Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts

Roadside Baseball: The Locations of America's Baseball Landmarks Review

Roadside Baseball: The Locations of America's Baseball Landmarks
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I cannot remember enjoying a baseball book this much. It focuses on hundreds of historic baseball landmarks, and the breadth of places is fascinating. There are all of the classic former ballpark sites like the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field, complete with a description and photos of what is there now. Dozens of baseball museums I never knew existed, historically placed markers identifying famous homeruns by Babe Ruth, the home of Connie Mack, sacred baseball burial grounds and much more. I cannot believe how much I learned from this book (and I have studied the game for a long time). Some fine detective work here--like where Lou Gehrig really played his last game, the birthsite of Jackie Robinson, and where Babe Ruth pitched a notable yet obscure game against Walter Johnson in California. Lots of historic Negro League sites, too--for we baseball fans who love the road and who love history, this is our ultimate guide and I've never seen anything like it.

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Capturing such quintessentially American pastimes as baseball and road trips in one fascinating work, this updated and expanded guide chronicles more than 500 important events in baseball history with detailed descriptions of the event and information on each location. Packed with historical data, trivia, photographs, and baseball lore, entries include the birthplaces of baseball legends, ballparks, museums and halls of fame, final resting places, and many places that are no longer standing. From out-of-the-way spots to the most popular stadiums in the U.S. and Canada, no site is too small or insignificant to be included in this comprehensive directory. Entries include the Buckminster Hotel in Boston, where the Black Sox planned their fix of the 1919 World Series; the original little league field and museum in Williamsport, Pennsylvania; the birthplace of Jackie Robinson; the place where Mickey Mantle was discovered by a scout from the New York Yankees; and the site of the original Wrigley Field, erected in Los Angeles in 1925.

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The Ultimate Baseball Road-Trip: A Fan's Guide to Major League Stadiums Review

The Ultimate Baseball Road-Trip: A Fan's Guide to Major League Stadiums
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As an avid reader of baseball books, I am often skeptical of new baseball publications. Baseball books can be tediously academic (it is a game after all, Mr. Will) or, in the case of guide books, short on substance. Other works just seem to repeat the stories and cliches I hear every year during rain delays. When I saw "The Ultimate Baseball Road-Trip," I thought it might be another coffee-table book. But it has been a fun, informative read. The book appeals to the historian in me, especially in its efforts to tell about the Negro League and minor league entries in each respective MLB city and in its attempts to document old stadiums. Yet, O'Connell and Pahigian write in a style that is witty and engaging, and wise to the role of trivia in the seamhead's life . I have found myself continually sneaking a quick read at my desk or on the train. (The book is addictive and perfect for summer reading.) Finally, I can recommend this book as a travel guide nearly on par with the "Let's Go" or "Rough Guide" series. I used it on a trip to the Midwest and found it especially useful in less celebrated cities like Milwaukee and St. Louis. It is rare that a book of this type can succeed on so many levels.

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The Ultimate Baseball Road-Trip is a comprehensive guide to all the diverse and fascinating ballparks throughout the country by two entertaining young writers whose love for the game of baseball and the game of life overflows from each page. Josh Pahigian and Kevin O'Connell's approach to skillfully planning and fully appreciating a road-trip or a visit to a single park is funny and irreverent and loaded with information designed to make the most of the experience.Part travel manual, part ballpark atlas, part baseball history book, part restaurant and city guide, and, not least, part epic narrative, The Ultimate Baseball Road-Trip encompasses all the essential elements of a full-blown baseball road-trip. Included are ticket and travel information, a detailed guide to the best and worst seats in each park, folklore and statistics on each park, tips on each park's trademark foods, and profiles of nearby sports bars and baseball attractions, all within a lively narrative that reminds us that baseball is often the ultimate metaphor for the important things in life.

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Beyond the Scoreboard: An Insider's Guide to the Business of Sport Review

Beyond the Scoreboard: An Insider's Guide to the Business of Sport
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If you suspected that sports are big, big business this book will confirm that. It gives a detailed picture of just about every business aspect of major sports including TV, ownership, corporate sponsorship, government involvement, stadium design and financing, and union/sports agents involvement. It even has a chapter of the sports video gaming industry and fantasy leagues that have flourished in the last decade. There are interviews with the commissioners of the principal sports: Roger Goodell (NFL), David Stern (NBA), Gary Bettman (NHL) and Brian France (NASCAR). In addition to its thorough descriptions of the mechanics of the sports business, the book has "case studies" interspersed throughout the chapters that give examples of the complex dealings of the sports business world.
One domain of the sports world, just to give one example, is the evolution of the design, construction and financing of sports stadiums (stadia?). There is an architectural sub-specialty of sports stadiums and arenas that has brought about many design innovations now commonly seen across the nation: single sport stadiums (no longer shared between football and baseball) luxury suites, club areas, strategies for seating placement, vendors and concessionaires, and more. It's no surprise that complicated financing schemes have emerged to fund these mega million structures, involving corporate resources and government/business partnerships.
There is hardly an aspect of the business of sports that isn't covered in great depth by the authors. Whatever one's favorite sport might be there is much to be learned about what makes it tick in this book.

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Go behind the scenes with your insider's access to the high-pressure, high-stakes business of professional sport.

In Beyond the Scoreboard, Rick Horrow, sport business analyst for Fox Sports, Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the BBC and host of PBS Nightly Business Report's "Beyond the $coreboard," and Horrow Sports Ventures' vice president Karla Swatek take you to the boardrooms, negotiating tables, and executive suites of sport's most influential powerbrokers.

Beyond the Scoreboard tackles sport's hot-button topics head on. You'll see

• how sponsors measure return on investment with sport organizations;

• how pro teams negotiate with governments to make a stadium deal;

• the effect of the sport facility building boom on teams' bottom lines;

• how sport agents try to maximize the value of their in-demand clients; and

• the effect on teams and fans of revolutionary changes in modern ticket selling.

Whether you are one of the millions of people who play fantasy sports or you just want to know more about how your favorite teams determine their strategies, you'll learn how the experts make deals happen.

And with engaging sidebars and exclusive interviews from the most powerful figures in sport, including Roger Goodell, David Stern, Brian France, and Gary Bettman, you'll gain expert analysis from people who have played leadership roles in some of the most intense negotiations and lucrative business deals in sport history.

There's nobody better equipped to explain what it takes to be a success in sport marketing, sponsorships, facility financing, or generating media coverage than Rick Horrow, the Sports Professor. In Beyond the Scoreboard, Horrow and Swatek provide you with an all-access pass to the multibillion-dollar world of professional sport.


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