Yogi Berra


Book Description

Jacket.




Yogi Berra


Book Description

“Allen Barra brings a legendary figure from the true golden age of baseball to life.”—Bob Costas Yogi Berra is one of the most popular former athletes in American history, and the most quoted American since Abraham Lincoln. Part clown, part feisty competitor, Berra is also the winningest player (fourteen pennants, ten World Series, 3 MVPs) in baseball history. In this revelatory biography, Allen Barra presents Yogi’s remarkable life as never seen before with nearly one hundred photos and countless “Yogi-isms,” and offers hilarious insights into many of baseball’s greatest moments. From calling Don Larsen’s perfect game, to managing the 1973 “You Gotta Believe” New York Mets, Yogi’s life and career are a virtual cutaway view of our national pastime in the twentieth century.




Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee


Book Description

“Allen Barra brings a legendary figure from the true golden age of baseball to life.”—Bob Costas Yogi Berra is one of the most popular former athletes in American history, and the most quoted American since Abraham Lincoln. Part clown, part feisty competitor, Berra is also the winningest player (fourteen pennants, ten World Series, 3 MVPs) in baseball history. In this revelatory biography, Allen Barra presents Yogi’s remarkable life as never seen before with nearly one hundred photos and countless “Yogi-isms,” and offers hilarious insights into many of baseball’s greatest moments. From calling Don Larsen’s perfect game, to managing the 1973 “You Gotta Believe” New York Mets, Yogi’s life and career are a virtual cutaway view of our national pastime in the twentieth century.




Yogi


Book Description

Packed with rousing anecdotes and vintage Yogi-isms, this first person account of a legendary baseball life provides insight into Berra's early days with the Yankees and the Mets and his encounters with DiMaggio, Mantle, Stengel, and other sport greats




Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories


Book Description

In Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories, editor Alex Belth of BronxBanterBlog.com collects personal essays by some of the most well-known and respected voices in sportswriting and entertainment today. In these revealing, sometimes hilarious, oft-touching essays, the contributors recount their favorite moments inside the most famed of all American stadiums. The book also includes a special chapter on the new Yankee Stadium. Contributors include: Bob Costas (NBC, HBO) • Richard Ben Cramer • Pete Hamill • Tony Kornheiser (ESPN) • Tom Boswell (Washington Post) • Dave Kindred (Washington Post) • Leigh Montville (Sports Illustrated) • William Nack (Sports Illustrated) • Joe Posnanski (Sports Illustrated) • Jane Leavy • Pat Jordan • Maury Allen (New York Post) • Bob Klapisch (Bergen Record) • Tyler Kepner (New York Times) • Allen Barra (Wall Street Journal) • Marty Appel • Jeff Pearlman • Alan Schwarz (New York Times) • Charles Pierce (Boston Globe) • Steve Rushin (Sports Illustrated) • Nathan Ward • Mike Vaccaro (New York Post) • Rob Neyer (ESPN.com) • Ken Rosenthal (ESPN) • Scott Raab (Esquire) • Luis Guzman




Driving Mr. Yogi


Book Description

“A warm, sentimental look at a baseball icon” (The Tampa Tribune). Driving Mr. Yogi is the story of a unique friendship between two New York Yankees legends—a pitcher and catcher—who share rides, meals, and a bond that transcends the twenty-five-year difference in their ages. The story begins in 1999, when Hall of Famer Yogi Berra is reunited with the Yankees after a long self-exile, the result of being unceremoniously fired by team owner George Steinbrenner fourteen years before. A reconciliation between Berra and the boss means that Berra will once again attend spring training. Retired-pitcher-turned-pitching-coach Ron Guidry knows the club’s young players will benefit from “Mr. Yogi’s” encyclopedic knowledge of the game, just as Guidry had during his playing days, so he encourages his old mentor to share his insights. In Yogi, Guidry finds not just a personable dinner companion or source of amusement—he finds a best friend. At turns tender and laugh-out-loud funny, and teeming with unforgettable baseball yarns that span more than fifty years, Driving Mr. Yogi is a universal story about the importance of wisdom being passed from one generation to the next, as well as a reminder that time is what we make of it and compassion never gets old. “Funny, revealing, and surprising . . . Anything that brings new Yogi Berra stories is a good book.” —MLB.com “Lovingly documented . . . You’ll find yourself wishing it ain’t over till it’s over.” —Parade magazine




The Last Coach: A Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant


Book Description

The explosive biography of the greatest college football coach in history. When Paul William "Bear" Bryant died on January 26, 1983, it was the lead story on the all three networks' evening news. New York City newspapers reported his death on their front pages. Three days later, America watched in awe as an estimated quarter of a million mourners lined the fifty-five mile stretch from Tuscaloosa to a Birmingham cemetery to pay their respects as his three-mile long funeral cortege drove by. Bryant's passing was noted with the kind of reverence our country reserved for statesmen or military leaders, though Paul "Bear" Bryant had insisted for much of his life that he was "just a football coach." For millions he was much more, he was the greatest coach the game ever saw, the heir to the tradition established by Knute Rockne. He took his Alabama Crimson Tide teams to an unmatched six national championships. But to the players, journalists and fans whose lives he touched in his more than half a century as a player and coach, he was the last symbol of values that transcended football—courage, discipline, loyalty, and hard work. To his critics, Bryant represented the dark side of big-time college football—brutality, fanaticism and blind adherence to authority. The real Bear Bryant was far more complex than either his admirers or detractors knew. While maintaining a public friendship with Alabama governor George Wallace, he continually sought ways to undermine the governor's segregationist policies, finally forcing a legendary football game in Birmingham with the University of Southern California that opened the floodgates to the integration of football at the University of Alabama, including its coaching staff. Old fashioned in his politics, he was nonetheless an admirer of Robert Kennedy, whom he planning to vote for in 1968. Allen Barra's The Last Coach traces Paul Bryant's rise from a family of truck farmers to recognition as the most successful and influential coach in the game's history. Through it all, Bryant's influence has not only endured but prevailed as his former players and assistants continue to define the best in not only college but professional football. A USA Today and Washington Post Best Sports Book.




Mickey and Willie


Book Description

Acclaimed sportswriter Allen Barra exposes the uncanny parallels--and lifelong friendship--between two of the greatest baseball players ever to take the field. Culturally, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were light-years apart. Yet they were nearly the same age and almost the same size, and they came to New York at the same time. They possessed virtually the same talents and played the same position. They were both products of generations of baseball-playing families, for whom the game was the only escape from a lifetime of brutal manual labor. Both were nearly crushed by the weight of the outsized expectations placed on them, first by their families and later by America. Both lived secret lives far different from those their fans knew. What their fans also didn't know was that the two men shared a close personal friendship--and that each was the only man who could truly understand the other's experience.




Walter Johnson


Book Description

"This lavishly illustrated narrative of Walter Johnson's life is the definitive work on the subject and is likely to remain so."-Lawrence S. Ritter, Oldtyme Baseball News. "Henry Thomas's biography of Walter Johnson is carefully researched, thoroughly documented, and, best of all, a pleasure to read."-Spitball. "Does justice to Johnson's extraordinary on-field accomplishments, and it also emphasizes his decency, humility, and self-effacing humor."-Booklist. "Belongs in the very top ranks of sports biographies."-Washington Times. "One of the most comprehensive biographies ever written about an athlete. Incredibly detailed, filled with fascinating stories about arguably the greatest pitcher of all time."-Tim Kurkjian, senior writer for Sports Illustrated. "Delights the soul."-Sports Collectors Digest. Henry W. Thomas, the grandson of Walter Johnson, lives in Arlington, Virginia. He is currently editing, for audio release, the interviews taped by Lawrence Ritter for his classic The Glory of Their Times. Shirley Povich is in his seventy-fifth year as an award-winning sportswriter for the Washington Post.




Clearing the Bases


Book Description

Sports expert Allen Barra's Clearing the Bases takes you to the heart of baseball's ultimate question in this, the ultimate baseball debate book, one guaranteed to spark thousands of heated arguments and supply the fuel for thousands more. Who was better, Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays? Who was the best right-hander of the '60s, Bob Gibson or Juan Marichal? Who is the greatest starting pitcher of all time? At his peak, who was more valuable, Joe DiMaggio or Ted Williams? If Lefty Grove, Sandy Koufax, and Roger Clemens had pitched at the same time against the same hitters, who would have won the most games? If Jackie Robinson had been white, would he be deserving of the Hall of Fame? Is Pete Rose overrated? Has Tim Raines been underrated? Who is the best hitter of the game today-- Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey, Jr.? Is today's pitching really that bad? Why can't modern pitchers go nine innings? Which are more valuable--good starters or good relievers? How important is the stolen base? What are the myths that still surround Babe Ruth? What was the most talented baseball team of the twentieth century? Which twentieth-century championship team has been most slighted by baseball historians? What has been the real impact of black and Latin talent on Major League Baseball? Is baseball more competitive now than it was one hundred years ago? Or fifty? Or twenty-five? Who was the greatest all-around player of the last century? Find the answers here. Clearing the Bases is the first book to tackle these and many other of baseball's most intriguing questions, plus it offers hard, sensible answers--answers based on exhaustive research and analysis. Sports journalist Allen Barra, whose weekly sports column, "By the Numbers," has earned him millions of readers in The Wall Street Journal and whose outspoken opinions on Salon.com are discussed regularly on National Public Radio, takes on baseball's toughest arguments. Using stats and methods he developed during his ongoing tenure at The Wall Street Journal, Barra takes you to the heart of baseball's ultimate question, Who's the Best?, in this, the ultimate baseball debate book. Regardless of what stand you take in these debates, you'll never think about baseball's greatest stars in the same way again.