Search Results for: life as sport

This Los Angeles Times bestseller takes a riveting look at the life and times of depression-era golf legend Bobby Jones.

In the wake of the stock market crash and the dawn of the Great Depression, a ray of light emerged from the world of sports in the summer of 1930. Bobby Jones, a 28-year-old amateur golfer, mounted a campaign against the record books. In four months, he conquered the British Amateur Championship, the British Open, the United States Open, and finally the United States Amateur Championship, an achievement so extraordinary that writers dubbed it the Grand Slam. No one has ever repeated it.

Mark Frost uses a wealth of original research to provide an unprecedented intimate portrait of golf great Bobby Jones. In the tradition of The Greatest Game Ever Played, The Grand Slam blends social history with sports biography, captivating the imagination and engaging the reader. The Grand Slam is a biography not to be missed.

Don’t miss this action-packed and comprehensive look at the life and achievements of an NFL legend!

With more Super Bowl appearances than any other player in NFL history, Tom Brady is a sports icon. From his college days as a backup quarterback at University of Michigan to his record-breaking number of winning seasons with the New England Patriots, this new and comprehensive biography gives fans a firsthand look at the highs and lows of the superstar’s life and career, complete with stats and photographs.

In this poignant memoir, a legendary sports journalist writes about the team that changed his life: the Morton High School Lady Potters basketball team.

Dave Kindred has covered dozens of Super Bowls and written about stars like Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan. But a high-school girls basketball team—the Lady Potters of Morton, Illinois—stands apart from the rest.

In this moving and intimate story, Kindred writes about his rise to professional success and the changes that brought him back to his hometown late in life. As he dealt with personal hardship, his urge to write sustained him. For years, he has recapped the games of the Lady Potters, including their many runs to state championships. He attended game after game, sitting in the stands and making notes, paid nothing but Milk Duds. And the team and their community were there for him as he lost a grandson to addiction and his wife to long-term illness. 

Tender and honest, Kindred’s story reminds readers what sports are really about. He trades in the exhausting spectacle of Super Bowl Sunday for the joy of togetherness, the fire of competition, and the inexhaustible hope for victory tomorrow.

We live in a world that all too often operates under the overriding template of self-promotion, embracing a “hooray for me” attitude, and which measures success in increasingly small timeframes dotted with markers of temporal value.

Millions of viewers know James Brown as a sports commentator and former athlete. With Role of a Lifetime, James reveals a different side of his character. Brown rose from a middle-class home to earn a scholarship to Harvard and a chance at a professional sports career before moving on to broadcast journalism. Part memoir and part self-help, this book draws on James’s lessons from his faith and life experiences to guide readers to find fulfillment and significance. He offers values and encouragement to others of all generations, assisting them in their search for meaning in navigating a world that increasingly promotes transient values, if any at all. His message that shortcuts and gimmicks are counterproductive to a person’s success provides hope that there is a God who cares about them and their futures.

A ball can start a revolution.

Born in Kabul, Awista Ayub escaped with her family to Connecticut in 1981, when she was two years old, but her connection to her heritage remained strong. An athlete her whole life, she was inspired to start the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange after September 11, 2001, as a way of uniting girls of Afghanistan and giving them hope for their future. She chose soccer because little more than a ball and a field is needed to play; however, the courage it would take for girls in Afghanistan to do this would have to be tremendous–and the social change it could bring about by making a loud and clear statement for Afghan women was enough to convince Awista that it was possible, and even necessary.

Under Taliban rule, girls in Afghanistan couldn’t play outside of their homes, let alone participate in a sport on a team. So, Awista brought eight girls from Afghanistan to the United States for a soccer clinic, in the hope of not only teaching them the sport, but also instilling confidence and a belief in their self-worth. They returned to Afghanistan and spread their interest in playing soccer; when Awista traveled there to host another clinic, hundreds of girls turned out to participate–and the numbers of players and teams keep growing. What began with eight young women has now exploded into something of a phenomenon. Fifteen teams now compete in the Afghanistan Football Federation, with hundreds of girls participating.

Against all odds and fear, these girls decided to come together and play a sport that has reintroduced the very traits that decades of war had cruelly stripped away from them–confidence and self-worth. In However Tall the Mountain, Awista tells both her own story and the deeply moving stories of the eight original girls, describing their daily lives back in Afghanistan, and how they found strength in each other, in teamwork, and in themselves–taking impossible risks to obtain freedoms we take for granted. This is a story about hope, about what home is, and in the end, about determination. As the Afghan proverb says, However tall the mountain, there’s always a road.

A ball can start a revolution.

Born in Kabul, Awista Ayub escaped with her family to Connecticut in 1981, when she was two years old, but her connection to her heritage remained strong. An athlete her whole life, she was inspired to start the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange after September 11, 2001, as a way of uniting girls of Afghanistan and giving them hope for their future. She chose soccer because little more than a ball and a field is needed to play; however, the courage it would take for girls in Afghanistan to do this would have to be tremendous–and the social change it could bring about by making a loud and clear statement for Afghan women was enough to convince Awista that it was possible, and even necessary.

Under Taliban rule, girls in Afghanistan couldn’t play outside of their homes, let alone participate in a sport on a team. So, Awista brought eight girls from Afghanistan to the United States for a soccer clinic, in the hope of not only teaching them the sport, but also instilling confidence and a belief in their self-worth. They returned to Afghanistan and spread their interest in playing soccer; when Awista traveled there to host another clinic, hundreds of girls turned out to participate — and the numbers of players and teams keep growing. What began with eight young women has now exploded into something of a phenomenon. Fifteen teams now compete in the Afghanistan Football Federation, with hundreds of girls participating.

Against all odds and fear, these girls decided to come together and play a sport that has reintroduced the very traits that decades of war had cruelly stripped away from them — confidence and self-worth. In However Tall the Mountain, Awista tells both her own story and the deeply moving stories of the eight original girls, describing their daily lives back in Afghanistan, and how they found strength in each other, in teamwork, and in themselves — taking impossible risks to obtain freedoms we take for granted. This is a story about hope, about what home is, and in the end, about determination. As the Afghan proverb says, However tall the mountain, there’s always a road.

Throughout the 1998 baseball season, two names made the headlines more than any others: Mark McGwire, the eventual home run king, and Sammy Sosa, the runner-up in a race that won the hearts of baseball fans worldwide. Yet at the end of the day, it was Sosa who walked away with the National League’s MVP award, not McGwire. Why? Because Sosa had dug the dismal 1997 Chicago Cubs out of the cellar not just with his home runs, but also with his spectacular all-around play. Yet Sosa’s contributions off the field, both in the States and in his native land, the Dominican Republic, are even more impressive. In this powerful biography of one of the most admired sluggers in baseball, Matt Christopher, the number one sports series for kids, traces Sosa’s life from his poverty-stricken childhood-when shining shoes put food on the table-to his professional career. For more information on the Matt Christopher Sports Bio Bookshelf, please see the last pages of this book.

A New York Times bestseller, David Halberstam’s The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions.

Marshall has spent his while life–all eleven years of it–being told he’s a disappointment. He struggles in school and in sports, and even his best friend only seems to hang around to be close to Marshall’s brilliant, universally beloved and admired big sister. But when Hope disappears, leaving only a note that she’s gone to find the River Witch, it’s up to Marshall to find his sister–and discover the strength he’s had inside all along.

Don’t miss this action-packed and informative look at the life and achievements of a basketball legend!

Matt Christopher, the number one sports writer for kids, profiles basketball superstar Michael Jordan, covering his childhood, college career, rookie years, professional career highlights, and even his short stint in minor league baseball. Written in Matt Christopher’s easy-to-read style and complete with incredible photos and Michael Jordan’s key stats, this comprehensive biography will entertain and educate.

After an astonishing career-first in Scotland, and then over 27 years with Manchester United Football Club- Sir Alex Ferguson delivers Leading, in which the greatest soccer coach of all time will analyze the pivotal leadership decisions of his 38 years as a manager and, with his friend and collaborator Sir Michael Moritz, draw out lessons anyone can use in business and life to generate long-term transformational success.

From hiring practices to firing decisions, from dealing with transition to teamwork, from mastering the boardroom to responding to failure and adversity, Leading is as inspiring as it is practical, and a go-to reference for any leader in business, sports, and life.

In the NFL there is only one certainty: that every day, someone will have to be the Next Man Up. Football is an unrelentingly punishing sport, played and practiced at undiminished intensity, and it devours its players. Confronting injuries, trades, and the grim reality of competition, every NFL team prepares constantly for the likelihood — the certainty — that even franchise players can go down at any time. And someone new must be ready, trained, and primed to step in at the highest level.

Bestselling sportswriter John Feinstein persuaded one NFL team to lift the extraordinary secrecy that shrouds the sport and let him see how a team operates at the closest level. One team let him join every practice, every coaches’ meeting, every players’ gathering, every strategy debate. From the give-and-take of draft day, into the grinder of summer training camps, and from 100-degree practice games to the last game in frigid conditions, Feinstein reveals how a football team works — or fails to work — as no writer has done before.

Next Man Up unveils rituals (what a coach tells a player at the moment he cuts him); rules (the inanities of league-appointed “uniform Nazis”); conflicts (the scouts vs. the coaches, the general managers vs. the agents, the offense vs. the defense, the special teams coaches vs. everybody); money (how much a journeyman makes, and how his life differs from the multi-million-dollar-a-year star players)-every nuance of a team’s life, from the owner’s goals to the coach’s day-to-day travails to the feeling of the sleet-soaked ball in the hands of a receiver on artificial turf.

The access John Feinstein enjoyed allows him to discuss with equal understanding the owner’s management strategy, the coaches’ and coordinators’ plans for each new game, and how it all affects the players themselves. Anyone who loves football — any team, in any era — will savor the thousands of details revealed here for the first time, and the extraordinary drama that goes into following week after week, the most sensational sport in America.

The definitive guide to the real men of the gridiron: NFL tight ends.

There is no profession in sports like the NFL tight end. None. You must mash 320-pound defensive ends in the run game. You must twist your torso at impossible angles to make acrobatic catches downfield in the pass game. You must have a certain element of crazy to you, too. The tight end is a blend of brain and brawn and bruises…so many bruises. BLOOD AND GUTS tracks the fascinating rise of this position one tight end at a time, from Mike Ditka and John Mackey in the '60s to Rob Gronkowski today. As much as football has changed over the years, there has always been one glorious constant: the tight end.
 
None of this is by accident, either. There’s a reason all of these players were magnetically drawn to the position.
 
In BLOOD AND GUTS, Tyler Dunne interviews the greatest tight ends ever, whose stories reveal why they were uniquely qualified to serve as the blood and the guts of football—the players keeping this sport alive and well. There’s a reason Mike Ditka epitomized true toughness in pro football through the 1960s. Ben Coates, the son of a World War II vet, put an entire childhood spent building roofs to use by smashing defenders in the open field. Tony Gonzalez matured from a kid terrified of bullies to an absolute beast terrifying defensive backs. His entire life, Jeremy Shockey has been hellbent on sticking it to anyone who doubts him. And from afar, a young “Gronk” idolized Shockey and took his approach to a whole new level.
 
Here, great American tight ends share countless harrowing, never-before-told stories. One moment, a tight end (Gonzalez) nearly socks a coach in the eye. The next, a tight end (Shockey) is breaking the orbital bone of someone in a bar fight.
 
There’s no one in sports like them. BLOOD AND GUTS brings them to life.

Michael Hurley watched his world unravel in the wake of infidelity, divorce and failure. In August 2009, he was short of money, out of a job, and seeking to salvage a life that had foundered. Deeply in need of perspective, he took to the open seas in a 32-foot sailboat, Gypsy Moon. The story of his 2-year outward odyssey, deterred by rough weather and mechanical troubles, combines keen observation, poignant thoughts, and deeper introspection with glorious prose.

Once Upon a Gypsy Moon also presents a rare and much-needed point of view on the familiar spiritual-journey narrative. It offers a star-crossed love story wrapped inside a rollicking good sea tale, but it also has something important to say to the reader about relationships, faith and disbelief, life and death, love and marriage, and what really matters.

He Played A Boy’s Game. He Lived A Man’s Life. As a lonely child, Jim Morris took one thing with him wherever his family moved-his ability to hit and throw a baseball. For Jim, the passion of becoming a major-league ballplayer was his anchor and inspiration…until injuries and life got in the way.

A decade after Jim walked away from the minors and began a life of fatherhood and mortgage payments, he made a promise to the hardscrabble high-school team he coached: If they could win their local championship, he would try out again for the big leagues. They did-and he did. Now, in this wondrous, heart-tugging book, Jim Morris tells the story of his remarkable life and his amazing journey to the Big Show at the age of thirty-five . . . and how he finally fulfilled his childhood dream.