Baseball stories about the famous and not-famous are the essence of this book.

Recounts thrity-four unusual baseball events including the man who caught a ball thrown from the top of the Washington Monument.

Recounts twenty-three humorous, frustrating, disappointing, and exciting moments in the past half-century of football.

Everything has its weird side-- even sports! Add wacky stats, facts, and stories to your arsenal of spots trivia with this new addition to the very popular Weird but True series!

The untold story of baseball’s nineteenth-century origins: “a delightful look at a young nation creating a pastime that was love from the first crack of the bat” (Paul Dickson, The Wall Street Journal). You may have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Neither did. You may have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. They didn’t. Perhaps you’ve read that baseball’s color line was first crossed by Jackie Robinson in 1947. Nope. Baseball’s true founders don’t have plaques in Cooperstown. They were hundreds of uncredited, ordinary people who played without gloves, facemasks, or performance incentives. Unlike today’s pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They worked, built businesses, and fought against the South in the Civil War. In this myth-busting history, Thomas W. Gilbert reveals the true beginnings of baseball. Through newspaper accounts, diaries, and other accounts, he explains how it evolved through the mid-nineteenth century into a modern sport of championships, media coverage, and famous stars—all before the first professional league was formed in 1871. Winner of the Casey Award: Best Baseball Book of the Year

An Olympian who sacrificed a medal to save a competitor, a professional soccer player who was bribed out of retirement with pizza, a runaway pig who disrupted the start of a baseball game -- truth is stranger than fiction, especially in sports! In this sequel to his first compilation of sports bloopers and unbelievable stories, And Nobody Got Hurt", Today Show regular and Emmy Award-winning sportscaster Len Berman shares more of the funniest and most amazing stories in the history of sports, including favorite moments from his popular Spanning the World segments on NBC-TV.

A collection of unusual and offbeat tales taken from baseball history includes the world's shortest bona fide home run and the baseball player who literally bit himself in the posterior while sliding into second base

Eighteen true stories of unique events in basketball include accounts of the Rio Grande College team, the Harlem Globetrotters, Wilt Chamberlain, and other high scorers and fancy shooters.

Offers a collection of true facts about animals, food, science, pop culture, outer space, geography, and weather.