Boston Ball


Book Description

Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun, and Gary Williams played no small role in the making of modern college basketball. Collectively, they've won more than 2,300 games and six national championships and reached thirteen Final Fours. All three have been enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Pitino, Calhoun, and Williams each spent more than two decades on the national stage, becoming celebrities in their own right as college basketball and March Madness became a multi-billion-dollar industry. Before Pitino became the face of the Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville programs, before Calhoun turned UConn into a national power, and before Williams brought Maryland to its first national championship, all three of these coaches cut their teeth in front of modest-sized crowds in the crumbling college gymnasiums of Boston during the 1970s and early 1980s. Boston Ball charts how this trio of coaches, seemingly out of nowhere, started a basketball revolution: Pitino at Boston University, Calhoun at Northeastern University, and Williams at Boston College. Toiling in relative obscurity, they ignited a renaissance of the "city game," a style of play built on fast-breaking up-tempo offense, pressure defense, and board crashing. Part of a fraternity of great coaches--including Mike Jarvis, Kevin Mackey, and Tom Davis--they unknowingly invented Boston Ball, a simultaneously old and new path to the top of college basketball. Pitino, Calhoun, and Williams took advantage of the ample coaching opportunities in "America's College Town" to craft their respective blueprints for building a winning program and turn their schools into regional powers, and these early coaching years served as their respective springboards to big-time college basketball. Boston Ball is the story of how three ambitious young coaches learned their trade in the shadow of the dynastic Celtics, as well as the story of how the young players--in their recruitment, relationships, and basketball lives--made these teams into winners.




How Boston Played


Book Description

"Whether consciously molding the city through the construction of public spaces or developing social ties through organizations such as athletic clubs, Bostonians of all classes participated in recreation-based community building, often at cross-purposes. Elite Bostonians, for instance, promoted the establishment of parks as a healthy alternative to unsavory activities, such as drinking and gambling, that they associated with the city's vast new pool of immigrants. They were soon forced to compromise, however, with citizens who were less interested in the rhetoric of moral uplift than in using the parks for competitive athletics and commercial amusements."--BOOK JACKET.




The Boston Celtics


Book Description

A revised Team Spirit Basketball edition featuring the Boston Celtics that chronicles the history and accomplishments of the team. Includes access to the Team Spirit website which provides additional information, photos, and updates during and after the season. Table of Contents, Glossary, Timeline, Bibliography of additional resources and Index. Aligns to Common Core State Standards requirements for Reading Informational Text.




Boston's Massacre


Book Description

An in-depth history of the pivotal event in Colonial America, as well as its causes, competing narratives, and evolving memories. On the night of March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd gathered in front of Boston’s Custom House, killing five people. Denounced as an act of unprovoked violence and villainy, the event that came to be known as the Boston Massacre is one of the most familiar incidents in American history, yet one of the least understood. Eric Hinderaker revisits this dramatic episode, examining in forensic detail the facts of that fateful night, the competing narratives that molded public perceptions at the time, and the long campaign afterward to transform the tragedy into a touchstone of American identity. When Parliament stationed two thousand British troops in Boston beginning in 1768, resentment spread rapidly among the populace. Steeped in traditions of self-government and famous for their Yankee independence, Bostonians were primed to resist the imposition. Living up to their reputation as Britain’s most intransigent North American community, they refused compromise and increasingly interpreted their conflict with Britain as a matter of principle. Relations between Britain and the North American colonies deteriorated precipitously after the shooting at the Custom House, and it soon became the catalyzing incident that placed Boston in the vanguard of the Patriot movement. Fundamental uncertainties about the night’s events cannot be resolved. But the larger significance of the Boston Massacre extends from the era of the American Revolution to our own time, when the use of violence in policing crowd behavior has once again become a pressing public issue. Praise for Boston’s Massacre George Washington Prize Finalist Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati Prize “Fascinating . . . Hinderaker’s meticulous research shows that the Boston Massacre was contested from the beginning . . . [Its] meanings have plenty to tell us about America’s identity, past and present.” —Wall Street Journal “Hinderaker brilliantly unpacks the creation of competing narratives around a traumatic and confusing episode of violence. With deft insight, careful research, and lucid writing, he shows how the bloodshed in one Boston street became pivotal to making and remembering a revolution that created a nation.” —Alan Taylor, author of American Revolutions “Seldom does a book appear that compels its readers to rethink a signal event in American history. It’s even rarer . . . to accomplish so formidable a feat in prose of sparkling clarity and grace. Boston’s Massacre is a gem.” —Fred Anderson, author of Crucible of War




Boston's Ballparks & Arenas


Book Description

A history of sports in Boston told through its parks and arenas.




Boston’s Black Athletes


Book Description

Sport often mirrored the racial climate of the time, but it also informed and encouraged equality on and off the field. In Boston, the Black athletic body historically represented a challenge to the city’s liberal image. Boston's Black Athletes: Identity, Performance, and Activism interprets Boston’s contested racial history through the diverse experiences of the city’s African American sports figures who directed their talent toward the struggle for social justice. Editors Robert Cvornyek and Douglas Stark and the contributors explore a variety of representative athletes, such as Kittie Knox, Louise Stokes, and Medina Dixon, that negotiated Boston’s racial boundaries at sequential moments during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to demonstrate Boston’s long and troubled racial history. The contributors’ biographical sketches are grounded in stories that have remained memorable within Boston’s Black neighborhoods. In recounting the struggles and triumphs of these individuals, this book amplifies their stories and reminds readers that Boston’s Black sports fans found a historic consistency in their athletes to shape racial identity and cultural expression.




Boston's Royal Rooters


Book Description

In the fall of 1897, over 250 baseball fans from Roxbury, Massachusetts, traveled to Baltimore with saloon keeper Nuf-Ced McGreevy and Pres. John F. Kennedy's future grandfather Honey-Fitz Fitzgerald to cheer their Beaneaters to the pennant. They became known famously as the Royal Rooters. Singing their fight song, “Tessie,” they cheered on five world champion teams in the early 1900s. When Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees after 1919, “Tessie” all but disappeared from Fenway. A new generation of Fenway Faithful suffered through decades of heartbreak until “Tessie” returned in 2004 to deliver another world title. In the course of a century, the original group of rooters has grown into a legion of fans known as Red Sox Nation. Boston's Royal Rooters chronicles the rich tradition of Boston's pioneering fans like Nuf-Ced, Honey-Fitz, and Lib Dooley, “the Queen of Fenway Park,” and examines through rare images their influence on modern-day fans.




Boston Baseball


Book Description

Over 60 images relating to Boston Baseball in a full-color paperback. Part of Applewood's Pictorial America series, the book features images drawn from historical sources, and include prints, paintings, illustrations, and photographs. This small gem is the ideal gift for anyone interested in a concise and beautiful visual history of early Boston Baseball and the Red Sox.







Red Sox vs. Braves in Boston


Book Description

For 52 years, Boston was a two-team Major League city, home to both the Red Sox and the Braves. This book focuses on the two teams' period of coexistence and competition for fans. The author analyzes the Boston fan base through trends in transportation, communication, geography, population and employment. Tracing the pendulum of fan preference between the two teams over five distinct time periods, a deeper understanding emerges of why the Red Sox remained in Boston and the Braves moved to Milwaukee.