Sportswriter Jerome Holtzman has been around the game of baseball for more than 60 years. During that span he has met and worked alongside most of the greatest writers American sports has ever known. In his sixth book, entitled Jerome Holtzman on Baseball, he tells colorfully in-depth stories about the life and times of such legendary scribes as Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Jimmy Canon, Shirley Povich, and many others. Enveloped inside these personality sketches are heretofore hidden tales about baseball's greatest players.

Jerome Holtzman has covered the sport of baseball for the "Chicago Daily Times," "Chicago Sun-Times," and "Chicago Tribune" since the mid 1940s, now his thoughts and best columns are collected together in one edition as an official history of Major League Baseball.

This book explores the exciting, enticing, enduring and frequently frustrating panorama of America's national pastime. For the first time the colourful saga of Major League Baseball in Chicago is wrapped between the covers of a single book sure to appeal to both Cubs and White Sox fans. When it comes to baseball tradition, Chicago is second to none, the sole city to embrace two major league teams without interruption from their founding to the present day.

Baseball: no other sport can claim its drama, its rhythms-or as many writers among its fans. These twenty-seven selections are by authors ranging from Lardner to Malamud.

Interviews eighteen of the writers who dominated sports reporting in the interwar period, including Dan Daniel, Paul Gallico, Red Smith, Marshall Hunt, and John Kieran

"The ultimate chronicle of the games behind the game."—The New York Times Book Review Baseball has always inspired rhapsodic elegies on the glory of man and golden memories of wonderful times. But what you see on the field is only half the game. In this fascinating, colorful chronicle—based on hundreds of interviews and years of research and digging—John Helyar brings to vivid life the extraordinary people and dramatic events that shaped America's favorite pastime, from the dead-ball days at the turn of the century through the great strike of 1994. Witness zealous Judge Landis banish eight players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, after the infamous "Black Sox" scandal; the flamboyant A's owner Charlie Finley wheel and deal his star players, Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers, like a deck of cards; the hysterical bidding war of coveted free agent Catfish Hunter; the chain-smoking romantic, A. Bartlett Giamatti, locking horns with Pete Rose during his gambling days of summer; and much more. Praise for The Lords of the Realm "A must-read for baseball fans . . . reads like a suspense novel."—Kirkus Reviews "Refreshingly hard-headed . . . the only book you'll need to read on the subject."—Newsday "Lots of stories . . . well told, amusing . . . edifying."—The Washington Post

Think you know how the game of baseball began? Think again. Forget Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown. Did baseball even have a father--or did it just evolve from other bat-and-ball games? John Thorn, baseball's preeminent historian, examines the creation story of the game and finds it all to be a gigantic lie. From its earliest days baseball was a vehicle for gambling, a proxy form of class warfare. Thorn traces the rise of the New York version of the game over other variations popular in Massachusetts and Philadelphia. He shows how the sport's increasing popularity in the early decades of the nineteenth century mirrored the migration of young men from farms and small towns to cities, especially New York. Full of heroes, scoundrels, and dupes, this book tells the story of nineteenth-century America, a land of opportunity and limitation, of glory and greed--all present in the wondrous alloy that is our nation and its pastime.--From publisher description.

When Bowie Kuhn became baseball commissioner in 1969, attendance at games was declining, labor disputes were flaring, and many teams were suffering from poor management and marketing. Fifteen years later, when Kuhn retired, the sport was flourishing. Kuhn had overseen tumultuous changes issuing from a challenge to the reserve clause, the 1981 strike, escalated salaries, free agency, and his controversial rulings on matters ranging from gambling to broadcasting. In Hardball Kuhn reveals how the decisions were made and forthrightly challenges his detractors. The former commissioner offers many colorful anecdotes and strong opinions about baseball's greatest legends from Jackie Robinson to Howard Cosell. In a new afterword to this Bison Books edition, Bowie Kuhn, who now resides both in Jacksonville, Florida, and on Long Island, gives his take on the state of baseball since his retirement as commissioner in 1984.

Eighty-eight years after their last World Series win, the Chicago White Sox made up for lost time by sweeping the Houston Astros to become the 2005 world champions of baseball. With 99 regular-season wins, the Sox brought the second-best record in baseball to the postseason. Only one loss to the Angels prevented a complete sweep in every phase of their postseason play to win with an impressive 11-1 record. Believe It! celebrates the White Sox's championship season, its players, its manager, and its rich history. This book features the writing of Chicago Tribune columnists John Kass, Rick Morrissey, and Mike Downey, who provide a narrative of the season and World Series win. There are exclusive interviews with key contributors--manager Ozzie Guillen, slugger Paul Konerko, ace Mark Buerhle, and more--in which they talk about baseball and life with the Sox. And for the statistician fans, the not-to-be-missed numbers behind the season and throughout White Sox history are included.