Hardcover. Lexington KY, Eclipse Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Patrick Smithwick has written an unusually moving memoir about growing up in the hell-bent-for-leather world of Thoroughbred racing as the son of Hall of Fame steeplechase jockey A.P. "Paddy" Smithwick. Racing My Father is the story of a son working alongside his father throughout summer mornings, and then hopping in a "hot car," windows up, heater blasting - so his father can sweat off a few more pounds - and driving his father to the track where the races will be held in the afternoon. Paddy Smithwick was a natural. He was a charismatic figure. He was the greatest steeplechase rider in America in the 1950s and '60s, winning all the big races, leading the country in raes won four times, dominating the sport with his style, ability, heart, and gentlemanly demeanor. Patrick Smithwick is also a natural. As a jockey, he won steeplechase races. As a writer, he's won awards. There are hints of the innocence of Huck Finn as Smithwick starts off his account of serving his apprenticeship with his father. The innocence ends when his father is paralyzed in a bad fall. Yet, the youthful Smithwick helps his father work his way back into racing, and the father-son, trainer-rider team ends up in the winner's circle at Saratoga Springs. Smithwick has recreated his own Yoknapatawpha County - with its gritty backsides and polished clubhouses, its knotty characters and sleek racehorses. Clean copy.
Toronto, Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclippws dust jacket. Road Games is a passionate, engrossing and authoritative chronicle of the extraordinary 1992-93 NHL season, one that ended with an inquiry into whether or not the Ottawa Senators deliverately "tanked it" to secure their first overall draft pick of hockey's newest sensation, Alexandre Daigle. This was the season that Mario Lemieux's involvement in a sordid scandal was forgotten when he overcame cancer to win the scoring title; Doug Gilmour emerged as one of the game's finest players; and European stars Selanne, Bure, Mogilny and Fedorov rose to preeminence, while the North American hockey heroes-Gretzky, Lemieux, and Lindros-endured a season marked by injury, sickness, disturbing controversy and moving comeback. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Sydney Australia , Macmillan, reprint, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 398 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY ROD LAVER on title page. 32 pages of b&w and color photography. Light edge wear to dust jacket, otherwise clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster , 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 286 pages, b&w photos. The autobiography of the baseball legend. Clean copy, dj spine with light fading.
Hardcover. NY, Crown, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. 302 pages, b&w illustrations. Foreword by Larry Bird. A vivid, true-to-life portrait of a living legend whose career spaned the history of the NBA. He molded the most successful franchise in the history of American sport, and through the stars he acquired and nurtured he changed the face of professional basketball.
Hardcover. New York , Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1965, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages. Hardcover. Author's first book. Pages are age toned. Black & white photo section with a degree of damp wrinkling to the upper third of pages. Stain at top edge of rear inside cover. Black cloth cover, spine cloth heavily faded. No dust jacket. Unmarked text. Good.
Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 2nd pr., 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 256 pages, b&w illustrations. Hall of Famer Ford was the Yankee pitching ace in the 1950s and early 1960s, when the team frequently won the pennant. Raised in Queens, he was a quintessential New Yorker, and his well-publicized friendship with country boy Mickey Mantle made him seem the archetypal city slicker. Here he and New York Daily News columnist Pepe cover his diamond career, which was pretty much an uninterrupted triumph. Ford's lifetime winning percentage was .690, he played in 11 World Series and set the record for most consecutive scoreless innings in the series. There are also tales of his epoch-making carousing with Mantle and Billy Martin, his doctoring of baseballs and the greats he has known. Additionally, there is a warm introduction by pal Mantle. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Stein and Day, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 260 pages, b&w photographs. INSCRIBED BY GRAZIANO on front fly leaf, dated 1987. Very good in a bright dust jacket.
Hardcover. Boston, David R. Godine, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 273 pages, oblong hardcover illustrated in color and b&w. Frank Benson, a pivotal artist of the American Impressionist movement had three great loves in his long and productive life: his family, his art, and the sporting life. As a boy, Benson dreamed of being an ornithological illustrator. In mid-life, after an extremely successful career as a portraitist, he returned to the wildfowl and sporting subjects that were his lifelong passion. Over the next forty years, in etching, lithography, watercolor, and oil and wash, he portrayed birds beloved since childhood, scenes of his hunting and fishing expeditions, and still lives of incomparable delicacy. Whether painting a hunter setting out decoys, a wash of geese by moonlight, a watercolor of a companion poised to gaff a salmon, or an etching of a group of ducks silently gliding in for a landing, Benson conveyed the joy and beauty of a sportsman's life.
Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, BC Ed., 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 349 pages, b&w photos. One of the most endearing of American heroes, Casey Stengel guided the New York Yankees to ten pennants in twelve seasons. Here is the brilliant manager stripped naked--the person underneath all the clowning, mugging, and double-talking. Robert Creamer shows us Casey at twenty-two, famous from his very first day in the big leagues. We see Casey's playing career fall apart as he is traded, shunted to last-place teams, hampered by injuries, considered finished--until he bats a glorious home run in the 1923 World Series. Here are Casey's managing successes and failures--dismissed by the Yankees, he returns to the limelight with his new and inept New York Mets, the team he single-handedly lifts into the nation's consciousness. Clean copy, like new.
Hardcover. New York, Persea Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 228 page. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR BELTH ON TITLE PAGE AND DATED August 31, 2007. Otherwise, clean, tight copy with minor rubbing on dust jacket edges.
Hardcover. NY, Bantam Books, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 305 pages, b&w illustrations. First Printing of the First Edition, with complete number row (0987654321) on the copyright page. Illustrated with 16 pages of photos. Appendix (career stats). Clean copy.
Hardcover. Champaign IL, Sagamore Publishing, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 307 pages, b&w illustrations. SIGNED by all contributors on the front free endpaper - Kerry Keene, Raymond Sinibaldi, David Hickey, and Babe Ruth's granddaughter Linda Ruth Tosetti. The definitive work on his early years, The Babe in Red Stockings, represents not only a detailed study of his remarkable on-field achievements, but also delves into his happy-go-lucky, playful, and occasionally temperamental nature. Dozens of new pieces of information are added to further complete the portrait of one of America's most fascinating figures, the one and only Babe Ruth.
Hardcover. NY, Total Sports, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 296 pages, Foreword by Hank Aaron. In the crisp, evocative prose of Lawrence S. Ritter and in Mark Rucker's glorious selection of 350 rare photographs, this lavish gift book celebrates George Herman Ruth and the big-bang game he invented. Originally issued in 1988, this book created a new form of sports biography that has been widely imitated since, but never with such commercial success or critical acclaim. Includes unopened CD Rom game for Windows 95. (Will work on later Windows). DUE TO SIZE & WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. NY, Rodale, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. While The Big O: My Life, My Times, My Game will not disappoint basketball purists longing for Oscar Robertson's play-by-play of favorite games, the attraction of this autobiography is Robertson's perspective on the evolution of the sport and on the racial struggles that were the context of his formative years. Called by many basketball experts the greatest all-around player ever, Robertson earned an astonishing array of honors including an Olympic gold medal, 12 NBA All-Star appearances, the NBA Rookie of the Year award, and the 1964 NBA MVP award. Most remarkably, Robertson remains the only player in basketball history with a triple-double season (double-digit averages for scoring, rebounds, and assists). While Robertson could have easily candy-coated this impressive record for his retrospective, he devotes large sections of his book to the racial battles he faced off court, and his final chapters recount his controversial efforts as an NBA union leader to create free agency, a pension plan, and disability protection for players. In telling his life story, he lays bare the racism and mistreatment he suffered at the hands of individuals and institutions throughout his career, from the Mayor of Indianapolis and Cincinnati University to the NBA and CBS Sports. At times, his critiques can seem excessive (e.g. his discussions of the distortions in the film Hoosiers, while interesting, are repeated a bit too often), and some sections (like his attempts to compare himself to contemporary players) border on self-indulgence. Yet, he seems justified in arguing that his achievements--largely accomplished on second-rate teams, against a back-drop of unprecedented racial strife, and before the modern era of sports-media saturation--are easily underrepresented. In the end, The Big O offers a complex, human portrait to complement a spectacular sports career.
Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A reminder of the time when America fell in love with a tall, lanky, curly-haired pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. For a time in the 1970s, the country was in thrall to Mark Fidrych, who came to be known as "The Bird" for his resemblance to Big Bird. Fidrych emerged in the summer of 1976 and became an unlikely but legitimate phenomenon. Wilson tells the Bird's story in this biography of the Massachusetts native whose antics included tending to his own pitching mound during games and allegedly talking to the baseball. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Abrams Press, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 352 pages, b&w illustrations. The first full biography of the star Negro Leaguer and Hall of Famer James 'Cool Papa" Bell (1903-1991) was a legend in black baseball, a lightning fast switch hitter elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. Bell's speed was extraordinary; as Satchel Paige famously quipped, he was so fast he could flip a light switch and be in bed before the room got dark. Wheeler recounts the life of this extraordinary player, a key member of some of the greatest Negro League teams in history. Born to sharecroppers in Mississippi, Bell was part of the Great Migration, and in St. Louis, baseball saved Bell from a life working in slaughterhouses. Wheeler charts Bell's ups and downs in life and in baseball, in the United States, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico, where he went to escape American racism and MLB's color line.
Softcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st US, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, Advance Reading Copy, 408 pages. The seven-foot Dirk Nowitzki is one of the greatest players in basketball history. The Dallas Maverick's legend revolutionized the sport, redefining the role of the big man in the modern game. Dirk moved differently: flexible and fast, confident and in control. He thought differently, too. On the court, his shots were masterful-none more venerated than his signature one-legged flamingo fadeaway, a move that lives on in the repertoire of today's most skilled NBA players. How did this lanky kid from the German suburbs become an all-time top ten scorer and NBA champion? How can a superstar stay so humble? Award-winning novelist and sportswriter Thomas Pletzinger spent over seven years traveling with Nowitzki. He witnessed Dirk's summer workouts, involving fingertip pushups and the study of the physics, and spent days discussing literature and philosophy with Holger Geschwindner, Dirk's enigmatic mentor and coach. Watching Nowitzki in empty gyms and in packed arenas with 30,000 fans, Pletzinger began to understand how Dirk and Holger's philosophical insights on performance, creativity, and freedom enabled his success and longevity. This proof edition lacks the photo section. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, Revised Ed., 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. 253 pages, b&w photos. Expanded with new material for this 1956 editon. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 456 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. Award-winning sports writer Jane Leavy follows her New York Times runaway bestseller "Sandy Koufax" with the definitive biography of baseball icon Mickey Mantle. The legendary Hall-of-Fame outfielder was a national hero during his record-setting career with the New York Yankees, but public revelations of alcoholism, infidelity, and family strife badly tarnished the ballplayer's reputation in his latter years. In "The Last Boy", Leavy plumbs the depths of the complex athlete, using copious first-hand research as well as her own memories, to show why The Mick remains the most beloved and misunderstood Yankee slugger of all time. Clean copy.
NY, Paul S. Eriksson, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with light edgewear. 174 pages, b&w photos. One of the NBA's great all-time guards tells his life story from the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant to coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Wiley, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 320 pages. Having signed the most lucrative contract in NHL history with the Washington Capitals, Alexander Ovechkin, at 24, is an undisputed hockey legend. In the mold more of a rock star than hockey player, Ovechkin courts the limelight, is never shy with his opinions, and, in a sport that thrives on the collective culture of the team-Ovechkin is an iconoclast who flouts convention, while loving the game. In The Ovechkin Project, veteran hockey writers Damien Cox and Gare Joyce trace his elite sports pedigree, his role representing Russia in the World Juniors, and how since entering the NHL, he's taken his team from worst to first in their division, and the hockey world by storm. Clean copy.
 "Racing My Father: Growing Up with a Riding Legend by: Patrick Smithwick")
 "Red Grange-Football's Greatest Halfback by: Schoor, Gene (with Henry Gilfond)")
 "Road Games: A Year in the Life of the NHL by: Macgregor, Roy")
 "Rod Laver, a Memoir (SIGNED COPY) by: Laver, Rod and Larry Writer")
 "Say Hey: The Autobiography of Willie Mays by: Mays, Willie/Sahadi, Lou")
 "Seeing Red: The Red Auerbach Story by: Shaughnessy, Dan")
 "Slick: My Life in and Around Baseball by: Whitey Ford/ Phil Pepe")
 "Somebody Down Here Likes Me Too (SIGNED COPY) by: Graziano, Rocky and Ralph Corsel")
 "Sporting Art of Frank W. Benson, The by: Bedford, Faith Andrews")
 "Stengel: His Life and Times by: Creamer, Robert W.")
 "Stepping Up: The Story of Curt Flood and His FIght for Baseball Player's Rights (SIGNED COPY) by: Belth, Alex")
 "Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson by: Haywood, Will")
 "T.J.-My 26 Years in Baseball by: John, Tommy with Dan Valenti")
 "The Babe in Red Stockings: An In Depth Chronicle of Babe Ruth With the Boston Red Sox 1914-1919 (SIGNED COPY) by: Hickey, David/ Keene, Kerry/ Sinibali, Raymond")
 "The Babe: The Game That Ruth Built by: Ritter, Lawrence S.; Rucker, Mark; Aaron, Hank")
 "THE BIG O: My Life My Times My Game by: Robertson, Oscar")
 "The Bird: The Life and Legacy of Mark Fidrych by: Doug Wilson")
 "The Bona Fide Legend of Cool Papa Bell: Speed, Grace, and the Negro Leagues by: Wheeler, Lonnie")
 "The Jackie Robinson Story by: Mann, Arthur")
 "The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by: Jane Leavy")
 "The Lenny Wilkens Story by: Wilkens, Lenny")
 "The Ovechkin Project: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Hockey's Most Dangerous Player by: Damien Cox/Gare Joyce")