"The Super Bowl is an American tradition of grand annual gridiron pageantry and competition. Regarded as the preeminent sports event in this country, Super Bowl games have molded athletic heroes and created household names. February 2016 will usher in the fiftieth Super Bowl championship and what better way to celebrate this time-honored tradition than with 50 Years, 50 Moments: The Most Unforgettable Plays in Super Bowl History-a compelling collection...

"Bonnie Tsui looks at our love affair with the water, from evolution to mythology, from survival and well-being, from community swim clubs to competitive races, and she goes around the world to explore its significance in many cultures"-- Provided by publisher.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, tucked away in upstate New York in a small town called Cooperstown, is far from any major media market or big league stadium. Yet no sports hall of fame's membership is so hallowed, nor its qualifications so debated, nor its voting process so dissected. Since its founding in 1936, the Hall of Fame's standards for election have been nebulous, and its selection processes arcane, resulting in confusion among...

"Mariano Rivera never dreamed of becoming a professional athlete. He didn't grow up collecting baseball cards, playing Little League, or cheering on his home team at the World Series. He had never heard of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, or Mickey Mantle. One day, that all changed. From a childhood playing pickup games in Panama to an epic career with the New York Yankees, Mariano's rise to greatness has been anything but ordinary. He's the guy...

"A wonderfully informative, exuberant, and entertaining book--part sports history, part personal history--that explores America's romance with baseball through one "perfect game" and the drama of pitching. In Off Speed, Terry McDermott weaves the fascinating story of baseball's 150-year hunt for the perfect pitch. Using the framework of a single game (9 chapters, 9 innings, 9 pitches), he explores the history of every type of pitch, combining the...

An inside account of how English soccer's Premier League became an extreme entertainment empire draws on one hundred interviews with major decision-makers to explore its traditional English origins and its rise from a billionaire experiment to global prominence.

"Stratton offers boxing fans a solidly researched, popularly written study of a complex, good man. A clear winner." -Library Journal  (starred) "Stratton's attention to detail is impressive, and he seems to have uncovered every little tidbit about Patterson's life both in and out of the ring, making this warm biography a must for boxing fanatics. An engaging, breezy portrait of an underappreciated boxing giant." -Kirkus Reviews A "deftly...

The rich, poignant tales of major league baseball's most hard-luck fraternity-the pitchers of its Almost-Perfect Games From 1908 to 2015, there have been thirteen pitchers who have begun Major League Baseball games by retiring the first twenty-six opposing batters, but then, one out from completing a perfect game, somehow faltering (or having perfection stolen from them). Three other pitchers did successfully retire twenty-seven batters in a row,...

"For players, coaches, writers, and fans, basketball is a science and an art, a religious sacrament, a source of entertainment, and a way of interacting with the world. In Lost in the Game Thomas Beller entwines these threads with his lifetime experience as a player and journalist, roaming NBA locker rooms and city parks alike as a basketball flâneur in search of the meaning of the modern game. He captures the magnificence and mastery of today's...

The first Tour de France was a far cry from the polished international sporting event we see on television today. Organized by the financially free falling L'Auto magazine, the desperate editors thought that organizing a grand cycling tour was the only thing that could save their publication. But in 1903, cyclists weren't enthusiastic about what was pitched to them as a heroic race through roads more suited to hooves than wheels, with bikes weighing...