Breakaway transcends Americans passions for sports and casino gambling as it follows two professional hockey team owners who run the table from bankruptcy to a lucrative new arena and the most-storied trophy in all of sports.Already the Pittsburgh Penguins were unconventional. One former owner, a Hollywood producer, used the team as backdrop for a blockbuster movie with terrorists attacking during a championship game. Then after the Penguins won two real championships, its...

The City of McKeesport in southwestern Pennsylvania once had a population of more than fifty thousand people and a newspaper that dated back to the nineteenth century. Technology has caused massive disruption to American journalism, throwing thousands of reporters out of work, closing newsrooms, and leaving vast areas with few traditional news sources—including McKeesport. With the loss of their local paper in 2015, residents now struggle to make sense of what goes on in their community an...

Today the Pittsburgh Steelers are one of pro football’s most successful and prestigious franchises, but that wasn’t always the case.  As America was emerging from the turbulent decade of the 1960s the Steelers’ front office had their sites squarely focused on the future.Relive the on the field and back room moments that shaped Steelers’ history and led the Steel City to four Super Bowl victories.  The Color of Sundays tells the story of how Bill Nunn Jr., Art Rooney, and t...

Roberto Clemente became a baseball icon because of his talent and compassion, and how he overcame prejudices.He was drafted from Puerto Rico, where he spoke Spanish, when he was just eighteen. At first fans laughed at his Spanish accent and some even disliked him for the color of his skin.Roberto worked hard to learn English and improve his baseball skills. He became one of the game's greatest hitters while he played for the Pittsburgh Pirates.He was the first Latin...

The fascinating sports history of defunct teams in baseball, hockey, basketball and more!THEY’RE GOING, GOING, GONE. . . .Their names roll off the tongue, a litany of the damned: the Providence Steam Roller, the Wilmington Quicksteps, the Cincinnati Porkers. They are the lost squads of professional sports history—teams forsaken by fans, fleeced by owners, or forgotten by time. Until now.Kiss ’Em Goodbye unearths the real stories of ...

What happens when three financial industry whiz kids and certified baseball nuts take over an ailing major league franchise and implement the same strategies that fueled their success on Wall Street? In the case of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, an American League championship happens—the culmination of one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history.In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team’s Cinderella jou...

The New York Times bestselling, authorized, “enormously entertaining and wide-ranging” (The Seattle Times) biography of the late, great Willie Mays.Willie Mays (1931–2024) was arguably the greatest player in baseball history, revered for the passion he brought to the game. He began as a teenager in the Negro Leagues, became a cult hero in New York, and was the headliner in Major League Baseball’s bold expansion to California. He was a blend of pow...

ROBERTO DURAN is a sporting legend. Often called the greatest boxer of all time, he held world titles at four different weights and is the only professional in history to have fought in five different decades. His bouts with fellow greats like Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler have gone down in fistic folklore and his pro record of 104 wins, 69 by KO, in 120 fights puts him in an elite group of fighters. They called him Manos de Piedra: “Hands of Stone”.American jo...

From one of Canada's top baseball writers and radio hosts: a retrospective of the Toronto Blue Jays on the 20th anniversary of Joe Carter's World Series-winning home run--and a look ahead to what promises to be their most successful season since. A must-have for all Blue Jays fans, and a great read for Toronto and Canadian sports fans in general.In Full Count, Jeff Blair takes us back to the days when the Toronto Blue Jays were "the Cadillac of franchises," and shows us ex...

This bestselling account of the most important season in baseball history, 1947, tells the dramatic story of how Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and changed baseball forever.April 15, 1947, marked the most important opening day in baseball history. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the diamond that afternoon at Ebbets Field, he became the first black man to break into major-league baseball in the twentieth century. World War II had just ended. Democracy had...

Lionel Messi is one of the greatest soccer players of his generation. In fact, although still so young, he has been dubbed by many fellow professionals as "The Best Player to Ever Grace the Sport." Most fans are aware of his successes on the field, but in order to truly understand Lionel Messi, you must first understand where he came from. Lionel Messi: An Unauthorized Biography explores Messi's upbringing and details his breakthrough onto the world stage, all the way through his ...

The book that inspired Harrison Ford in his portrayal of Branch Rickey in the hit movie “42”The idea of integrating baseball began as a dream in the mind of Branch Rickey. In 1947, as president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he defied racism on and off the field to bring Jackie Robinson into the major leagues, changing the sport and the nation forever. Rickey's is the classic American tale of a poor boy from Ohio whose deep-seated faith and dogged wor...