The San Francisco Seals, 1946-1957


Book Description

The San Francisco Seals were members of baseball's Pacific Coast League from 1903 until 1958. Arguably the most successful minor league franchise ever, the Seals held the minor league attendance record from 1946 until it was broken by Louisville in the 1980s, and remained independently owned until 1956. The Seals were also Joe DiMaggio's first team and many another major league star was on the team's roster on his climb up the ranks. This work is a collection of oral histories of players who took the field for the Seals from 1946 through 1957, just before the Giants came to San Francisco and when the Seals played their final game. Ferris Fain said of the 1946 Seals, "I just think that that was the best ballclub that I've ever played on, including major league. I mean, as a team." Frank Seward, Don Trower, Jack Brewer, Roy Nicely, Neill Sheridan, Joe Brovia, Bill Werle, Con Dempsey, Dario Lodigiani, Lou Burdette, Ed Cereghino, Bill Bradford, Reno Cheso, Nini Tornay, Jerry Zuvela, Leo Righetti, Jim Westlake, Ted Beard, Chuck Stevens, Bob DiPietro, Don Lenhardt, Riverboat Smith, Jack Spring, and Bert Thiel also reminisce about their careers with the Seals.




San Francisco Seals


Book Description

For more than half a century, San Francisco Seals baseball was a fertile source of future major league players, with a legacy firmly grounded in the annals of Pacific Coast League baseball. Paul and Lloyd Waner, Ping Bodie, Earl Averill, William Kamm, Ferris Fain, Harry Heilmann, Smead Jolly, "Lefty" O'Doul, Frankie Crosetti, the DiMaggio brothers (Joe, Vince, and Dom), Larry Jansen, and others all launched their careers as Seals. From 1903 to 1957, the Seals were the toast of the town, offering tight pennant races and intense games with the Oakland Oaks -- their cross-bay rivals -- while playing at Recreation Park and Seals Stadium. In almost 6 decades, the Seals won 11 pennants and 4 Governor's Cups. They survived the earthquake and fire of 1906, the Great Depression, and two world wars.




The 1957 San Francisco Seals


Book Description

The 1957 PCL season faced uncertainty about the impending "invasion of major league baseball" in 1958. While the meetings, wheeling and dealing and politics took place off the diamond, the historic San Francisco Seals, a charter member of the Golden Era of the league, 1903-1957, played baseball and clinched the pennant two days before the season ended. We follow this team one game at a time as players faced historic rivals from spring training through the final game of the era. Readers experience minor league baseball as it was more than fifty years ago when there were no agents, next year's contract was based on this year's performance, and PCL teams consisted of a blend of major league veterans and minor leaguers on the cusp. The Pacific Coast League was no ordinary league, the Seals were no ordinary team, and 1957 was no ordinary season.




The California Golden Seals


Book Description

Hockey has had its share of bizarre tales over the years, but none compare to the fascinating story of the California Golden Seals, a team that remains the benchmark for how not to run a sports franchise. From 1967 to 1978, a revolving door of players, apathetic owners, and ridiculous marketing decisions turned the Seals, originally based in Oakland, into hockey’s traveling circus. The team lost tons of money and games, cheated death more often than Evel Knievel, and left behind a long trail of broken dreams. Live seals were used as mascots, players wore skates that were painted white on an almost daily basis, and draft picks were dealt away nonchalantly like cards at a poker game. The California Golden Seals examines the franchise’s mismanaged—but always interesting—history, from its ballyhooed beginnings as a minor-league champion in the 1960s to its steep slide into oblivion in the late 1970s after moving to Cleveland. Through a season-by-season narrative, Currier brings to life the Seals’ history with lighthearted anecdotes, personal interviews, and statistics about hockey’s most infamous losing team.




The Original San Francisco Giants


Book Description

The Original San Francisco Giants is a nostalgic look at the team that brought Major League Baseball to San Francisco, the 1958 Giants. Author Steve Bitker, who attended his first big-league game in 1958 at age five at a charming little downtown ballpark called Seals Stadium, traveled as far as the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands to interview virtually every surviving member of the team.




International Sports Law and Business


Book Description

This comprehensive, three-volume set focuses on the legal and business aspects of sports in the United States and abroad. The authors have presented the subject matter from a practical and pragmatic perspective, yet with analytical precision and attention to fine points of detail. This book is composed of five parts: Part I deals with the law and business of sports in the United States, with the primary emphasis on the legal aspects of professional sports. Part II deals with the internationalization of sports from various perspectives, principally North American team sports. Part III explores the law and business of sports in 18 non-U.S. jurisdictions--subject matter hardly covered in other sources, if at all. Part IV treats the legal and, to some extent, business aspects of broadcasting and sports, both in the United States and in selected foreign jurisdictions. Part V focuses upon sports marketing in its various forms in the United States, as well as its international perspectives. This easy-to-read work is unmatched in that it covers subjects not addressed or only tangentially addressed in other works, presents insiders perspectives on the subject matter, and focuses extensively on international aspects of sports law and business in connection with many different subjects. Among its exhibits, International Sports Law and Business includes a World League of American Football Standard Player Contract form, a sample World League of American Football Acquisition and Operation Agreement, Statute of Court of Arbitration for Sport and Regulations. It also includes a comprehensive index.




Home Team


Book Description

In 1957 Horace Stoneham took his Giants of New York baseball team and headed west, starting a gold rush with bats and balls rather than pans and mines. But San Francisco already had a team, the Seals of the Pacific Coast League, and West Coast fans had to learn to embrace the newcomers. Starting with the franchise’s earliest days and following the team up to recent World Series glory, Home Team chronicles the story of the Giants and their often topsy-turvy relationship with the city of San Francisco. Robert F. Garratt shines light on those who worked behind the scenes in the story of West Coast baseball: the politicians, businessmen, and owners who were instrumental in the club’s history. Home Team presents Stoneham, often left in the shadow of Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, as a true baseball pioneer in his willingness to sign black and Latino players and his recruitment of the first Japanese player in the Major Leagues, making the Giants one of the most integrated teams in baseball in the early 1960s. Garratt also records the turbulent times, poor results, declining attendance, two near-moves away from California, and the role of post-Stoneham owners Bob Lurie and Peter Magowan in the Giants’ eventual reemergence as a baseball powerhouse. Garratt’s superb history of this great ball club makes the Giants’ story one of the most compelling of all Major League franchises.




Lefty O'Doul


Book Description

From San Francisco to the Ginza in Tokyo, Lefty O'Doul relates the untold story of one of baseball's greatest hitters, most colorful characters, and the unofficial father of professional baseball in Japan. Lefty O'Doul (1897-1969) began his career on the sandlots of San Francisco and was drafted by the Yankees as a pitcher. Although an arm injury and his refusal to give up the mound clouded his first four years, he converted into an outfielder. After four Minor League seasons he returned to the Major Leagues to become one of the game's most prolific power hitters, retiring with the fourth-highest lifetime batting average in Major League history. A self-taught "scientific" hitter, O'Doul then became the game's preeminent hitting instructor, counting Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams among his top disciples. In 1931 O'Doul traveled to Japan with an All-Star team and later convinced Babe Ruth to headline a 1934 tour. By helping to establish the professional game in Japan, he paved the way for Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, and Hideki Matsui to play in the American Major Leagues. O'Doul's finest moment came in 1949, when General Douglas MacArthur asked him to bring a baseball team to Japan, a tour that MacArthur later praised as one of the greatest diplomatic efforts in U.S. history. O'Doul became one the most successful managers in the Pacific Coast League and was instrumental in spreading baseball's growth and popularity in Japan. He is still beloved in Japan, where in 2002 he was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.




The Greatest Minor League


Book Description

In 1903, a small league in California defied Organized Baseball by adding teams in Portland and Seattle to become the strongest minor league of the twentieth century. Calling itself the Pacific Coast League, this outlaw association frequently outdrew its major league counterparts and continued to challenge the authority of Organized Baseball until the majors expanded into California in 1958. The Pacific Coast League introduced the world to Joe, Vince and Dom DiMaggio, Paul and Lloyd Waner, Ted Williams, Tony Lazzeri, Lefty O’Doul, Mickey Cochrane, Bobby Doerr, and many other baseball stars, all of whom originally signed with PCL teams. This thorough history of the Pacific Coast League chronicles its foremost personalities, governance, and contentious relationship with the majors, proving that the history of the game involves far more than the happenings in the American and National leagues.




San Francisco's Famous Sea Lions


Book Description

Tells the story of the colony of sea lions which live at San Francisco's Pier 39, and efforts to protect them.