Billy Ball

Author : Dale Tafoya
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1493043633
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Billy Ball written by Dale Tafoya and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 1970s, the Oakland Athletics became only the second team in major-league baseball history to win three consecutive World Series championships. But as the decade came to a close, the A's were in free fall, having lost 108 games in 1979 while drawing just 307,000 fans. Free agency had decimated the A’s, and the team’s colorful owner, Charlie Finley, was looking for a buyer. First, though, he had to bring fans back to the Oakland Coliseum. Enter Billy Martin, the hometown boy from West Berkeley. In Billy Ball, sportswriter Dale Tafoya describes what, at the time, seemed like a match made in baseball heaven. The A’s needed a fiery leader to re-ignite interest in the team. Martin needed a job after his second stint as manager of the New York Yankees came to an abrupt end. Based largely on interviews with former players, team executives, and journalists, Billy Ball captures Martin’s homecoming to the Bay area in 1980, his immediate embrace by Oakland fans, and the A’s return to playoff baseball. Tafoya describes the reputation that had preceded Martin—one that he fully lived up to—as the brawling, hard-drinking baseball savant with a knack for turning bad teams around. In Oakland, his aggressive style of play came to be known as Billy Ball. A’s fans and the media loved it. But, in life and in baseball, all good things must come to an end. Tafoya chronicles Martin’s clash with the new A’s management and the siren song of the Yankees that lured the manager back to New York in 1983. Still, as the book makes clear, the magical turnaround of the A’s has never been forgotten in Oakland. Neither have Billy Martin and Billy Ball. During a time of economic uncertainty and waning baseball interest in Oakland, Billy Ball filled the stands, rejuvenated fans, and saved professional baseball in the city.

Author : Michael Lewis
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393066231
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game written by Michael Lewis and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-03-17 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This delightfully written, lesson-laden book deserves a place of its own in the Baseball Hall of Fame." —Forbes Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-budget Oakland A's, visionary general manager Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball theorists. They are all in search of new baseball knowledge—insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money.

Author : Bill Balata
Publisher : Btb Entertainment
ISBN 13 : 9780967087702
Total Pages : 116 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Being the Ball written by Bill Balata and published by Btb Entertainment. This book was released on 1999 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Will Weaver
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0064472086
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hard Ball written by Will Weaver and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1999-02-27 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Battle in the Bullpen For as long as Billy Baggs can remember, rich townie and ace pitcher Archer "King" Kenwood has been his nemesis--both on the field and off. And the summer before they enter high school, their long-standing rivalry explodes into violence. Desperate to keep the peace between his two star players, Coach Anderson comes up with a plan: If they want to play, they have to pay--by spending a week together, twenty-four hours a day. But will Coach's plan make things better? Or just a whole lot worse? After a family tragedy on the farm, Billy Baggs’s life is finally back on track. He’s starting high school. He’s caught the eye of the baseball coach and even a few college scouts. He has prospects for a girlfriend—Suzy Langen, the catch of the ninth grade. But blocking Billy’s path is King Kenwood, town rich kid and ace pitcher. As the two boys’ rivalry turns violent, it is left to Coach Anderson to find a solution. In the process, both Billy and King come to find their real problems might lie closer to home—with their own fathers.

Author : Nancy Finley
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 162157542X
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Finley Ball written by Nancy Finley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of a losing baseball team that became a 1970s dynasty, thanks to the unorthodox strategies and stunts of two very colorful men. When Charlie Finley bought the A's in 1960, he was an outsider to the game—a insurance businessman with a larger-than-life personality. He brought his cousin Carl on as his right-hand man, moved the team from Kansas City to Oakland, and pioneered a new way to put together a winning team. With legendary players like Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Vida Blue, the Finleys' Oakland A's won three straight World Series and riveted the nation. Now Carl Finley's daughter Nancy reveals the whole story behind her family's winning legacy—how her father and uncle developed their scouting strategy, why they employed odd gimmicks like orange baseballs and "mustache bonuses," and how the success of the '70s Oakland A's changed the game of baseball.

Author : R. T. Kendall
Publisher : FaithWords
ISBN 13 : 0446560235
Total Pages : 141 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Out of Your Comfort Zone written by R. T. Kendall and published by FaithWords. This book was released on 2009-05-30 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: R. T. Kendall brings a fresh perspective to difficult questions of faith and reveals the correct and balanced picture of God's nature in order to draw readers back to the real God.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 686 pages
Book Rating : 4.5S/5 ( download)

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Download or read book McClure's Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Bud Shrake
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743227999
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Billy Boy written by Bud Shrake and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-03-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not since Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show has a novelist captured the poignant contradictions of young manhood in the American West the way Bud Shrake does in Billy Boy. And no novel has ever combined history, spirituality and golf into so potent a triumph of the human spirit. There are tough times ahead for sixteen-year-old Billy. He's just come to Fort Worth with his father, Troy, after the death of his mother back in Albuquerque. Troy's drinking and gambling will leave them all but penniless, and he'll soon move on and abandon Billy in this strange town to fend for himself. With only a vague idea of how he's going to live, Billy heads over to Colonial Country Club, where he hopes he can get work as a caddie and where he just might see his hero, Ben Hogan. What he finds there, under the watchful eye of his guardian spirit, teaches him unforgettable lessons about golf, life, love and honor. In Billy Boy, longtime novelist and screenwriter Bud Shrake takes us back to the early 1950s, in a story thick with the Texas dust. Hardscrabble Billy, tough as he thinks he is and smarter than he knows, makes a place for himself behind the walls of privilege at Colonial. He first draws the approval, then the ire, of the club's most eccentric millionaire member, while his looks and manner draw the attention of the millionaire's beautiful granddaughter -- to the displeasure of her boyfriend, the club champion. Billy survives a fierce initiation and a dreadful scene with his drunken father -- but most important, he comes in contact with two of the greatest figures in the history of golf in Texas, Ben Hogan and John Bredemus, each of whom takes Billy under his wing for different reasons and with different results. Shrake skillfully weaves these historical figures and his richly drawn characters into the fabric of the town and the tenor of the time. Billy must face down his fears and doubts, and he does so in a climactic confrontation that combines the yearnings of youth with the redemption of the spirit. Billy Boy is an unforgettable novel of coming of age in a time and a place filled with mythic echoes and frontier dreams.

Author : Andy Dolich
Publisher : Triumph Books
ISBN 13 : 1637274165
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Goodbye, Oakland written by Andy Dolich and published by Triumph Books. This book was released on 2023-04-11 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating tour of Oakland sports history and a look toward the future of professional sports in the East Bay. Oakland is a sports city like no other. It is the only city in America to be abandoned by the same team twice, with the Raiders most recently leaving for Las Vegas. The Golden State Warriors, who crossed the bay in 1971 in search of better digs, have now returned to San Francisco with trophies in tow. The long-fought battle to keep the Oakland Athletics in the East Bay may narrowly save the city from a hat trick of departures. And yet, Oakland has produced more than its share of success in the form of 10 league championships across the NFL, NBA, and MLB. The city is gritty, gutsy, and self-preserving, with a blue-collar mentality and a gold standard under that collar. Bolstered by the Silicon Valley tech boom, Oakland has become one of the most desirable places to live in the entire country, all while its sports fans are increasingly made to feel that, in the famous words of Gertrude Stein, "There is no there there." What is it about Oakland that inspires such wanderlust in its professional teams? Featuring numerous conversations with luminaries across sports, politics, and economics, this new book explores Oakland's fascinating and paradoxical identity as a sports town while illuminating a cast of characters as diverse as the city itself: rogues, superstars, movers and shakers operating on and off the field, and the ill-treated fans. Through the insight of venerated Oakland Tribune scribe Dave Newhouse and sports business leader Andy Dolich, readers will come to appreciate the many quirks and challenges that define "The Town."

Author : Michael I. Niman
Publisher : Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN 13 : 9780870499890
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book People of the Rainbow written by Michael I. Niman and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fictional re-creation of a day in the life of a Rainbow character named Sunflower begins the book, illustrating events that might typically occur at an annual North American Rainbow Gathering. Using interviews with Rainbows, content analysis of media reports, participant observation, and scrutiny of government documents relating to the group, Niman presents a complex picture of the Family and its relationship to mainstream culture - called "Babylon" by the Rainbows. Niman also looks at internal contradictions within the Family and examines members' problematic relationship with Native Americans, whose culture and spiritual beliefs they have appropriated.