Baseball Books

William Hartel's affectionate tribute to the "Friendly Confines" of Wrigley Field is a must for any baseball fan, and especially if you've ever been fortunate to watch a game there. Though there are numerous historical photos outlining the history of the old park built in 1914, the bulk of the pictures were taken from dawn to dusk on the same day - June 18, 1993. Loaded with quotes and stories from everyone from Bill Veeck to Ernie Banks and long-time National League Umpire Doug Harvey, this book makes its case that Wrigley is not only the best place on earth to play and watch baseball, but one of the most memorable places to visit for fans of all ages. I read this book on a cold January evening yet when I closed my eyes, I could feel the sun on my face, smell the hot dogs, and hear Ernie Banks saying, "Let's play two!"

.

Holy Cow!

Maybe THIS year!

As I write this review, da Cabs have just won their first post-season series since 1908. There is euphoria in Wrigleyville! What a gorgeous anthology book to celebrate - in essays of words and pictures - da Cubs and dere Friendly Confines! Dere's a foreword by George F. Will and mouth-watering pictures of peanuts, popcorn, and hotdogs. (Hey! Where's some Cracker Jacks? ;-) The frontispiece and back (is that called a backispeice?) are appropriately covered in ivy.

Here's the Dust Jacket Lead Off by Ernie Banks: Ballplayers come and go, but Wrigley Field endures. As long as Cub fans take their kids out to the Friendly Confines and show them where baseball should be played, the chain will be unbroken.

Believe!

Reviewed by TundraVision, Once a Cub fan, always a Cub Fan

A GREAT GIFT FOR ANY BASEBALL FAN. A GREAT TOUR OF ONE OF THE BEST STADIUMS EVER. I LOVE THIS BOOK. EXCELLENT READING. WRIGLEY BROUGHT TO LIFE IN A BOOK. GREAT BUY.

i am a sox's fan but this book makes me love the chicago cubs magnificent building. It brings you behind the sceens and shows little secrets about the park. Great book.

This review originally appeared on my Weblog:...

While Providence may not have had a major league team since 1884, in R.D. Rosen's world, Providence is a major league team, home to the Providence Jewels, along with an architectural treasure of a ball park located somewhere around India Point park.

Rosen has written a series of mysteries featuring Harvey Blissberg, a former Providence Jewel player turned detective turned motivational speaker. Blissberg is a great detective character- by turns blustery, unsure of himself, and self-effacing. He's a very likable character, flaws and all. And of course, seeing places like Wayland Square, Haven Brothers, and the Industrial National Bank Building is very interesting for the Rhode Island savvy among us.

Rosen's geography is a little off (in Dead Ball, he has Routes 95 and 195 confused at points-- 195 passes over Richmond Street, not 95!) but that's a tiny niggle. He gets lots of geographical things right too!

The books are great fun if you like mysteries. The plots move along relatively quickly, and reading about Providence and the mythical Providence Jewels makes you wish we did have a ball club (forget about the headaches of traffic, parking, and corruption for a minute.)

Read the books, you'll be glad you did!

It looks like Providence Jewel outfielder, Moss Cooley, may be ready to do the impossible. His bat is red hot; he's hit in 46 consecutive games, and he's zeroing in on DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak record...the record, experts said, that would never be broken. But not everyone is thrilled by the possibility, and with all his success and notoriety, comes hate mail. When Moss receives a headless lawn jockey with a death threat attached, team management decides to call in the big guns, former Jewel's center fielder, turned private detective, Harvey Blissberg, to protect their star player. But "babysitting" isn't enough for Harvey, and once he sinks his teeth into the case and starts digging, he can't let go until he gets to the truth..... Mystery lovers and baseball enthusiasts will be glad to know that Richard Rosen is finally back, after a long hiatus, with another Harvey Blissberg mystery. Dead Ball is a well paced, intriguing, page turner, full of great characters, vivid scenes, and subtle plot twists that keep you off balance and guessing to the end. But it's Mr Rosen's smart, crisp, intelligent writing, and witty and irreverent dialogue that really makes this novel stand out, and his obvious love of the game, and knowledge of baseball history adds real credibility to the story. With its stunning conclusion, and very satisfying ending, Dead Ball is a novel that should definitely be placed at the top of every mystery fan's "Must Read" list. If you're new to the Harvey Blissberg series, start at the beginning with Strike Three, You're Dead, and read them all. If you're already a groupie, Harvey's back, and better than ever!

Harvey Blisberg was once a good outfielder for the Providence Jewels. After retiring he became a private investigator until all the evil he witnessed threatened to turn him into a madman. He quit to become a motivational speaker, but gave up on that too because he did not believe his own words.

Harvey accepts a job as bodyguard to Jewel's superstar Moss Cooley, a black man closing in on Joe DiMaggio's once unbreakable hitting record. The excellent baseball player has (not surprisingly) begun receiving hate mail but there is one death threat that worries team officials because they think that someone is very serious about harming Moss. As he watches over his client, Harvey realizes that this is not about breaking a record by a black man, but is about Moss and someone connected to him. Harvey places himself in peril by following the serpentine trail from Moss to his tormentor.

Baseball fans are going to love this exciting sports mystery that stars an endearing curmudgeon as a hero. The action is fast-paced and the characters, especially Harvey and Moss, feel genuine. With MEAN STREET, RD Rosen hits a home run to rival that of Maz.

Harriet Klausner

Harvey Blissberg, PI, ex-center fielder is back with his old major league team, the Providence Jewels, who have a new park since he played for them, 15 years before. The Jewels superstar, Moss Cooley, is close to breaking Di Maggio's 56 game hitting streak, but someone is trying to rattle him. The team hires Blissberg to protect Cooley.

Harvey and Moss learn to trust and respect each other and little by little, the mystery is unraveled. I was sure I would dislike this book, since I find professional sports boring and Providence is one of my least favorite cities. I was wrong. Rosen makes the game and the people interesting and exciting again (I stopped following baseball when the Giants left New York, when it was a game and not big business as it is today.) Bits and pieces of baseball history are woven into the story as is Providence and its landmarks including Haven's Brothers, a prototype the first diner.

I always enjoy a good mystery, but this book offered more. Debs Kafka is a professor of Criminal Justice, yet yearns to play professional baseball. Triggered by the murder of a priest, this San Francisco plot swept me away in a whirlwind of criminology, romance, University politics, and baseball trivia, all entwined with the threads of scandal facing the Catholic Church today. A good read! I hope to see more of Debs Kafka on the bookshelves soon.

OK, so you were afraid to get out of school and go face the real world. So you stayed in school. Now you're about to get your Ph.D. and all of a sudden you realize that the world of academia sucks (it really does).

At the same time, your girl friend has told you to kiss-off, and with no good-bye kiss. Then your major professor (and priest) gets murdered. (You know what's been happening with priests and little boys.) So you get a chance to start over, you take a chance and get a shot at your childhood dream, professional baseball.

Then you learn that the killer is now threatening to kill the star pitcher. Even worse, this dastardly fellow is planning this evil crime right in the final days of a tight pennant race. Can you imagine such a thing?

Well, it's certainly a good thing that your Ph.D. is (about to be) in criminology. Guess what happens now....

This book is very easily read and completely entertaining. For those familiar with San Francisco, the landmarks and familiar hot spots mentioned are a nice touch!! I'll be looking for the next Debs Kafka mystery...

Having been a fan of Rob Elias's non-fiction works, I was eager to see how he would fare in his initial foray into the world of murder mystery novels. Set in and about the San Francisco Bay area, from the first chapter on it is clear that Professor Elias and his protagonist Debs Kafka have hit a homerun. This whodunit has something for everyone- religion (specifically Catholicism), baseball, and higher education. Could anything be more timely? The result is a wonderfully engrosssing story that keeps the reader guessing throughout and has a climax that will literally blow you away. Let's hope that the bookcover's notation that this is a "Debs Kafka Mystery" means that we can look forward to more from Mssrs. Elias and Kafka in the future.

What an informative and fun book to read! The author presents great quotes, mental skills, and winning strategies by the best minds in baseball for achieving excellence in sports, business, and the game of life.

This book is a must have for coaches and players alike. I own and run Centerfield Baseball Academy and this book is like having the best coaches in the country in my place 24-7!. If you are a coach it is amazing to have such an organized blue print for success at your fingertips. As a player who got to the professional leval I could have been twice the player and teammate had I read Dugout Wisdom. A young player who reads this book will get tips to exponentially improve his game and, what's more important, he will relate to his coach and team in a way he never has before. This is worth every penny. ...

I bought Jim Murphy's DUGOUT WISDOM because I wanted to learn about managing a winning business team. I don't confess to know a lot about baseball but after reading a few pages of DUGOUT WISDOM, I realized that this is not just a book for baseball coaches and fans. It's a book for anyone wanting to be a champion, wanting to be the best that they can be in all that they do whether it be in sports, business, personal life, anything. DUGOUT WISDOM is very practical.

I recommend DUGOUT WISDOM for anyone who wants to gain wisdom and be motivated, challenged, and inspired!

The amount of quality managers and coaches he interviewed is outstanding, and putting it all together with the ten principles really clarified for me what the top managers do. As a business professional I feel I can transfer much of these principles into my life, because we're all dealing with people, whether it's sports or business. I really liked the chapter on Forming a Covenant, and having a spiritual base, which is really inner strength. I was especially intrigued to find out what Dusty Baker had to say, as I feel he's one of the best at dealing with people and forming a winning team from different personalities. Highly recommended.

We rely heavily on our ESPN's Baseball Encyclopedia when we have a question about baseball. We keep it readily available. This current edition is our second one. I recommend it to baseball fans.

As a frequent reader of previous Baseball Encyclopedias, this ESPN version does a great job providing historical statistics and higher level strategyies and implications.

ESPN again delivers as their 2008 MLB Encyclopedia is a baseball statistics lover's dream come true! Chock full of player information and stats, I've been utilizing my copy for a few months already!

This is a wonderful and reasonably priced book for referencing the statistical record of the greatest game ever invented.

If you are a baseball fan and need an historical, reference book your library, The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition (Espn Baseball Encyclopedia) is the book. Every season, every player are at your fingertips. There are even sections on the Negro Leagues, Umpires, Coaches and Managers. The only area that is missing is the rosters for each team for each season. The volume does provide the regular players and most important reserves. The price is quite low for the most immense comprehensive single volume on the Nation's Pastime.

Jansen's voice is as delightful as ever, looking at where we've been to try and figure out where we are now, without the soft focus lens that so often accompanies a nostalgic look backward at baseball's early days, or California's. It was a tough and sometimes ugly past, and George captures it all with humor, insight, and honesty. I've bought one book for myself and one for a baseball fan friend of mine.

Matching George's honesty, I'll admit I know the author, but even if I didn't, I would have bought this book!

Seeing Sunny Again
The Fade-away is, as one of my mentors used to say (that would be James N. Frey [not the fibber], author of How to Write a Damn Good Novel), a damn good novel. As someone who still manages to read most days, I am always grateful when I come across a book that I look forward to `getting back to'. I do most of my reading on the train during my commute and The Fade-away is such a book. It provided a wonderful antidote to the cell phone yakkers and other boors that take the train these days. On a superficial level the novel is about baseball, but baseball is a metaphor for life and Jansen has a lot of wonderful insights into both. Set in the turn of the century, not the last one, but the one before that, and told from four disparate points of view, The Fade-away is well-written with intricate period detail and believable characters who filter what happens to them and those around them through what I consider to be properly-adjusted period attitudes and biases, rather than our modern ones. As a sometimes writer of historical novels I know how tricky this can be. A balance must be struck between old, sometimes extinct, attitudes, which are needed for authenticity, and new, 21st century attitudes, which must be acknowledged in order to entice and hold, not repel, the modern reader. The Fade-away does this. I would term The Fade-away literary fiction due to the sophistication of the characters and situations. It tells the story of the Port Newton Athletic Club baseball team, which is tired of losing. At the urging of Foghorn Murphy, they start down a new path, echoing modern sports scandals (Bonds and his alleged steroid use, coaches betting on games, etc.) along the way.

George Jansen's rendering of minorities living in the white man's world back when people settled their differences (or acted out their hatred of the `other') with their fists, seems to be right on target. It was a time when life was a little crueler, but despite that, men (and women) still strove to lead lives of dignity, or at least to appear to do so. Jack Dobbs, aka, The Chief exhibits the former quality right through to the end. And speaking of "the end", hundreds of endings are available to the writer. There are no rules. Jansen chose one that has the unmistakable ring of truth to it. The sweetly sad and wonderful world of The Fade-away won't fade away in this reader's mind for a long time to come.

George Jansen's "The Fade-away" is a keeper, a book readers will want to tell friends about. Whether fans of baseball or simply fans of a good tale--both winsome and wistful--readers will find "The Fade-away" rewarding. Port Newton, California is at the turn of the twentieth century a town failing fast, cllinging desperately to its ball team as a means of salvaging its future. And many of its male citizens are holding furiously to the team as a means of staving off their own diminishing skills and prospects. Fished out of nearby Carquinez Straight is nearly-drowned J.P. "Jack" Dobbs, an enigmatic Indian and one-time professional ball player. Like many of his rescuers, he is on the downward side of fortune. First the team, then the entire town looks to "Chief" Dobbs to bring them victories in their bitter rivalries with neighboring towns. Through the eyes of the town's doctor and his precocious daughter, the town's restless entrepreneur--and his barkeep--and the town's newspaper, Jansen provides his readers with differing perspectives of the "goings on" in Newton as its citizens flirt with selling their souls for success, attention, and a renewed sense of their own worth. It is the classic struggle between innocence and larceny, between playing the game straight and doing whatever it takes to win--with a fascinating series of twists and turns involving love, envy, avarice, ambition, hope, and despair. This is a wonderful story, well-told and filled with quirky, but well-drawn and believable characters. Jansen exhibits a keen ear for the language and a deft appreciation of the values of early Port Newton as he explores the fragility of lives, loves and relationships there. "The Fade-away" deserves wide-circulation.

You don't have to be a baseball fan to enjoy The Fade-away. It is an engaging story about people and life in small-town California in 1900, a time when baseball was played mostly by regular people. If you are a baseball fan, particularly of its history, there's a healthy dose of early baseball stuff. But it is not a fairy tale of sports heroism; it's about people who are, in the author's words, flawed and incomplete.

It wouldn't take much detective work to learn that I'm a friend of the author, so I thought I'd get that out of the way. If a friend of yours has ever written and published a novel, you may have struggled through it, and then thought up something polite to say. I knew that would not be the case here, having thoroughly enjoyed George Jansen's first novel, The Jesse James Scrapbook, and then waited anxiously for his next book. In this second novel, he has further refined his distinctive, multiple-viewpoint, mosaic style of storytelling. I read it nonstop, cover-to-cover, and when I was finished, went back to savor some of my favorite parts.

As an historian, Jansen really does his homework. He thoroughly researches the time and place in which his story is set, but then he doesn't turn around and beat you over the head with what he's learned. Rather than getting a history lesson, you comfortably settle into that time and place, and come away with the feeling that you've been there.

The Fade-away is LOL funny at times, but mostly poignant. It is sweet, but honest. Its characters are far from heroes, but you might find yourself loving some of them anyway.

Jason Becker has always been known to have an "active imagination" and this book proves it. The hampster really fell off the wheel hard when he wrote this book, but man, Jason can out-cook Aunt Jemimia and Uncle Ben anyday!!!

A must read!!!

If Douglas Adams and Franz Kafka had ever teamed up to write a script for a Monty Python movie, this would have been the novelization of the script. A rapid-fire series of puns, bizarre plot twists, and dead-pan humor combines with the sense of alienation and bleak despair that lies under the surface of most modern humor. If there is any justice in the world, this book will be a classic.

...is awesome. He is a worthy inheritor to the throne left vacant by the untimely demise of Douglas Adams. This book will make you laugh out loud, and you will find yourself giggling over parts of it for weeks to come. A very entertaining read, one I could not put down until I was finished with it. I eagerly look forward to Mr. Becker's next book.

Jason Becker is a man that knows how to write comedy. From beginning to end it is a laugh riot. The scene with the duck, the plunger and the Dirty Vicar is one I will always think about while eating eggs benedict. Only problem was the underlying homosexual undertones. Who is this Gerard and why does he wear ladies underwear, it is never explained.

I bought this book, after it came out in 1993, from a terrific "retro" collectible shop in the Century City shopping center called "Raffia", which tragically exists no longer.

I don't remember why, but for some reason, I decided at the time that I would not actually open up the book and read it until after the Giants won a World Series.

Eleven years and a lifetime of heartbreak later, I realize that the Giants will win a World Series on the day after the Messiah comes riding into Jerusalem on a white donkey, blowing his shofar.

I recently found the book again and realized that I would never get to read it if I actually waited as long as I had originally intended so I just finished it.

One of the reasons why it's an interesting read is because it's written at the dawn of a new age in Giants history - on the heels of the aborted sale and move of the franchise to Tampa Bay, Florida and the subsequent purchase of the contractual services of one Barry Lamar Bonds. So you can probably take almost all of the franchise batting records that are listed at the back of the book and throw them to the wind.

And speaking of the wind, the book also predates by a few years the relocation of home field from Candlestick Park - termed by Bruce Jenkins as "the great wind machine" - to Pacific Bell Park in the heart of downtown San Francisco. Candlestick Park was much maligned as a baseball field in its time, but it looks quite magnificent in the photographs that the authors include in the text. And as they point out, it held up to the 1989 Series earthquake. Fans and reporters who diss Candlestick today are weather wimps and ingrates.

The book is a retrospective of Giants history starting in 1885 from their magnificent beginning as the New York Gothams ("My big fellow! My Giants!", owner Jim Mutrie is supposed to have triumphantly exclaimed, according to legend, after one particularly satisfying victory) to the glory days in the first 30 years of the 20th century under Manager John McGraw, King Carl Hubbell, Bill Terry, and Mel Ott to the lean years of the 1940's when the war depleted their roster to rebirth and redemption in the 1950's - courtesy (in large part) of Leo Durocher, Bobby Thomson, and Willie Mays - even as economic considerations were moving both the Giants and their historical rivals, the Dodgers, inexorably away from New York and toward the West Coast.

The 1950's might have even been more glorious on the field if the Korean War hadn't exacted two years of military obligation from Willie Mays and if Monte Irvin hadn't broken his leg in a pre-season 1952 exhibition game.

The book also captures the empty glory of the Giants San Francisco history - a lot of great teams; a lot of great players; a lot of close calls and nothing left at the end of any season but a collapsed one-horse shay. The authors perfectly summarize the history of the 1960's Giants with the observation, "It may be that no team has ever had so much talent and worked so hard and come away with so little to show for it".

Little did the authors know that, ten years after they wrote those words, they could be recycled to describe the Giants of the 1990's and 2000's. The substantive questions that they ask at the end of the book about the team's future can now be answered, "No."

The book's feature point is its collection of historical photographs, including, for example, a 1914 Cracker Jack card of Christy Mathewson, an art deco photographic cover of the 1933 World Series (Giants-Senators) program, and a 1952 program, on the cover of which Durocher reads to a cherubic Giant player the story of "The Little Miracle of Coogan's Bluff", and much much more. Having this book is the next best thing to owning your own souvenir shop.

As for the writing, it is flawed in some instances and brilliant in others. The description of the end of the 1962 World Series is so agonizingly good that I can't read it again. On the other hand, the authors several times commit the Giant mistake of saying that the team almost moved to Minnesota in 1976. While the relocation of the Giants and Dodgers to Minneapolis and St. Paul had been considered in the 1950's, in 1976, Minnesota was (and still is) barely able to support the Twins, let alone a second major league team. It was Toronto that the Giants almost moved to, having been tentatively sold to LaBatt's Brewery. LaBatt's eventually bought the Blue Jays, who would bring two world championships to the city of Toronto. It makes one think.

And while 1974-1985, as the authors say, was almost entirely a dismal chapter in the team's history, the one exception to that was the scrappy band of overachievers, led by Vida Blue, Jack Clark, Willie McCovey and Mike Ivie that made a serious run at a vastly more talented Dodger team in 1978. If John "The Count" Montefusco (for accuracy's sake, his nickname contained one letter too many) could have replicated his 1975 and 1976 performances in 1978, the team could have pulled it off. Failure to even mention the 1978 team is a glaring omission (there is one 1979 photograph of Jack Clark sliding home).

Failing to mention the 1982 team -- the one that contended into the final week of the season and ultimately took away (thanks largely to Joe Morgan) the satisfaction of playing "spoiler" to the Dodgers -- was also a glaring omission.

And - it's not the authors' fault - but while Will Clark's place in Giant history of the late 1980's must be acknowledged, referring to him as a possible future Hall of Famer now seems laughable in retrospect. And his endorsement of the book on its back cover - "This is a must for all Giants fans, past and present" - turns out to be a bitterly ironical demerit.

Some of Slick Will's more cynical critics now wish that he had taken more of an interest in the Giants during the last season that he played for them.

THIS BOOK IS GREAT FOR ANY BASEBALL FAN. THE PHOTOS AND OTHER MATERIAL USED TO SHOW THE HISTORY OF THE GIANTS IS OUTSTANDING. I THINK THIS ONE OF THE BEST BOOK I HAVE READ FOR MEMORIES AND HISTORY OF THE BELOVED GIANTS. READ IT YOU WON'T BE SORRY

This book is a must read for any fan of the greatest team in baseball, the San Francisco GIANTS! Beautifully orchestrated, full-blown color photos and fantastic stories of the Giants rich history dating back to Coogan's Bluff.

If anybody knows how to contact Bruce Chadwick or David M. Spindel then please forward their contact info. right away. (650.988.9290) or ryan@altoscan.com

This is a great book if you're into Baseball history. Instead of illustrations, the stories are accompanied by photos of actual artifacts from this great game! A must for any baseball fan!

What a wonderful book to inspire young girls to do and be anything they want! This book is a great launching pad for a discussion about girls and sports and what they have not been allowed to do because of prejudices. Wonderful pictures, too!

Title: The Girl who struck out Babe Ruth
Author: Jean L.S. Patrick
Reading Level: 2nd to 5th

I loved the book It was great.
I liked the book because it was different that a Girl struck out famous baseball players!
Baseball fans would like it !

Title: The Girl who struck out Babe Ruth
Author: Jean L.S. Patrick
Reading Level: 2nd to 5th

I loved the book It was great.
I liked the book because it was different that a Girl struck out famous baseball players!
Baseball fans would like it !

Excellent description of the life of a 17 year old girl whowasan amazing sportswoman. She actually did strike out Babe Ruth andLou Gehrig in succession. The author portrays this young baseball player in an excellent fashion, giving girls a vision of their unlimited potential.

An inspiring message for girls of all ages!

Author Patrick also offers workshops that give further detail about this amazing young woman, including actual film footage of the event.

This was a Christmas gift for our adult son. He loved the book, but the CDs that were to be a part of it were not included!

Written by the award-winning sportscaster Ted Patterson, The Golden Voices Of Baseball is a vividly presented collection of brief biographical portraits of the great baseball announcers of radio history. Enhanced with an accompanying set of two CDS featuring captivating tracks of memorable sports callers in action The Golden Voices Of Baseball offers a truly exciting survey, filled throughout with black-and-white photographs, history, nostalgia, and commentary. An ideal gift for baseball enthusiasts, The Golden Voices Of Baseball is a unique and very highly recommended sports history.

My wife tricked me into a bookstore on my birthday on the pretense of looking for a book for her. Lo and behold legendary
sports analyst, Ted Patterson, was inside in the midst of a book signing for the above title. This was a treat! Mr. Patterson is an extremely knowledgeable gentleman who has been a fixture in the Baltimore sports scene for some time. I HAD TO HAVE THE BOOK!

The book, folks, is all that and more. If you grew up listening to O's games described to you by the incomparable Chuck Thompson - you will understand what I mean. Not only does the book provide history, but it also delves into the broadcaster's life. The cd's which accompanied the book made this a priceless momento. Kudos, Mr. Patterson!

The story I have to tell is a wonderful and pleasant one. The author, Ted Patterson, and I were friends at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in the late sixties when Ted was working on his thesis for his Master's Degree in Communication and Theatre. What is not revealed in this book is that his thesis, "The Golden Voices of Sport" is the basis for the book, "The Golden Voices of Baseball." I was an integral part in helping Ted with typing and organization; I even traveled with him to Cincinnati for a one of the interviews with the sportscasters. Now thirty-five years later, Ted has contacted me here, still at Miami University and married. This has been an awesome experience down memory lane, which has flooded my mind with so many great moments in my life back then.

As to the book and the CDs, as I look back to the past as to how the thesis came about (50 tapes of broadcasters), and the number of years that passed until the book was finally published in 2002, this alone speaks volumes as to how valuable these tapes have become and now they are a reality for all to share. The book is very well written and most informative, with loads of great pictures and memories for all sports fans to share. I agree with Curt Gowdy, who has written the introduction, when he says that so many sportscasters are gone now, but their memory shall live on forever through this book.