Why do football fans choose one club over another in cities where intense, deep-seated rivalries exist? What makes them choose family ties, politics, religion, or race? Rivals Game author Douglas Beattie spent two years getting underneath Britain's biggest tournaments to discover the answers and encover the history of football's fiercest rivalries.

A Struggle for the Ages. . . BOSTON GLOBE JANUARY 6, 1920 RED SOX SELL RUTH FOR $100,000 CASH -------- Demon Slugger of American League, Who Made 29 Home Runs Last Season, Goes to New York Yankees -------- FRAZEE TO BUY NEW PLAYERS The Yankees vs. the Red Sox. Each baseball season begins and ends with unique intensity, focused on a single question: What's ahead for these two teams? One, the most glamorous, storied, and successful franchise in all of sports; the other, perennially star-crossed but equally rich in baseball history and legend. In The Rivals sports writers of The New York Times and The Boston Globe come together in the first-ever collaboration between the two cities' leading newspapers to tell the inside story of the teams' intertwined histories, each from the home team's perspective. Beginning with the Red Sox's early glory days (when the Yankees were perennial losers), continuing through the Babe Ruth era and the notorious trade that made the Yankees champions (and marked the Sox with the so-called "Curse of the Bambino"); to Ted Williams vs. Joe DiMaggio; Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk; Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez; down to last year's legendary playoff showdown, The Rivals captures the drama of key eras, events, and personalities of both teams. And who better to tell the story than the baseball writers of the two rival cities? For The New York Times, it's Dave Anderson, Harvey Araton, Jack Curry, Tyler Kepner, Robert Lipsyte and George Vecsey who report on the Yankee view of the rivalry, while The Boston Globe loch's Gordon Edes, Jackie MacMullan, Bob Ryan and Dan Shaughnessy recount the view from the Hub. And their stories are richly illustrated with classic photographs and original articles from the archives, capturing the great moments as they happened. For Red Sox fans, Yankees fans, or anyone interested in remarkable baseball history, The Rivals is an expert, up-close look at the longest, and fiercest of all sports rivalries.

Cooperstown! Josh is thrilled when all his hard training pays off in a big way and his team, the Titans, makes it to a national tournament in Cooperstown, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. More is on the line for Josh than just a trophy. Winning would mean everything to his dad—now Josh's coach. Winning could mean a major endorsement deal for the Titans and the attention of big league scouts! After a dirty play and a brutal injury threaten to sideline Josh, he spies suspicious activity at the tournament. He tries to tell his good friend Jaden about what he's seen, but she's too busy spending time with the L.A. Comets' star player, Mickey Mullen Jr., to want to get involved. Jaden says she's doing research for the newspaper . . . but is she? Now Josh has a rival—both on the field and off—as he swings for the fences in a game that quickly becomes more dangerous. New York Times bestselling author Tim Green delivers a hard-hitting look at what some teams will do to win in this gripping companion to Baseball Great.

An Inspiring True Story Set in the Midst of the Civil Rights Era By 1970, racial tension was at a breaking point in the southern town of Gallatin, Tennessee. Desegregation had emotions running high. The town was a powder keg ready to erupt. But it was also on the verge of something incredible. Eddie Sherlin and Bill Ligon were boys growing up on opposite sides of the tracks who shared a passion for basketball. They knew the barriers that divided them--some physical landmarks and some hidden in the heart--but those barriers melted away when the boys were on the court. After years of playing wherever they could find a hoop, Eddie and Bill entered the rigors of their respective high school teams. And at the end of the 1970 season, all-white Gallatin High and all-black Union High faced each other in a once-in-a-lifetime championship game. What happened that night would challenge Eddie and Bill--and transform their town. This New York Times bestseller is a fast-paced true story of courage, determination, character, and forgiveness.

A mysterious football accident sends a high school reeling in this award-winning multimedia-format novel from Tommy Greenwald Thirteen-year-old Teddy Youngblood is in a coma, fighting for his life after an unspecified football injury at training camp. His family and friends flock to his bedside to support his recovery—and to discuss the events leading up to the tragic accident. Was this the inevitable result of playing a violent sport, or did something more sinister happen on the field that day? Told in an innovative multimedia format combining dialogue, texts, newspaper articles, interview transcripts, an online forum, and Teddy’s inner thoughts, Game Changer explores the joyous thrills and terrifying risks of America’s most popular sport.

The sixteen original essays in this collection cover influential and famous rivalries from a variety of sports, including track and field, golf, boxing, basketball, tennis, ice skating, baseball, football, soccer, and more. The essays are diverse, but together they illustrate what is common to any rivalry: equally matched opponents that often have decidedly different backgrounds, styles, and personalities. These differences may center on race and culture, political and societal ideologies, personality, geography, or religion—a mix intensified by fans and the media. From highly publicized and emotionally charged individual competitions to bitterly fought team contests, Rivals illuminates what one-of-a-kind opponents and the passion they inspire tell us about ourselves and our society.

In the annals of sports, no individual rivalry matches the intensity, longevity, and emotional resonance of the one between two extraordinary women: Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. Over sixteen years, Evert and Navratilova met on the tennis court a record eighty times—sixty times in finals. At their first match in Akron, Ohio, in 1973, Chris was an eighteen-year-old star and Martina, two years her junior, was an unknown Czech making her first trip to the United States. It would be two years before Martina finally beat Chris, and another year—after Navratilova had dropped twenty pounds and improved her game—before Evert publicly betrayed her first hint of concern. By then, the women were already friends and sometimes doubles partners, and the colorful story that would captivate the world was under way. The Rivals is the first book to examine the intertwined journey of these legendary champions, based on extensive interviews with each. Taking readers on and off the courts with vivid, never-before-published material, award-winning sportswriter Johnette Howard shows how Evert and Navratilova came of age during the rambunctious golden age of tennis in the 1970s, and how—together—they redefined women’s athletics during a time of volcanic change in sports and society. Their epic careers unfolded against the backdrop of the fight for Title IX, the gay rights movement, the women's movement and the fall of the iron curtain. Howard draws entertaining, intimate, and myth-shattering portraits of Evert and Navratilova, describing the personal migrations each woman made, and showing how enmeshed their lives became. Navratilova and Evert’s ability to forge and maintain a friendship during sixteen years of often-cutthroat competition has always provoked wonder and admiration. They were a study in contrasts, a collision of politics and style and looks. Chris was the crowd darling while Martina, her greatest foil, was often cast as the villain. Chris was the imperturbable champion who proved toughness and femininity weren’t mutually exclusive; Martina was portrayed as both emotionally fragile and some fearsome Amazon. Chris’s off-court life was presumed to be bedrock solid, the stuff of Main Street America; Martina’s was derided as outrageous and sometimes chaotic, even during her invincible years. Yet, through it all, the two remained friends who lifted each other to heights that each says she couldn’t have reached without the other. Women’s tennis now is more popular than ever, thanks in large part to the trailblazing of Evert and Navratilova. A rivalry like theirs, filled with so many grace notes, is unique in sports history.

Many historical chess books focus on individual 19th century masters and tournaments yet little is written covering the full scope of competitive chess through the era. This volume provides a comprehensive overview, with more than a third of the 300 annotated games analyzed by past masters and checked by powerful engines. Players such as Max Lange and Cochrane, known to the chess public only by the name given to a fierce attack or gambit, are brought to life. Fifty masters are each given their own chapter, with brief biographies, results and anecdotes and an endgame section for most chapters.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world. How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind. The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in? In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning. Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.