Books by "Charles A. Stoneham & Co"
2 books found
"There has been only one manager-and his name is McGraw."-Connie Mack. "Diligently researched and artfully written, John McGraw illuminates not only the man but the transformation of America and its national pastime between 1890 and 1930."-San Francisco Chronicle. "Absorbing. . . . Alexander is a lively writer and a crisp storyteller."-New York Times. "From a historian of Alexander's stature one can expect more than just another sports book, and the result is not disappointing. With great erudition and meticulous research, he brings to life not only a game and its competitors but a whole period of U.S. history."-America. "Sports biography at its best: an entertaining, scholarly treatment of the life and times of a legendary figure. . . . Alexander portrays famed Giant manager John McGraw without sentimental bias."-Library Journal. "He ate gunpowder every morning, " complained one umpire, "and washed it down with warm blood." That described John McGraw, who in the 1890s was the rowdiest member of the ferocious Baltimore Orioles, the club that pioneered the hit-and-run, the cutoff, the squeeze play, and the "Baltimore chop." In 1902 he began his thirty-season reign as manager of the Giants, winning ten pennants-a record matched only by Casey Stengel. His career in baseball spanned forty years and two eras-from the game's raucous early days to its emergence as big business. Charles C. Alexander, a professor of history at Ohio University, Athens, and the author of Ty Cobb, calls John McGraw "perhaps the single most significant figure in baseball's history before Babe Ruth transformed the game with his mammoth home runs and unparalleled showmanship."
To a generation of fans, Willie Mays was the greatest ballplayer they had ever seen. The prowess and speed of the Say Hey Kid were unmatched on the diamond before his time, prompting Joe DiMaggio to label him, “the closest you can come to perfection.” He was the first player to hit fifty home runs and steal twenty bases in a single season. Mays played for the New York Giants (1951–1957), San Francisco Giants (1958–1972), and New York Mets (1972–1973), and in his glory days with the Giants he not only set the major league mark for consecutive seasons by appearing in 150 games or more but by winning his two MVP awards a record twelve seasons apart. When Mays retired, he ranked third in career home runs (behind Aaron and Ruth), a record of 660 soon to be surpassed by Mays’s godson, Barry Bonds. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the only ballplayer biography ever named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Willie’s Time: Baseball’s Golden Age, restores to print Charles Einstein’s vivid biography of one of the game’s foremost legends. With a new preface from the author, this volume replays the most dramatic moments of the Say Hey Kid’s career—from the 1951 Miracle Giants to the Amazing Mets of 1973—and takes us inside the lives of Ruth, DiMaggio, Aaron, Durocher, and others along the way. Einstein offers a compelling and complete look at Mays: as a youth in racist Birmingham, a triumphant symbol of African American success, a sports hero lionized by fans, and yet all the while, still a very human figure destined to play for two decades amid baseball’s Golden Age.