Other books that might interest you

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  Tales from the Deadball Era - Ty...

  Mark S. Halfon

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  The Deadball Era (1901–1920) is a baseball fan's dream. Hope and despair, innocence and cynicism, and levity and hostility blended then to create an air of excitement, anticipation, and concern for all who entered the confines of a major league ballpark. Cheating for the sake of victory earned respect, corrupt ballplayers fixed games with impunity, and violence plagued the sport.  
  At the same time, endearing practices infused baseball with lightheartedness, kindness, and laughter. Fans ran onto the field with baskets of flowers, loving cups, and cash for their favorite players in the middle of games. Ballplayers volunteered for "benefit contests" to aid fellow big leaguers and the country in times of need. "Joke games" reduced sport to pure theater as outfielders intentionally dropped fly balls, infielders happily booted easy grounders, hurlers tossed soft pitches over the middle of the plate, and umpires ignored the rules. Winning meant nothing, amusement meant everything, and league officials looked the other way. 
  Mark Halfon highlights the strategies, underhanded tactics, and bitter battles that defined this storied time in baseball history, while providing detailed insights into the players and teams involved in bringing to a conclusion this remarkable period in baseball history.

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  A Visitor's Guide to the Ancient...

  Neil Faulkner

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  The essential handbook for the 21st-century citizen seeking a lively guided tour of the ancient Greek Olympics. Travel back to the heyday of the city-state and classical Greek civilization. Enter this distant, alien, but still familiar culture and discover what the Greeks did and didn’t do during five thrilling days in August, 388 B.C.In the Olympic Stadium there were no stands, no shade—and no women allowed. Visitors sat on a grassy bank in the searing heat of midsummer to watch naked athletes compete in footraces, the pentathlon, horse and chariot races, and three combat sports—wrestling, boxing, and pankration, everyone's favorite competition, with virtually no rules and considerable blood and pain. This colorfully illustrated volume offers a complete tour of the Olympic site exactly as athletes and spectators found it. The book evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of the crowded encampment; introduces the various attendees (from champions and charlatans to aristocrats and prostitutes); and explains the numerous exotic religious rituals. Uniquely detailed and precise, this guide offers an unparalleled opportunity to travel in time, back to the excitement of ancient Olympia.“Splendidly captures the excitement, the razzmatazz, the intensity, glamour and squalor of the ancient Olympics. Packed with anecdotes and intriguing facts, the careful scholarship behind this wonderful little book is presented with gusto.”—Philip Matyszak, author of Ancient Athens on Five Drachmas a Day“Ultimately the ancient Olympics were more of an epic frat party full of booze and sex than a prestigious sporting competition, and Faulkner paints that picture well.”—Moira E. McLaughlin, The Washington Post

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  Aim High

  Tanni Grey-Thompson

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  Aim High reveals what has motivated Dame Tanni Grey Thompson, the UK's leading wheelchair athlete, through the highs and lows of her outstanding career. Her triumphs, which include winning 16 medals, 11 of which are gold, countless European titles, six London Marathons and over 30 world records, have catapulted this Welsh wheelchair athlete firmly into the public consciousness.

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  Behind the Dragon - Playing...

  Ross Harris

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  Shortlisted for the Telegraph Sports Book Awards 2020—Rugby Book of the Year. A complete history of the Welsh rugby union team, as told by the players.   Based on a combination of painstaking research into the early years of the Wales team to interviews with a vast array of Test match players and coaches from the Second World War to the present day, Ross Harries delves to the very heart of what it means to play for Wales, painting a unique and utterly compelling picture of the game in the only words that can truly do so: the players’ own.  Behind the Dragon lifts the lid on what it is to pull on the famous red shirt—the trials and tribulations behind the scenes, the glory, the drama and the honour on the field, and the heart-warming tales of friendship and humour off it.   Absorbing and illuminating, this is the ultimate history of Welsh rugby—told, definitively, by the men who have been there and done it.  “A tremendous book. What an array of fantastic characters and insights . . . both laugh out loud and poignant.” —Tom English, BBC Sport  “An epic story by the men who created legends in the Welsh jersey.” —Stephen Jones, The Sunday Times  “Punchy, revelatory, irresistible.” —Alan Pearey, Rugby World  “Ross Harries has written a history book like no other.” —Peter Jackson, The Rugby Paper

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  My Best Race - 50 Runners and...

  Chris Cooper

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  Fifty runners—from the world’s elite to passionate amateurs—share the races they’ll never forget in this “fascinating and fresh look at competitive running” (Jon Sinclair, former USA cross country and 10K champion, RRCA Hall of Famer).   Every runner that enters a race has a unique motivation behind competing: racing for the challenge, for the achievement, for the health benefits, or for more personal reasons. But whether they are twenty-mile-a-day elite marathoners or twenty-mile-a-week recreational runners, each of them can invariably point to a singular performance as “the best race I ever ran.”  My Best Race is a collection of those singular performances. In this inspirational collection, fifty runners, from Olympians and world champions, to courageous disabled athletes and middle-of-the-packers, share their personal accounts of what they consider the best race they ever ran—and why.   Contributors include a top marathoner who sacrifices his place on the Olympic team to pace his friend to the final qualifying spot at the Olympic Trials; “The Central Park Jogger” who finishes a race she founded to benefit disabled athletes, fourteen years after being left for dead from a brutal attack that gripped the nation; an unheralded high school runner who beats a previously undefeated state champion—and who goes on to become a two-time Olympian; the woman race organizers tried to physically remove from the male-only Boston Marathon in 1967; and forty-six other runners.   “Such wonderful and inspiring stories by a diverse group of runners—bravo!” —Ryan Lamppa, media director of Running USA   “What a fascinating concept! . . . A very unique and inspiring collection that gives great insight into the minds of runners.” —Keith Brantly, member of the 1996 US Olympic marathon team

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  The Year - Reawakening the...

  Dave Barter

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  In 1939 British cyclist Tommy Godwin cycled 75,065 miles in a single year. Think about that for a second: that's an average of over 200 miles each day. And it's a mark that still stands after almost eighty years. In The Year, Dave Barter resurrects the legend of the year record - a challenge nearly as old as bicycles themselves - and the cyclists who pushed themselves to establish and break it. Barter uncovers the stories behind these riders who would routinely cycle over a hundred miles a day in the race to set new records: Americans such as John H. George who recorded over 200 'centuries', nineteen double 'centuries' and three triple 'centuries' in the late 1800s. The British advertising executive Harry Long, whose annual tallies of over 20,000 miles in the early twentieth century led to the founding of the formal cycling year record, and Cycling magazine's Century Competition. The Englishman of French descent, Marcel Planes, whose 1911 record of 34,366 miles stood for over twenty years. Not forgetting the legends of the job-seeking Arthur Humbles, the one-armed vegetarian communist Walter Greaves, the 'keep-fit girl' Billie Dovey and the staggering mark set by Godwin who left a youthful Bernard Bennett trailing in his wake. Meticulous research through the annuals, archives and news stories of the bicycling world is backed up with insights from the families of these legendary cyclists, as well as Dave's own analysis of the riders' years in numbers. There is no more difficult challenge in cycling. The Year is the definitive story of these phenomenal cyclists.

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