leichtathletinnen und Leichtathleten einen Streifzug durch mehr als 100 Jahre Leichtathletik-Geschichte, von Hanns Braun bis Niklas Kaul, dar. Es werden auch die überaus erfolgreichen Sportlerinnen und Sportler der untergegangenen DDR vorgestellt. So werden neben den Biographien der großen westdeutschen Leichtathleten wie Heide Rosendahl, Ingrid Mickler-Becker, Ulrike Meyfarth, Annegret Richter, Armin Hary, Manfred Germar, Carl Kaufmann und Willi Holdorf auch die Biographien von DDR-Athleten wie Renate Stecher, Bärbel Wöckel, Marlies Göhr, Ulf Timmermann und Waldemar Cierpinski geschildert. Auf diese Weise taucht der Leser in die Geschichte dieser faszinierenden Sportart ein.Abgerundet wird das Buch von zahlreichen Statistiken und Listen u.a. zu den deutschen Siegerinnen und Siegern bei Olympischen Spielen sowie Welt- und Europameisterschaften der Leichtathletik.

A refreshing work that gives readers an outlook on the ins and outs of being a student athlete. Jesse memorizes personal experiences that tie into choices and decisions that can be learned from and applied to everyday life situations, whether positive, negative, or neutral. Are you on your way to college to begin your new job of being a student athlete, or just looking to learn something new? Look no further for a helpful, inspiring read to keep you focused on what is important in these present times.

Sie springen von Klippen, laufen Ultramarathons oder steigen in Vulkane: Porträts von Frauen, die das Abenteuer suchenDie eigenen Grenzen verschieben, Ängste konfrontieren und etwas ausprobieren, von dem man nicht weiß, ob es zu schaffen ist: Das versucht jeder und jede von uns, auch wenn es dabei nicht immer um eine Besteigung des Mount Everest geht. In diesem Porträtband berichten zwanzig Frauen, die zu den größten Abenteurerinnen unserer Zeit zählen, wie sie ihr Glück im sportlichen Extrem suchen und es manchmal ganz woanders finden. Mit ihnen tauchen wir ohne Sauerstoff im arktischen Ozean, durchlaufen die unwirtlichsten Wüsten der Welt - und werden dabei auch an die grenzenlose Schönheit des Planeten erinnert.Die Sportlerinnen berichten von ihrer Motivation und der mentalen Herausforderungen, die eigenen Grenzen zu überwinden und ihre ambitionierten Ziele zu erreichen. Zudem gewähren die zwanzig porträtierten Frauen auch einen Einblick in ihr Privatleben und beleuchten die Vereinbarkeit von Familienleben, Job und Sport. Zu Wort kommen die Klippenspringerin Anna Bader, die Ultramarathon-Läuferin Anne-Marie Flammersfeld, die Abenteuerfotografin Ulla Lohmann und die Apnoe-Taucherin Anna von Boetticher sowie Evelyne Binsack, Anja Blacha, Laura Dekker, Sigrid Eichner, Angela Eiter, Jacqueline Fritz, Silvia Furtwängler, Freya Hoffmeister, Ute Kranz, Tamara Lunger, Alexandra Mitschke, Edina Müller, Olga von Plate, Nina Schlesener und Julia Wittig.Die Porträts der zwanzig außergewöhnlichen Frauen inspirieren sportbegeisterte und abenteuerlustige Frauen und Mädchen sowie alle, die Grenzen überwinden und Ziele erreichen wollen.

Branca is best known for throwing the pitch that resulted in the historic home run that capped an incredible comeback and won the pennant for the Giants in 1951. He was on the losing end of what many consider to be baseball's most thrilling moment, but that notoriety belies a profoundly successful life and career.

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 40. Chapters: Roger Federer career statistics, Federer¿Nadal rivalry, List of career achievements by Roger Federer, Roger Federer in 2010, Roger Federer's early career, Roger Federer in 2009, Roger Federer in 2008, Roger Federer in 2007, Roger Federer in 2006, Roger Federer junior years, Roger Federer in 2005, Roger Federer in 2003, Roger Federer in 2004, Roger Federer in 2011, Mirka Federer, Match for Africa and Joining Forces for the Benefit of Children. Excerpt: This is a list of the main career statistics of professional tennis player Roger Federer. Federer has completed a men's singles Career Grand Slam. He is the 6th male player to achieve this. With 16, Federer has won more singles Grand Slam tournament wins than any other man. Federer has also reached more Major finals than any other man, having made 23. He is also the only male in history to have reached the final of each Major at least five times. Federer has appeared at the year¿end championships nine times. With 5 championships, he is tied with Ivan Lendl and Pete Sampras. (i)=Indoor With 29 finals, Federer shares the record of the most Masters 1000 singles finals played with Rafael Nadal. With 17 Masters titles, Federer is tied for second with Andre Agassi (after Nadal). (i)=Indoor Wins (8) Key Won tournament, or reached Final, Semifinal, Quarterfinal, Round 4, 3, 2, 1, lost in Qualification Round 3, Round 2, Round 1 or Round Robin, Absent from a tournament or Participated in a team event, played in a Davis Cup Zonal Group (with its number indication) or Play-Off, won a bronze or silver match at the Olympics. The last is for a Masters Series/1000 tournament that was relegated (Not a Masters Series). Federer's win¿loss record against certain players who have been ranked World No. 100 or better is as follows: Players who have been ranked World No. 1 are in boldface. *As of 2011¿03¿27. Active players are in boldface. *As of 2011¿02¿21. *As of 2011¿07¿04. Federer's 41 win streak in 2006¿07 is the sixth best in the Open Era in men's singles (see winning streaks on all the surfaces). Federer's 35 win streak in 2005 is the eighth best in the Open Era in men's singles (see winning streaks on all the surfaces). Roger Federer (German pronunciation: ) (born August 8, 1981) is a Swiss professional tennis player who held the ATP number one position for a record 237 consecutive weeks, and 285 weeks overall. As of 18 July 2011, he is ranked World No. 3 by the Association of

New York Times Bestseller"On the subject of his love of Red Auerbach and his Celtic teammates, Russell is loud and clear. He might object to my use of the word 'love, ' but deny it though you will, Mr. Russell, that's what sits at the heart of this beautiful book." -- Bill Bradley, New York Times Book ReviewIn Red and Me, Boston Celtics basketball legend Bill Russell pays homage to his mentor and coach, the inimitable Red Auerbach. A poignant remembrance of a life-altering relationship in the tradition of Big Russ and Me and Tuesdays With Morrie, Red and Me tells an unforgettable story of one unlikely and enduring friendship set against the backdrop of the greatest basketball dynasty in NBA history.Red Auerbach was one of the greatest basketball coaches in sports history. Bill Russell was the star center and five-time MVP for Auerbach's Celtics, and together they won eleven championships in thirteen years. But Auerbach and Russell were far more than just coach and player. A short, brash Jew from Brooklyn and a tall, intense African-American from Louisiana and Oakland, the men formed a friendship that evolved into a rare, telling example of deep male camaraderie even as their feelings remained largely unspoken.Red and Me is an extraordinary book: an homage to a peerless coach, which shows how he produced results unlike any other, and an inspiring story of mutual success, in which each man gave his all and gained back even more. Above all, it may be the most honest and heartfelt depiction of male friendship ever captured in print.

Jane Leavy, the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, returns with a biography of an American original—number 7, Mickey Mantle. Drawing on more than five hundred interviews with friends and family, teammates, and opponents, she delivers the definitive account of Mantle's life, mining the mythology of The Mick for the true story of a luminous and illustrious talent with an achingly damaged soul. Meticulously reported and elegantly written, The Last Boy is a baseball tapestry that weaves together episodes from the author's weekend with The Mick in Atlantic City, where she interviewed her hero in 1983, after he was banned from baseball, with reminiscences from friends and family of the boy from Commerce, Oklahoma, who would lead the Yankees to seven world championships, be voted the American League's Most Valuable Player three times, win the Triple Crown in 1956, and duel teammate Roger Maris for Babe Ruth's home run crown in the summer of 1961—the same boy who would never grow up. As she did so memorably in her biography of Sandy Koufax, Jane Leavy transcends the hyperbole of hero worship to reveal the man behind the coast-to-coast smile, who grappled with a wrenching childhood, crippling injuries, and a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. In The Last Boy she chronicles her search to find out more about the person he was and, given what she discovers, to explain his mystifying hold on a generation of baseball fans, who were seduced by that lopsided, gap-toothed grin. It is an uncommon biography, with literary overtones: not only a portrait of an icon, but an investigation of memory itself. How long was the Tape Measure Home Run? Did Mantle swing the same way right-handed and left-handed? What really happened to his knee in the 1951 World Series? What happened to the red-haired, freckle-faced boy known back home as Mickey Charles? "I believe in memory, not memorabilia," Leavy writes in her preface. But in The Last Boy, she discovers that what we remember of our heroes—and even what they remember of themselves—is only where the story begins.

The Genius is the gripping account of Bill Walsh's career and how, through tactical and organizational skill, he transformed the San Francisco Forty Niners from a fallen franchise into a football dynasty. Along with his right-hand man John McVay, Walsh built the foundation for this success by drafting or trading for a durable core of stars, including Joe Montana, Fred Dean, and Hacksaw Reynolds. (Walsh would later restock the team with such players as Jerry Rice, Steve Young, and Charles Haley.) The key to Walsh's genius perhaps lay in his keen understanding of his athletes' psyches-he knew what brought out the best in each of them. With unmatched access to players, fellow coaches, executives, beat reporters, and Walsh himself, David Harris recounts the whole story-including Walsh's pre-Niners odyssey, the demons that pushed him throughout his career, and the scope of his impact on the game beyond the field and locker room. In the end, Harris reveals the brilliant man behind the coaching legend.

Like Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It, Adam Jones's Rose Bowl Dreams is a memoir that transcends the sports genre to contemplate faith, love, grief, and the challenges of fatherhood.God created college football as a grand gift to an imperfect world. I learned this as a very small boy living in the middle of the Texas Panhandle. In time I would come to believe that college football contained all of the joy, faith, pageantry, feeling, failure, and renewal that any person could hope for out of life. It taught me about patience and commitment, about enthusiasm and exasperation, about fatherhood and faith.Rose Bowl Dreams is the story of a family whose passion for college football begins at a small stadium in the remote Texas Panhandle and leads to college football's most famous venue, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Rose Bowl Dreams develops parallel stories of a son and his mother, a crisis of faith, and three fraught football seasons that end in bittersweet triumph as the author follows the story of the University of Texas Longhorns between the time he discovers his mother has inoperable cancer and Texas triumphs in the National Championship Game over USC in what might well be the greatest college football game ever played.Along the way Jones lays bare the heart and passionate soul of the college football fan. To millions, college football is the essence of life. It is, yes, religious in intensity. And its impact on families and its greater meaning possesses tremendous resonance. Rose Bowl Dreams reveals the growth and evolution of a college football fan with the humor and poignancy only personal experience could provide: kitchen table conversations with Panhandle football legend "Bulldog" Jones, good-byes to a mother who taught her son about unconditional love and unconditional fandom, the wise counsel of a psychiatrist father, the love of a beautiful woman, raising three boys, Mennonites singing, night games in Lubbock, a scrappy gamer of a quarterback, a man with a golden left arm, and finally, redemptively, a small boy from the south side of Houston named Vince.He would change everything.This book is an artfully rendered portrait of a Texas family bound by a game, and an inspiring account of how redemption flows through the contests on the field and into the lives of its fans. It's a portrait of divine will realized on the college football gridiron. A narrative that is like no football book you've ever read, Rose Bowl Dreams reminds us all that the good life moves ever forward.

Tommy Lasorda was one of baseball's larger than life figures. A former pitcher who was overshadowed by Sandy Koufax, Lasorda went on to a Hall of Fame career as a manager with one of baseball's most storied franchises. His teams won two World Series, four National League pennants, and eight division titles. He was twice named National League manager of the year and he also led the United States baseball team to the gold medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics. In I Live for This! award-winning sportswriter Bill Plaschke shows us one of baseball's legends as we've never seen him before, revealing the man behind the myth, the secrets to his amazing, unlikely success, and his unvarnished opinions on the state of the game. Bravely and brilliantly, I Live for This! dissects the personality to give us the person. By the end we're left with an indelible portrait of a legend that, if Tommy Lasorda has anything to say about it, we won't ever forget.

For twenty years, Miki "Da Cat" Dora was the king of Malibu surfers--a dashing, enigmatic rebel who dominated the waves, ruled his peers' imaginations, and who still inspires the fantasies of wannabes to this day. And yet, Dora railed against surfing's sudden post-Gidget popularity and the overcrowding of his once empty waves, even after this avid sportsman, iconoclast, and scammer of wide repute ran afoul of the law and led the FBI on a remarkable seven-year chase around the globe in 1974. The New York Times named him "the most renegade spirit the sport has yet to produce" and Vanity Fair called him "a dark prince of the beach." To fully capture Dora's never-before-told story, David Rensin spent four years interviewing hundreds of Dora's friends, enemies, family members, lovers, and fellow surfers to uncover the untold truth about surfing's most outrageous practitioner, charismatic antihero, committed loner, and enduring mystery.

Chris Coste dreamed of playing major-league baseball from the age of seven. But after eleven grueling years in the minors, a spot on a major-league roster still seemed just out of his reach-until that fateful call came from the Philadelphia Phillies in May 2006. At age thirty-three ("going on eighty”), Coste was finally heading to the big time. The 33-Year-Old Rookie is a real-life Rocky, an unforgettable and inspirational story of one man's unwavering pursuit of a lifelong goal. Beginning in a single-parent home in Fargo, North Dakota, and ending behind home plate on the flawless diamond of the Phillies' Citizens Bank Park-where fans and teammates call him "Chris Clutch” because of his knack for getting timely hits-this intimate account of Coste's baseball odyssey is a powerful story of determination, perseverance, and passion.

The story of a man who transcended the handicaps of race to become America's first African American mega sports celebrityAt the turn of the 20th century, hundreds of lightning-fast racers won the hearts and minds of a bicycling-crazed public. Scientists studied them, newspapers glorified them, and millions of dollars in purse money were awarded to them. Major Taylor aimed to be the fastest of them all. Taylor's most formidable and ruthless opponent-a man nicknamed the "Human Engine" was Floyd McFarland. One man was white, one black; one from a storied Virginia family, the other descended from Kentucky slaves; one celebrated as a hero, one trying to secure his spot in a sport he dominated. The only thing they had in common was the desire to be named the fastest man alive. Finally, in 1904, both men headed to Australia for a much-­anticipated title match to decide who would claim the coveted title.Major is the story of a superstar nobody saw coming, the account of a fierce rivalry that would become an archetypal tale of white versus black in the 20th century, and, most of all, the tale of our nation's first black sports celebrity.