Beautifully designed and carefully curated, a fascinating collection of the things that shaped the way we live and play in AmericaWhat artifact best captures the spirit of American sports? The bat Babe Ruth used to hit his allegedly called shot, or the ball on which Pete Rose wrote, "I'm sorry I bet on baseball"? Could it be Lance Armstrong's red-white-and-blue bike, now tarnished by doping and hubris? Or perhaps its ancestor, the nineteenth-century safety bicycle ...

“Football is force and fanatics, basketball is beauty and bounce. Baseball is everything: action, grace, the seasons of our lives. George Vecsey’s book proves it, without wasting a word.”—Lee Eisenberg, author of The NumberIn Baseball, one of the great bards of America’s Grand Old Game gives a rousing account of the sport, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day. George Vecsey casts a fresh eye on the game, illuminates its foibles a...

Some samples: 1) The Boston Celtics basketball team scored a couple of notable firsts in opening doors to talented African Americans. In 1950, Walter Brown drafted Chuck Cooper, an African-American forward who played for Duquesne University. Another owner of an NBA team tried to convince Mr. Brown not to become the first team owner to draft an African-American player, but Mr. Brown replied, "I don't give a damn if he's striped or polka-dot or plaid—Boston takes Charles Cooper of Duquesne."...

Updated & expanded—this entry in the bestselling bathroom reader series is full of hockey trivia on the sport's colorful history, legendary players, and more.The Bathroom Readers' Institute has added seventy all-new pages to this collection of tales and trivia about the Greatest Game on Ice. You'll find loads of new articles, plus updated facts throughout. So tighten your laces and grab your stick—it's Hockey Time! Read about . . .· Octopuses, rubber rats, ...

Some samples: 1) Notre Dame football player George Gipp was athletically gifted in more than one sport. In a baseball game, he was ordered to bunt, but instead he hit a home run. Why? He explained that he didn't want to spend much time standing on the bases because it was too hot. When he was a star football player, he talked to a newcomer to the varsity team, Roger Kiley, giving him a thrill because a star was noticing him. Unfortunately, Mr. Kiley dropped the first forward pass that Mr. ...

Hockey Night in Canada has reached a great age (and for television, practically an immortal one) because it made itself into something that Canada couldn't live without. It is this surge of emotion that connected us all each week, and which connects us through the years to now. Hockey Night in Canada didn't just aim a camera at a game and observe what happened-it actively gave the country a prism through which it could see itself and its evolving diversity. We look where the eye of Hockey ...

For the last 20 years, Sports Illustrated has collected and featured weekly signs from the world of sports that the Apocalypse is upon us: Tales of frenzied fans, egomaniacal coaches, Hall of Famers who run afoul of the law, mind-boggling bureaucracy, violent behavior and tastelessness run amok�In his new book, Sports Illustrated Book of the Apocalypse: Two Decades of Sports Absurdity, Jack McCallum (Sports Illustrated writer and New York Times bestselling author of Dream Team), co...

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...

TAKE THEM OUT OF THE BALL GAME–PLEASE!From star running back Bryon “Bam” Morris’s interesting (and totally illegal) sideline career to the 1950s Kansas City A’s sneaky relationship with the New York Yankees; from French golfer Jean Van de Velde’s epic choke on 18 at the 1999 British Open to the infamous Cleveland Ten-Cent Beer Night riot of 1974; from Hungary’s bloody 1956 Olympic water polo match with the Soviet Union to the definitive analysis of basketball coach Larry Brown’s sa...

Basketball, the only major world sport undeniably invented by a Canadian, has ironically failed to win Canadians’ hearts more than a century after its creation. James Naismith’s brainchild is a popular recreational pastime in his homeland, but players with bigger dreams had better take their talents south of the border. Canadian hoops has languished in the seemingly eternal shadow of hockey, with its cannibalization of air time, advertising dollars, and corporate capital.Faced with...

From the scoring exploits of historic greats like Gordie Howe, Dit Clapper and Joe Malone to hockey heroics ripped from yesterday's headlines—including the wild 2011 Cup final between the Boston Bruins and the Vancouver Canucks—these quizzes and games will test the knowledge and stoke the passions of hockey fans everywhere.In eight cleverly constructed theme chapters, among them a chapter on swashbuckling Stanley Cup clashes and another on the on-ice drama at the Vancouver 2010 Oly...

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...