Four decades ago, Gale Sayers allowed his remarkable running ability on the football field to speak for him. Today, Sayers has a powerful and poignant message to pass along not only to athletes but to everyone, and it's a message straight from his heart. Sayers, who grew up in modest surroundings in Omaha, Neb., is the son of a car polisher and mechanic. After fielding 75 college scholarship offers, he selected Kansas, where he became an All-American halfback before being selected in the f...

In October 1960, Omaha Central and Creighton Prep met for what many Nebraskans consider the greatest high school football game ever played. Future NFL Hall of Famer Gale Sayers scored seventy points while leading Central’s powerful offense through its first four games. Prep’s strong defense, on the other hand, allowed only twenty points all season. Legendary coaches patrolled both sidelines, and Prep was aiming for its third straight state championship. The stage was set for a Friday-night...

Hockey trivia master Don Weekes has cherry-picked more than 800 of his most compelling trivia questions and records to create this authoritative collection. Who was the only player to captain Steve Yzerman in NHL play? When did a forward or defenseman last tend goal during an NHL game? What is the time of the fastest goal from the start of a season-opening game? Irreverent, captivating, and even bizarre, these entertaining stories, historic milestones, and informative stat...

In hockey, goalies have always been a contradiction — solitary men in a team game, the last line of defence and the stalwarts expected to save the day after any and every miscue and collapse from his teammates. It’s no wonder that anyone who played the position has had his sanity questioned; yet some of the biggest innovations in the game have come from its puckstoppers. In The Goaltenders’ Union, Greg Oliver and Richard Kamchen talk to more than 60 keepers of yesterday and today, finding ...

The history of hockey is filled with the bizarre, the unexpected, and the hard to believe. Hockey's Most Wanted™ chronicles 700 of the most outrageous players, coaches, and owners in hockey history. In humorous detail, Floyd Conner describes hockeys top-ten strange plays, inept players, bizarre nicknames, craziest fans, colorful characters, unlikely heroes, odious owners, worst coaches, beleaguered officials, most brutal fights, and more. Learn why Dave Reece was nicknamed the Human Si...

William Louis "Bill" Veeck, Jr. (1914-1986) is legendary in many ways-baseball impresario and innovator, independent spirit, champion of civil rights in a time of great change. Paul Dickson has written the first full biography of this towering figure, in the process rewriting many aspects of his life and bringing alive the history of America's pastime. In his late 20s, Veeck bought into his first team, the American Association Milwaukee Brewers. After serving and losing a leg in WWII, he b...

Super Season celebrates the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl XLV-winning season in a commemorative publication that covers the memorable season and the people who made it happen. We recap each game of the 2010-11 season with stats, highlights and commentary from those involved, with a special look at the Super Bowl itself. We also have exclsusive features on Super Bowl MVP Aaron Rodgers, general manager Ted Thompson and many other star players on the team. Plus, we take a look back at the 12 o...

Moments that added to the legend—and brought the crowd to its feet—of this Original Six franchise and its black-and-gold clad warriors.In this fascinating collection of Bruins tales, Kerry Keene brings readers behind the scenes and captures the stories that have defined the franchise throughout its storied history. From the team’s inception in 1924 up through their 2011 championship run, Tales from the Boston Bruins Locker Room has it all. This treasure tr...

In The ESPN Mighty Book of Sports Knowledge, Steve Wulf, acclaimed author and founding editor of ESPN The Magazine, delivers an arena’s worth of sporting wisdom, trivia, best-of lists, curiosities, legendary feats, and sacred objects–from the magic of Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech to the lore of hockey’s Stanley Cup to the art of the perfectly thrown Wiffle Ball pitch. Written to remind us all why we love the games, this indispensable reference features contributio...

"Hockey historians will appreciate the precision action shots taken of the first cohort of NHL stars . . . a record of how hockey has evolved." — Winnipeg Free PressThe hockey stars of the 1950s and '60s—Rocket Richard, Gordie Howe, Dave Keon, Bobby Hull, Jean Beliveau, Terry Sawchuk, Tim Horton, and others—were some of the most passionate players in National Hockey League history. These skillful and often colorful athletes played exhilarating hockey and w...

There is no greater reward for a hockey player than winning the Stanley Cup. The Ultimate Prize chronicles the evolution of the sport from the first recorded game played in 1875 to the 2002 Champion Detroit Red Wings. Photographs and statistics of teams, coaches, players, owners, and hockey executives are listed year by year. Facts, legends, and lore will engross the reader. Unique among team sports trophies, the Stanley Cup has been called "the people's trophy." It travels the...

Hank, the nimble; Hank, the quick; Hank, the human corkscrew; Hank, as fast as light; Hank, the rubber-boned man, wrote Roy Cummings after seeing a 19-year-old Hank Luisetti perform for the first time in 1936. Cummings sat alone in a deserted gym trying to describe to his readers what he had just witnessed on the basketball court.Luisetti, who learned the game to a background chorus of fog horns and gulls on San Francisco Bay, would later that year introduce New Yorks basketball legions to...