It may be natural to play games, but the sports we love aren't natural at all. Each and every one of them has been invented, tweaked, pushed and pulled to come up with better rules, cleverer tactics and more effective techniques. There are no prizes for guessing who invented the Cruyff Turn or the Fosbury Flop - but who invented the header or the sliding tackle? The dive pass or the scrum? The lob or the smash? The sand wedge or the tee? The googly or the flipper? This book introduces 250 men, women and animals, each of whom has transformed at least one major sport. Famous or infamous, remembered or forgotten, god-like or god-awful, the game was never the same after them. In making his selection, Tim Harris, author of Sport, has drawn on years of passion, argument and research to produce a list that is at once personal and authoritative, provocative and challenging: the rogues, rulers and revolutionaries who shaped the games we play today.
Players and Pretenders tells the story of the flip side of basketball?s ?March Madness,? where the game is played by average players for love, not for money.
With an all-new introduction to the Baen Ebook Edition. Clay Reynolds is the winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award. "Ingenious . . .
Everyone knew that freshman had their hall, sophomores had theirs, juniors had theirs, and seniors had theirs. But of course he walked down our hall to see where my locker was, and stood there and talked to me before he walked to his ...
The strongest collection yet from this widely praised poet is about the central players in our lives, our relationships over time--between mother and son, mother and daughter--and how one generation of relationships informs and shapes the ...
Joe Montana? Steve Young? Robert Cohen, has his own take on the matter and in a book that is bound to inspire conversation if not controversy, ranks who he believes are the greatest players from 1-50, with 25 honorable mentions.
In Tide Players, acclaimed New Yorker contributor and author Jianying Zha depicts a new generation of movers and shakers who are transforming modern China.
When Nya Gamden is accepted into the nursing program at Old Dominion University, she is thrilled, until her boyfriend asks her to give up her dreams in exchange for marriage, forcing her into the arms of a well-respected businessman who is ...
Criticizes modern professional basketball, arguing it is threatened by scandals, and suggests top players have been corrupted by their huge salaries
The All-America Football Conference and the National Football League battled for supremacy from 1946 through 1949. In the end, the players from the AAFC, as well as three teams, were brought into the NFL.
This combination makes for a winning debut in Legends: The Best Players, Games, and Teams in Baseball. This is no traditional almanac of mundane statistics, but rather a storyteller's journey through baseball's storied game.