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Finalist for the 2023 CASEY Award Gaylord Jackson Perry was born in 1938 as the younger son of a tobacco sharecropper in Martin County, North Carolina. He and his older brother Jim grew up against a background of backbreaking work six days a week in a community that boasted not a single paved road until the 1950s. Their only relaxation was playing baseball, first with their father and later at school. While both brothers would go on to succeed as pitchers in major league baseball, for Gaylord, success would require a lot of perseverance and an almost equal amount of subterfuge. After a couple of lackluster seasons with the San Francisco Giants, he learned from bullpen-mate Bob Shaw how to throw the illegal spitball. More importantly, he learned to control the tricky pitch and to conceal it from suspicious umpires, opposing managers, and baffled batters. When he finally broke out the spitter in a victory by attrition in a marathon, 32-inning, nine-hour doubleheader against the Mets in May 1964, his destiny was set. The Hall of Famer would go on to a 314–265 win-loss record, with a 3.11 earned-run average and 3,534 career strikeouts, becoming the first pitcher in major league history to win the Cy Young Award in both leagues. Sports historian David Vaught has mined archival and public records, game statistics, media accounts, and previously published works—including Perry’s 1974 autobiography—to compile the first critical biography of a player as famous for his wry humor and downhome banter as for his trademark illegal pitch. Written for baseball fans and American sports historians, Spitter: Baseball’s Notorious Gaylord Perry provides new insights and genuine enjoyment of the game for a wide range of readers.
For everyone who has ever wondered about spitballs, pine tar, the size of the diamond—all of the fascinating stories behind the rules of America's pastime—this book provides all of the answers. The authors take readers on a unique trip around the bases, explaining the development of the existing rules and drawing on a vast amount of fascinating history, lore, and trivia. Anecdotes feature legendary figures and events such as Yogi Berra, who threw himself out at first while playing in the minors in order to win a bet for a steak dinner; Fred “Bonehead” Merkle, who famously cost the New York Giants the pennant when he failed to tag a base; Albert Belle and the corked bat controversy; and Mets manager Bobby Valentine, who appeared in disguise after having been ejected by umpires. Every rule is dissected in this appealing look at baseball history that supplements its stories with archival photographs from the Hall of Fame as well as photos of current heroes.
Within the Eastern Empire, Duke Kordas Valdemar rules a tiny, bucolic Duchy that focuses mostly on horse breeding. Anticipating the day when the Empire's exploitative and militant leaders would not be content to leave them alone, his father gathered magicians in the hopes of one day finding a way to escape and protect the people of the Duchy from tyranny. One of the Duchy's mages find there is a way to place a Gate at a distance so far from the Empire that it is unlikely the Emperor can find or follow them as they evacuate everyone that is willing to leave. When Kordas is summoned to the Emperor's Court, will his reputation as a country bumpkin buy his people the time they need to flee? -- adapted from jacket.
This work, which picks up where the author's previous book, The Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s (McFarland, 2005), left off, covers the Dodgers' final eight years in Brooklyn. Chapters carry the reader from the 1951 playoffs, when a late season collapse and Thomson's "Shot Heard Round the World" dealt Brooklyn a heartbreaking blow, through the 1955 World Series title, and finally to Walter O'Malley's controversial decision to move the team to Los Angeles. The author covers each season in-depth and assesses popular perceptions of the Dodgers, their players and owners, and considers O'Malley's culpability in the team's departure, which ended a string of 74 years in which Brooklyn had major league baseball.
A provocative travel narrative about one of the world's few matriarchal societies
The second historical suspense novel in Imogen Robertson’s critically acclaimed Westerman and Crowther mystery series London, 1781. Harriet Westerman anxiously awaits news of her husband, a ship’s captain who has been gravely injured in the king’s naval battles with France. As London’s streets seethe with rumor, a body is dragged from the murky waters of the Thames. Having gained a measure of fame as amateur detectives for unraveling the mysteries of Thornleigh Hall, the indomitable Mrs. Westerman and her reclusive sidekick, anatomist Gabriel Crowther, are once again called on to investigate. In this intricate novel, Harriet and Crowther will discover that this is no ordinary drowning—the victim is part of a plot to betray England’s most precious secrets.