Other books that might interest you

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  Brighton Up

  Nick Szczepanik

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  Brighton Up: The Inside Story of Brighton & Hove Albion's Journey From Despair to Triumph and the Premier League tells the story of how Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club bounced back from the heartbreak of missing out on promotion to the Premier League by the narrowest of margins, to achieve that ultimate goal earlier this month. Acclaimed sports journalist Nick Szczepanik, a lifelong Brighton fan with strong contacts at the club, documents its travails over two turbulent seasons.
  The book explains how the Seagulls, written off as certainties for relegation to League One before the 2015-16 season, overcame the loss of one of their own in the Shoreham Air Show tragedy to go on a record unbeaten run. But although top scorers in the Championship, they fell agonisingly short of their target of automatic promotion by a single goal, then lost out again in the lottery of the play-offs.
  The football world expected them to be crushed by disappointment and outspent by the big guns of Newcastle, Norwich and Aston Villa, but instead they regrouped and came back stronger in 2016-17.
  Led by experienced and inscrutable manager Chris Hughton and backed by owner Tony Bloom - the world-class poker player nicknamed 'The Lizard' for his ice-cold blood - they played with a determination not to let the heartbreak happen again.

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  More Than a Game - Living with...

  Archie Macpherson

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  'This is like a scene from Apocalypse Now'
  
  Archie Macpherson examines the story of football's most explosive rivalry - Celtic v Rangers.
  
  In this book he centres on the infamous riot at the Old Firm Scottish Cup Final at Hampden on 10 May 1980, at which he was the match commentator, and which resulted in the banning of alcohol in football grounds.
  
  He explores his memories of the many clashes between the two clubs over his half-century broadcasting career.
  
  This leads him inevitably to the sources of the sectarianism which has characterised this fixture and the West of Scotland.
  
  He weaves his experiences, and those of others, into the complex tapestry of social issues and club loyalties and takes us through the wider political context: World War II, the invisible hand of Margaret Thatcher and Scotland's independence referendum.
  
  This vitriolic conflict is more than a game. It is a kaleidoscope of bitter dispute, and occasional violence, and Archie Macpherson provides a colourful insight into how it was to live with the Old Firm for over five decades.

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  Growing the Game - The...

  Alan M. Klein

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  A sociologist and anthropologist scientifically examines the worldwide growth of MLB and America’s favorite pastime.Baseball fans understand the game has become increasingly international. Major league rosters include players from no fewer than fourteen countries, and more than one-fourth of all players are foreign born. Here, Alan Klein offers the first full-length study of a sport in the process of globalizing. Looking at the international activities of big-market and small-market baseball teams, as well as the Commissioner’s Office, he examines the ways in which Major League Baseball operates on a world stage that reaches from the Dominican Republic to South Africa to Japan.The origins of baseball’s efforts to globalize are complex, stemming as much from decreasing opportunities at home as from promise abroad. Klein chronicles attempts to develop the game outside the United States, the strategies that teams such as the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Kansas City Royals have devised to recruit international talent, and the ways baseball has been growing in other countries. He concludes with an assessment of the obstacles that may inhibit or promote baseball’s progress toward globalization, offering thoughtful proposals to ensure the health and growth of the game in the United States and abroad. “A superb inside look at how the national pastime has reinvented itself . . . Klein’s writing is engaging, and his research is top-notch.” —Tim Wendel, author of The New Face of Baseball: The One-Hundred-Year Rise and Triumph of Latinos in America’s Favorite Sport“A timely contribution to our understanding of baseball in our contemporary age.” —Michael L. Butterworth, Sociology of Sport Journal

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  Queen of the Negro Leagues -...

  James Overmyer

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  The first woman inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, there was no one like Effa Manley in the sports world of the 1930s and 1940s. She was a sophisticated woman who owned a baseball team. She never shrank from going head to head with men, who dominated the ranks of sports executives. That her life story remained unchronicled for so long can only be attributed to one thing: her team, the Newark Eagles, belonged to the Negro Leagues.In Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles, Negro Leagues Centennial Edition, James Overmyer brings to light new details regarding Effa Manley's fascinating story, including previously-unknown information about her childhood and family. Overmyer wonderfully portrays Effa Manley's trailblazing life, her championship baseball team, and a thriving black community in Newark that took the Eagles into their hearts. In addition, this book contains updates regarding the Negro Leagues, its talented rank of players, and Manley's induction into the Hall of Fame.This important work shines the spotlight on a previously unsung segment of baseball history. Drawing extensively from Eagle team records and Manley's scrapbook, Queen of the Negro Leagues is the definitive biography of a groundbreaking female sports executive.

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  The Immortals 2 - The Story of...

  Harry Harris

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  From the loveable Claudio Ranieri winning the Premier League with the 5,000-1 underdogs to Brendon Rodgers lifting the FA Cup five years later this is the story of football's romantics, the archetypal underdogs biting the so-called Super League elite.
  If ever there was the perfect riposte to those inflated egos who wanted to take the game away from the people and claim it as their own, then the exploits of Leicester City epitomises the right of the true fans to dream the impossible dream.
  First Ranieri fulfilled those dreams with he broke the mould of the Big Five and claimed the title, and then, perhaps even more remarkable, to prove it wasn't just a one-off, Rodgers ended a long run of FA Cup Final heartaches by claiming the club's first ever victory in the world's oldest and most prestigious cup competition. In so doing he became the first manager since Sir Alex to win the cup both side of the border.
  Between the two highly unpredictable episodes came untold tragedy when the club's adored owner was killed in a helicopter crash leaving the King Power Stadium.
  Aiyawatt 'Top' Srivaddhanaprabha took over the running of the club after his father Vichai died in that tragedy in 2018. The Thai family bought the club in 2010 and have transformed it from a provincial outfit to a global entity.

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  Get Into Sport: Five Ways You're...

  Wiesia Kuczaj

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  Many users don’t realise they have a host of undiscovered additional functions at their disposal too.

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