Gibby - Tales of a Baseball Lifer

John Gibbons, Greg Oliver

Summary

A captivating and candid memoir from one of the most beloved and colorful figures in Toronto Blue Jays history
		 
Over 11 years and two separate managerial stints with the Toronto Blue Jays, John Gibbons endeared himself to fans with his folksy manner and his frequent battles with umpires: “Here comes Gibby!” Winning helped too. Under Gibbons’s management, the Jays made the American League Championship Series in 2015, ending a 22-year playoff drought; then they did it again in 2016. Along the way the team defied odds, won over a nation, and with one flip of a bat produced one of the most iconic moments in MLB history. Now, in his memoir, Gibby shares the story: an on-field career that didn’t pan out, but a managing career that did … eventually.
		 
Raised in a military family, he played his first competitive baseball in Newfoundland and Labrador, and, with the family now in San Antonio, Texas, Gibby, a catcher, developed into a first-round draft pick of the New York Mets. While Gibbons only played 18 major league games, he did earn a World Series ring as the 1986 Mets bullpen catcher and knew all the characters from that team, including Doc Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra, and Gary Carter. In 1990, Gibby began his journey as a coach and manager. An old teammate, J.P. Ricciardi, hired him to work with the Jays, and he moved his way up the ranks and into the hearts of baseball fans.

Available since: 04/04/2023.

Print length: 256 pages.

Other books that might interest you

The Ultimate Road Trip - All 89...

Mike Wilson, Lance Hornby,...

“If you like hockey and travel, you’ll love this book.” — Rick Vaive, Leafs captain and three-time 50-goal scorer
		 
The Ultimate Leafs Fan attended every Toronto Maple Leafs contest of the 2018–19 NHL season and in this lively account makes it his mission to figure out what makes fans bleed blue
		 
Through 89 games, from October to April, Mike Wilson, a retired Bay Street trader, traveled to 31 rinks to document stories of Leafs love. Mike took every conceivable mode of transport, stayed in team hotels and on the couches of family and friends, then went into the cheap seats, private suites, the streets, sports bars, hotel lobbies, and many other unique locations where Leafs Nation gets together, to gather tales both hilarious and heart-wrenching. Media personalities, former players, and NHL celebrities gave Wilson their thoughts on what fuels the Leafs passion.
		 
With a foreword from club president Brendan Shanahan and colourful souvenir photos, The Ultimate Road Trip allows fans to vicariously experience the journey of a lifetime, and explores the passion of the sign-waving, fully costumed diehards who fill arenas from Alberta to Anaheim.

Show book

In Search of Real Monsters -...

Richard Freeman

From animals long believed extinct to monsters we thought never existed —a cryptozoologist’s true accounts of his worldwide hunt for legendary creatures. 
 
Cryptozoologist Richard Freeman has spent years researching and tracking down mythical monsters. In this book, he recounts more riveting monster hunt stories from his globetrotting adventures: through the dense forests of Sumatra on the trail of a mystery ape known as the orang-pendek, to Tasmania in search of the thylacine or Tasmanian wolf. Every corner of Earth has its own monster —even in the traceless Gobi Desert, where he searches for the Mongolian death worm, a creature so feared by the nomads that it can send a whole community into a panic. 
 
Freeman also provides excellent advice on how to carry out your own cryptozoological expeditions from scratch—with information on:what equipment to takeinoculationshow to choose which mythical animals to huntplanning aheadthe importance of getting good local guides, and more

Show book

Something in the Air - American...

Richard Hoffer

In the tradition of Seabiscuit and The Summer of ’49, a gripping sports narrative that brilliantly tells the amazing individual stories of the unforgettable athletes who gathered in Mexico City in a year of dramatic upheaval.The 1968 Mexico City Olympics reflected the spirit of their revolutionary times. Richard Hoffer’s Something in the Air captures the turbulence and offbeat heroism of that historic Olympiad, which was as rich in inspiring moments as it was drenched in political and racial tensions. Although the basketball star Lew Alcindor decided to boycott, heavyweight boxer George Foreman not only competed, but waved miniature American flags over his fallen opponents. The sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos became as famous for their raised-fist gestures of protest as their speed on the track. No one was prepared for Bob Beamon’s long jump, which broke the world’s record by a staggering twenty-two inches. And then there was Dick Fosbury, the goofball high jumper whose backwards, upside down approach to the bar (the "Fosbury Flop") baffled his coaches while breaking records. Though Fosbury was his own man, he was apolitical and easygoing. He didn’t defy authority; he defied gravity. Witty, insightful, and filled with human drama, Something in the Air mixes Shakespearean complexity with Hollywood sentimentality, sociopolitical significance, and the exhilarating spectacle of youthful, physical prowess. It is a powerful, unforgettable tale that will resonate with sports fans and readers of social history alike.

Show book

No Place to Fall - Superalpinism...

Victor Saunders

No Place to Fall is Victor Saunder's follow up to his Boardman Tasker Prize winning debut book Elusive Summits. Covering three expeditions to familiar and unfamiliar ranges in Nepal, the Karakoram and the Kumaon, each shares the exhilaration of attempting new alpine-style routes on terrifyingly committing mountains. In 1989 Victor Saunders and Steve Sustad completed a difficult route on the West Face of Makalu II, only to be brought to a storm-bound halt above 7000 metres while descending. Without food or bivouac gear, they endured a tortuous descent after a night in the open. Two years later the pair were with a small team in the Hunza valley exploring elusive access to a giant hidden pillar on the unvisited South-East Face of Ultar, one of the highest and most shapely of the world's unclimbed peaks. Climbing at night to avoid being caught out by the torture of sun on ice, they were a few pitches from the summit ridge on soft snow and rotten ice before equipment failure committed them to a dire descent. In 1992 Victor Saunders was part of a joint Indian-British team climbing various peaks in the Panch Chuli range and exploring its approaches from the west. A happy and successful expedition narrowly avoided ending in tragedy when Stephen Venables broke both legs in a fall on the descent from Panch Chuli V and Chris Bonington survived another fall going to his aid. The dramatic evacuation of Venables, in which the author took a major part, forms an exciting climax to a book which describes at first hand what it is like on the cutting edge of contemporary alpine-style climbing in the world's highest mountains. As well as exciting climbing action, No Place to Fall offers enviable mountain exploration, enriched by sharing the lives of the mountain peoples along the way. Victor Saunders also casts a perceptive, if bemused, eye over his fellow climbers and reflects on the calculation of risk that drives them back year after year to chance their lives in high places.

Show book

The Hockey Scribbler

George Bowering

Hockey forms the backdrop of our lives. For many Canadians, the big moments — births, deaths, marriages, moves — are all mixed up with the wins and losses of our teams. The voices of Hockey Night in Canada sportscasters are our soundtrack, and visions of skates scraping across the ice lull us to sleep.
 
George Bowering, Canada’s former poet laureate, is no different. Growing up in Oliver, BC, Bowering was entranced by the kids from Saskatchewan who skated and handled pucks as easy as breathing. His fascination with hockey followed him into adult life, from BC to Quebec and back again. Bowering followed his teams with a critical eye and a fan’s passion, and his stories bring us on a cross-country hockey-themed road trip, with occasional forays into boxing, poetry, and sports fashion.
 
Bowering has an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject. He has been an avid and attentive hockey fan since boyhood, and has an extensive catalogue of thoughts and opinions on the personalities and events that populate Canadian hockey history. In The Hockey Scribbler, Bowering brings us along on his richly detailed look back at the hockey in Canada since the 1950s.

Show book

A History of the Olympics

John Goodbody

This unique audiobook history of the Olympics, first issued in 2008, has been updated to include the Beijing Olympics and released to coincide with the London event. Written by the prize-winning sports journalist John Goodbody, and with a fascinating personal documentary featuring one of Britain's leading Olympians, Sebastian Coe, who is now heading the 2012 Games, this is an ideal opener! Goodbody, for many years chief sports news writer for the Times, has covered every Olympics since 1964. In this entertaining and informative account, he tells the main stories of each of the modern Olympics. Here are some of the heroes and heroines who have made sporting history, as well as the main disasters and scandals that attend the world’s greatest sporting event.

Show book