Chance Evers


Book Description

Perry Ellis’s life looks like a complex jigsaw puzzle with pieces scattered about and no clear picture of how to return to the contentment he enjoyed early in life. As Perry slips into despair following the death of his wife, he decides to take his own life. He quickly ends the suicide attempt, however, when he envisions how his brother, Clark, will react upon finding him. Perry assumes an alias (Chance Evers) to reinvent himself and seek atonement for a recent transgression against the family construction business. The journey of atonement begins when he encounters a veteran adventurer with a history of uncovering sunken treasure from old shipwrecks in Florida. The price of adventure is steep, prompting Perry to illicitly withdraw half of an emergency fund from the coffers of the family business. Clark’s discovery of yet another desperate choice by Perry sets the brothers on a collision course. The moment of truth arrives with a meeting in Florida and allows Clark to become unburdened of a secret he vowed never to reveal. The revelation inspires the brothers to want to restore what was buried beneath a lifetime of lies.




Tinker to Evers to Chance


Book Description

"Tinker to Evers to Chance examines this pivotal moment in American history, when baseball became the game we know today. Each man came from a different corner of the country and brought a distinctive local culture with him: Evers from the Irish-American hothouse of Troy, New York; Tinker from the urban parklands of Kansas City, Missouri; Chance from the verdant fields of California's Central Valley. The stories of these early baseball stars shed unexpected light not only on the evolution of baseball and on the enthusiasm of its players and fans all across America, but also on the broader convulsions transforming the US into a confident new industrial society."--Page [4] of cover.




Before the Ivy


Book Description

All Cub fans know from heartbreak and curse-toting goats. Fewer know that, prior to moving to the north side in 1916, the team fielded powerhouse nines that regularly claimed the pennant. Before the Ivy offers a grandstand seat to a golden age: BEHOLD the 1871 team as it plays for the title in nine different borrowed uniforms after losing everything in the Great Chicago Fire ATTEND West Side Grounds at Polk and Wolcott with its barbershop quartet MARVEL as superstar Cap Anson hits .399, makes extra cash running a ballpark ice rink, and strikes out as an elected official WONDER at experiments with square bats and corked balls, the scandal of Sunday games and pre-game booze-ups, the brazen spitters and park dimensions changed to foil Ty Cobb RAZZ Charles Comiskey as he adopts a Cubs hand-me-down moniker for his team's name THRILL to the poetic double-play combo of Tinker, Evers, and Chance even as they throw tantrums at umpires and punches at each other CHEER as Merkle's Boner and the Cubs' ensuing theatrics send the team to the 1908 World Series Rich with Hall of Fame personalities and oddball stories, Before the Ivy opens a door to Chicago's own field of dreams and serves as every Cub fan's guide to a time when thoughts of "next year" filled rival teams with dread.




Johnny Evers


Book Description

For more than a century Johnny Evers has been conjoined with Chicago Cubs teammates Frank Chance and Joe Tinker, thanks to eight lines of verse by a New York columnist. Caricatured as a scrawny, sour man who couldn't hit and who owed his fame to that poem, in truth he was the heartbeat of one of the greatest teams of the 20th century and the fiercest competitor this side of Ty Cobb. Evers was at the center of one of baseball's greatest controversies, a chance event that sealed his stardom and stole a pennant from John McGraw and the New York Giants in 1908. Six years later, following reversals and tragedies that resulted in a nervous breakdown, he made a comeback with the Boston Braves and led that team to the most improbable of championships. Spanning the time from his birth in Troy, New York, to his death less than a year after his election to the Hall of Fame, this is the biography of a man who literally wrote the book about playing second base.




Prairie Evers


Book Description

This charming, coming-of-age story is perfect for fans of Joan Bauer and Sheila Turnage. Prairie Evers is finding that school isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She’s always been homeschooled by her grandmother, learning about life while they ramble through the woods. But now Prairie’s family has moved north and she has to attend school for the first time, where her education is in a classroom and the behavior of her classmates isn’t very nice. The only good thing is meeting Ivy, her first true friend. Prairie wants to be a good friend, even though she can be clueless at times. But when Ivy’s world is about to fall apart and she needs a friend most, Prairie is right there for her, corralling all her optimism and determination to hatch a plan to help. Wonderful writing and an engaging narrator distinguish this lively story that celebrates friendship of every kind.




Before the Curse


Book Description

Before the Curse: The Chicago Cubs' Glory Years, 1870–1945 brings to life the early history of the much beloved and often heartbreaking Chicago Cubs. Originally called the Chicago White Stockings, the team immediately established itself as a powerhouse, winning the newly formed National Base Ball League's inaugural pennant in 1876, repeating the feat in 1880 and 1881, and commanding the league in the decades to come. The legendary days of the Cubs are recaptured here in more than two dozen vintage newspaper accounts and historical essays on the teams and the fans who loved them. The great games, pennant races, and series are all here, including the 1906 World Series between the Cubs and Chicago White Sox. Of course, Before the Curse remembers the hall-of-fame players--Grover Cleveland Alexander, Gabby Hartnett, Roger Hornsby, Dizzy Dean--who delighted Cubs fans with their play on the field and their antics elsewhere. Through stimulating introductions to each article, Randy Roberts and Carson Cunningham demonstrate how changes in ownership affected the success of the team, who the teams' major players were both on and off the field, and how regular fans, owners, players, journalists, and Chicagoans of the past talked and wrote about baseball.




Kentucky Curiosities


Book Description

Kentucky Curiosities is your round-trip ticket to the wildest, wackiest, most outrageous people, places, and things the Bluegrass State has to offer. Discover a medieval castle in the middle of horse-farm country, a soda fountain where the burgers and shakes are almost as famous as the clientele, and the true meaning of "biting the bullet." Meet the man who invented the traffic light, Kentucky's two Cassius Clays, and the real J. Peterman. Visit a museum devoted to the history of whiskey, a rest area named for a shoeshine man, and a house with 13 windows, 13-foot ceilings, 13 railings - you get the picture! Whether you're a born-and-raised Kentuckian or a recent transplant, authors Vince Staten and Liz Baldi will have you laughing out loud as they introduce you to the neighbors you never knew you had and take you to places you never knew existed - right in your own backyard.