Leagues Books

The reason I could call my review Tight boy and his violin because He was the bomb. I meen like he was the bat boy and he had it good because if you wer at my school C.L.A.S you couldent be no bat boy or a water boy . My school cause it self C.L.A.S because it stands for CULTURE AND LANGUGE ACADEMY OF SUCESES se THE C IS CULTURE AND THE L IS LANGUAGE AND THE A IS ACADEMY AND S IS FOR SUCCES. But yeah some of the other books chek me out like darnell rock reporting or this one oh yeah thats it.

Reginald's father is the manager of a baseball team in the Negro league. Reginald would rather play his violin than anything else. His dad signs him up to be a bat boy. Reginald plays his violin for the team which starts them on a winning streak. Shows insight into world of music impact and Negro ball players.

Reginald's father is the manager of a baseball team in the Negro league. Reginald would rather play his violin than a else. His dad signs him up to be a bat boy. Reginals plays his violin for the team which starts them on a winning streak. Shows insight into world of music impact and Negro ball players.

My son and I absolutely loved the story and illustrations. We can't wait for Gavin Curtis to write his next book, and for E.B. Lewis to illustrate his next book. Continue to keep up the high standards for children's books. We love to read! Reading is one of my most favorite things to share with my son who will be 5 in July. Thank you again to the both of you for a book well done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This book has so many themes superimposed on one another, but they are all presented within the context of a wonderful story about a boy who just wanted to play his violin.

Set among the context of the Negro League era, Reginald's father decides one summer to make him bat boy for his team. The team is down on its luck, and Reginald's heart isn't in this assignment, but everything comes together for him and the team one day.

The history of the era as gently portrayed in the travels of the players is presented for young readers. The story of being true to yourself, and of parents learning to accept that in their children, is here as well. Above all else, the story of Reginald and his journeys with the ball players is a story of hope and triumph among the community in a time that was not always seen as one of hope. Along with all of this, the illustrations of E. B. Lewis capture these themes beautifully.

I am on my second copy of this book. The first one finally fell apart from "over-use". I've given numerous copies of this book to friends and family. Everyone loves it as much as I do. This is the first book I go to when looking for a recipe and I've never been disappointed.

I grew up with this cookbook. My mother made recipes from it for special occasions, and now I do too. Among my favorites are the cheesecake and the banana nut bread. I think every lady in Morgan County uses the sausage ball recipe, too. The recipes in this book set the standard by which all these Southern classics are judged. Pick it up, if for no other reason than the vintage 1970s photographs of Decatur, AL, society ladies!

Recipes are totally reliable and there's an amazing variety. All were tested before being accepted for inclusion. Written before concerns about sugar and fat really hit but baked goods recipes can be easily adjusted by reducing sugar or fat by one quarter to one third. Have been using this cookbook for more than twenty years and was delighted to find it still available.

I received this cookbook as a wedding shower present. With the exception of the bath towels I also received, it is the shower present I have used the most in almost thirteen years of marriage.

While some of the recipes are traditional Southern cooking such as fried chicken and biscuits, that is by no means the extent of Cotton Country Cooking. The recipes reflect the diversity of cultures that make up America, and in paricular, the South. There is everything from Creole to German cuisine in Cotton Country Cooking. My personal favorites include Sweet and Sour Meatloaf, Banana Nut Bread, and Boiled Custard.

Are you tired of cooking the same thing over and over for your guests? Cotton Country Cooking is an excellent resource for when you entertain. If cooking is not what you enjoy, there are several easy and foolproof recipes for those times when you just can't get out of having to make something.

In this age of convenience and fast foods, why not treat yourself and your family and friends? Try the recipes in Cotton Country Cooking! They will taste the love.

I have bought and given this book away so many times that I have lost count. I lived in the south for only a few short years and came to love the people and their great foods. So when I moved west, I insisted on this book riding in the car with me. Every recipe in it can be trusted to be the hit of whatever the occasion might be. I don't plan any special meal without it.

Mike Shannon does a great job of getting behind the scenes of the life of an umpire in the independent Frontier League. As a resident of a town that had a team in the FL for 8 years (1995-2002), it was an especially interesting read. What really surprised me was that the featured subject, umpire Max McLeary, was born and raised here in Johnstown. A fine book for those who love the minor leagues!

This book was a great read. I think Shannon could descibe a turd and it would be exciting. He has a very unique style of writing that made me want to read the next page and the next and the next......

I think it was a good idea to tell about the Frontier League using Max the umpire to spice it up. I really have a good feel for the Frontier League and I can't wait to start my FL summer tour.

This book is for anyone one who is a true fan of baseball.

Someone once wrote that major league baseball is a business, but minor league baseball is still a game. For those of us who love baseball, but have soured on major league baseball, Mike Shannon's book hits it on the nose. His romp through the Frontier League is an entertaining and informative narrative on the players and people involved in the lower minor leagues. They truly love the game of baseball and you will love this book!

I loved this book because I love the game of baseball. This book captures the essence of the low minors and the people and personalities and places and ballparks that make the minors such an appealing place to watch the game. I am already planning a summer roadtrip to Chillicothe and Richmond and the rest of the Frontier League. Great read!

I work as an umpire in the Frontier League and work with Max McLeary and Jim Schaly. As you can see Max is a very complicated guy. This league is his life, not only during the season, but year round. When his umpiring days are over he would like to work within the league in some capacity. The stories in this book are true. Last year Max and I worked a series in Evansville, Indiana and before the game I found a white cane with a red tip (a blind persons cane) sitting in the locker room. Max decided that it would be funny to put on some dark sun glasses, turn his cap backwards and come out to ground rules using the cane. The place went nuts!

Last but not least, Mike writes a great book but there is one error that I must correct. Max's eye is plastic and if you're ever on the road with him make sure you don't get up in the middle of the night and drink from the water cup by the sink. That's the one with his eye in it.

MY SON COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN AFTER HE OPENED IT UP XMAS MORNING. I'LL GET HIS REVIEW.

"Glory for Sale" is full of the sort of detail most football fans only dream of accessing...the book enables readers to become part of the franchise process, to feel as though they were actually there. Jon Morgan's style is fluid and literary, and the book, however intricate, reads as easily as a novel. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the world of sports, and for anyone with a solid appreciation for plain old good writing.

Morgan goes through excruciating detail as to how the cities of Cleveland and Baltimore will now be forever conjoined. The book gives the reader a true perspective of the shenanigans by owners who are looking for the "easy money" of professional sports and how they will stoop to breaking the hearts of thousands of loyal fans just to fatten their wallets. Not only does it cut to the quick about the move of the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore; it also touches off on that fateful winter's night when Bob Irsay packed the beloved Colts onto the Mayflower trucks and stole away the heart of a city. A great read for Clevelanders and Baltimoreans alike; both of which can take small consolation that the heartbreaks of '84 and '95 will finally be resolved when the Browns return next August.

Why do elected officials at the state and city level continue to prostrate themselves before professional sports teams? Jon Morgan uses one of the most controversial team transfers of all time to examine a serious public policy issue with bright, jargon-free writing that cuts to the heart of these issues. If you're a taxpayer who's ever wondered about whether sports teams really goose the local economy, you need to read Glory for Sale.

If you have any interest in sports, you have to read Glory for Sale. Jon Morgan has written a fascinating and carefully crafted book about the inner workings of professional sports. Few of us have ever been privy to the secret meetings, the betrayal, the calculated lies, and the greed at work whenever a professional sports franchise tears free from a city. This book is more than the tale of Art Modell's apostasy, it is the frightening blueprint for a society whose religion sports is founded on a single commandment: Thou shalt win. -- Tim Green, author of The Dark Side of the Game and sports commentator for ABC's "Good Morning America," "NFL on Fox," and NPR's "Morning Edition

Glory for Sale is a fascinating read. Morgan manages to penetrate the personalities and structures of the NFL in a lucid and compelling fashion while providing a probing and critical analysis of city stadium subsidies, franchise movements and the business of football. -- Andrew Zimbalist, author of Baseball & Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime and co-author of Sports Jobs and Tax: Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Facilities

. . . a detailed, engrossing and fast-paced account of am increasingly volatile aspect of sports. -- Bortz & Co., Sports and Media Consultants

Team relocation is a controversial and complex issue that hotly divides avid sports fans. Jon Morgan's Glory for Sale insightfully lays out the importance of stadium economics in building a competitive team, and it clearly, easily explains why teams move. It is one of the best analyses I've read. --Paul J. Much, Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin (financial advisor on sports economics to teams, leagues, stadiums, and governmental agencies)

When I was a child I loved reading the stories of Julio Verne. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Around the World in 80 Days were my favorites. This new translation based on the original French texts is amazing, it moves quickly and I discovered things that I had never read in other English versions. You get more of Verne's politics here than in earlier translations including such memeorable phrases as: "The world needs no new continents, it needs new people."

The characters are well developed and you can indentify with all of them and how they view their effective captivity aboard the Nautilus. Captain Nemo is a wonderful character and Verne gives the reader just enough information about him to keep you enthralled but not enough to remove the mystery. The intro relates that Nemo was supposed to be a Polish aristocrat, getting back at the world for the the atrocities the Russians had commited against his family. But when Hetzel his publisher balked at the idea because of the new Franco Russian alliance Verne decided to remove any trace of nationality.

What else can be said? The English is not archaic!! This restored and annotated version, is a VAST improvement over previous English editions. The translation is very well done, and the annotations explain what has been changed and what previous translations accomplished. The wealth of background information also makes this one of the best English translations of this adventure I have ever read.

One of the great problems with Jules Verne is that in the English speaking world he is relagated to the category of "Boys' Own Adventures". On the Continent, however, he is considered a brilliant social commentator, and biting satirist, AND a man who predicted the future. This is a volume that helps set matters to the right.

If you know of "20,000 Leagues" already, you will find little different at first. The plot is still the plot. Nemo is still Nemo, Prof. Aronnax is still pompous and fascinated by the Nautilus and Ned Land....

Ned Land is a flaming socialist.

This is one of the major shifts between the original French and the "cleaned up" English editions. Most of the science of the day was pulled out as a "dull read" and all the Socialism, anti-English remarks, and other commentaries of a "questionable nature" were excised. We Americans have unfortunately been until only very recently only able to find these poor early translations, or translations based on these poor translations. There is much more to Verne than submarines and diving suits. He is a man with a vision of his times, both scientific and political, and his books underline this strongly.

English readers, demand your Verne well-translated! Do not allow yourself to be fobbed off with bowlderized versions! To be able to read as he wrote himself (well, in English, for those of us who don't read French...) is a greater pleasure than merely an amusing old science-fiction story from the 19th century. Reading this book, as Verne /meant/ it to be read, if a pleasure, but also a struggle to understand ourselves and our relationship to the oceans themselves.

The other reviewers have noted how the editors...both experts on Verne and the Victorian era science that guided him.. have gone back to the original French manuscripts, collated them to use the best, most reliable, paragraphs and phrases from each, and annotated the book to reflect on Verne's social, political and technical background as if affects the story.

If all this sounds like the book is some kind of dull scholarly treatise, rest assured that the novel as STORY is not harmed, but actually improved by the editors' restorations and fix-ups.

My own path to Nemo and the Nautilus was watching the Disney film version when I was 11, then getting the Classic Comics version, and finally going to the available butchered translation. Even that version captivated me, and sent me to the dictionary to decipher some of the hifalutin 19th century phrases.

Now, as then, I gloss over the endless catalogues of marine biology classification --- Verne as well as Victorian science fans were captivated by the then new interest in categorizing flora and fauna into genus, species, sub-species, varieties, etc. This stuff can be skipped without losing the story.

What interests me is the adventure under the sea, and the way in which these fellows are able to watch the wonders of the deep through the window of a plush 1860s salon. I am also interested in how Verne envisioned the workings of the sub. Interestingly, in 1904, just before his death, he wrote an article for Popular Mechanics in which he updated his thoughts on the future of the submarine, based on the Simon Lake and John Holland boats of that day. He had to explain to readers that he was NOT the inventor of the submarine, as popularly believed.

All in all, the editors have done a wonderful service in bringing the real "20, 000 Leagues" to light. I hope it will attract the interest of many bright and curious young boys and girls of the 21st century when the Sea Wolf and Virginia class subs of the USN have finally equalled the performance of the Nautilus of 1870.

My (10 year old) daughter got interested in '20,000 leagues' after reading the "Wishbone" version (go ahead and laugh). I went searching for the real thing to read with her, and came across this edition. With all of the missing content recovered, plus the annotations to fill in all sorts of additional information, the result is fascinating for adult readers. If you read the usual (butchered) version as a kid, you really owe yourself this one. All of the critiques of Verne over the years that tried to belittle his knowledge of science turn out to have been based on translations that whacked out what Verne really said -- they thought it was too dry and boring. Reading what he really said, plus the extensive footnotes that describe the state of knowledge at the time, make Verne's brilliance all the more astonishing. Just consider that he wrote about the Nautilus at a time when the Hunley was the state of the art!

Verne's prophetic masterpiece still thrills readers over 100 years after its publication. In this adventure, French naturalist Pierre Aronnax is taken aboard the Nautilus, a secret high-technology submarine capable of high speeds. Aronnax meets the enigmatic Captain Nemo, a renegade against society with a strong desire for revenge against the enemy that drove him under the sea. This novel is one of the first examples of modern science fiction. The world of science fiction owes Jules Verne a great debt.

This edition is particularly valuable. Most people aren't aware that the standard English translation is filled with lots of translation errors which botch the science of Verne's masterpiece. Also, the standard version cuts about 25% of the original French novel. This translation fixes the errors, and returns 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea's scientific accuracy (for that time). Also, the cut parts have been restored, so we can now enjoy reading a complete version of Verne's novel.

If you love classic books, and you're interested in reading about one of the greatest characters in science fiction, you have to read this. Also fans of science fiction should read this to understand where their genre came from. If you've read the old standard translation, you have to read this edition to see it the way it was meant to be.

"...an interesting foray into the world of fantasy football and the high stakes of gambling." The OHIOana Quarterly, Volume XLIX, No.3, Fall 2006, p. 148

A fast paced story line that takes a fresh approach to sports nonfiction. Turns a fantasy football league into a nightmare.

I'll admit that I've read only a dozen, or so, novels. Most of them are time consuming and have too many dead spots.

After reading this book, I was completely blown away! This is right on the money. There's never a dull moment. Anyone will love this novel.

Mark Barnes is an author on the rise. I can't wait to see what's next!

I am a fantasy football fan ( makes my wife nuts ). I also enjoy a good mystery. These two elements are brought toghther in fine fashion in this book. I enjoyed the tempo and the depth of the characters. While no threat to the great works of our time, this is a fun book.
I always measure how much I like a book by if I am happy I bought it or if I wish I had taken it out of the library. I am happy I bought this book.

This is a great book whose time has come. The topic in question is high stakes fantasy football, a "sport" which is peaking to new heights every year. What kind of madness could possibly go on behind the scenes? Find out in this thriller.

The League keeps the pages moving with nonstop action and plot movement. Easy to read, but contemplation is required. The crescendo of mystery and suspense culminates in the final pages: lives hang in the balance during a flurry of heart-pounding insanity.

A must-read for both suspense readers and fantasy players.

Warning: you'll have a hard time putting it down.

Although I have coached Football before this was my first attempt at ruining kids Baseball experience. :) I really wish that I had read something like this prior to doing any kind of coaching. The chapters on choosing your team and dealing with parents are excellent.

The drills are also helpful but other baseball coaching books are equally good in this aspect.

So far all of the books I've found are designed for coaching 9-12 year olds, this one included. I'm currently working with 6-8 year olds in a pitching machine league. This is the only drawback to this book I can see.

If you are only buying one book to help with coaching a youth Baseball team, this one delivers all the tools needed. Most are simply drill books (which have their purpose). Managing Little League Baseball will help a beginner coach understand everything he needs to get started.

Thought this was a great tool for me (coach) and the kids on our team.

This book is outstanding and obviously written by someone who knows what he is talking about. My only comment is that it is not only for Little League baseball but any baseball program for youth such as Pony/Colt, Dixie league and others. Other than the rules that are unique to the Little League organization, the rest of the book is applicable to nearly any program. His recent update is even better. As a former Umpire in these programs I was particularly impressed in his comments about that part of the program. Strongly recommend this book to both coaches, parents and players.

I found this book reinforced some of the more successful things I'd been doing as a coach and gave me many other tips I intend to put into use this season. The author is methodical in his approach and it is easy to see why he never had a losing season in 15 years of coaching Little League. I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to do a good job coaching youth baseball.

This is a necessary and inspiring addition to any coaches library. It made me want to send a fan letter to the author.

Born in Autaugaville, Alabama in 1923, Bob Motley chronicles his exciting and interesting life as a professional athlete. As an umpire in the Negro American League in the 1940s and `50s, he ran the gauntlet from top-flight professional baseball players to the Ku Klux Klan.
His birth in the heart of "Jim Crow territory," with all the restraints of segregation and prejudice, could not hold back his physical ability, positive attitude, and intellect, which powered him to be the best in his select profession. In that era, baseball was segregated far longer than other major sports. That forced the premier athletes of the time into the formation of the exclusively black Negro American League. Men like Elston Howard, Satchel Page, and Willie Mays turned the all-white Big Leagues on their ear after Brooklyn Dodger star Jackie Robinson broke the 80-year color barrier in 1947. Great black players who had been concentrated in the Black Leagues took the country by storm and elevated the game of baseball to infinite heights.
Motley umpired them all. His autobiography not only chronicles that story, but his story of success, in spite of unbelievable odds, with fortitude, personal discipline, patience, and guts. From my own personal view, having grown up playing ball with anyone who could swing a bat, I always wondered why such talent should be separated and thereby limited. My black high school teammates and I, although just two or three years from "integration," never gave that separation a thought when we took the field. Bob Motley, in this book, shows us what great a victory has been won by all Americans.
Even if Motley had not been with the Kansas City Monarchs, if he had not personally known Buck O'Neal, Roy Campanella, Hank Aaron, Joe Black or Cool Papa Bell, his story is that of a man who is in my Hall of Fame.

As a novice to the subject, I found this a most enjoyable read. It is full of lived history, love of sport and great humor. I highly recommend this book.

THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN BY BOB MOTLEY, WHO WAS AN UMPIRE IN THE NEGRO LEAGUES. HE TELLS OF HIS EXPERIENCES AND LIFE AS A BASEBALL UMPIRE. THIS IS A GREAT READ BY MR MOTLEY AS HE TELLS US OF SOME IMMORTAL GREATS AS SATHEL PAIGE, JACKIE ROBINSON, ROY CAMPANELLA AND MANY MORE. PLUS MANY OTHER STORIES ON THE JIM CROW LAWS AND HIS EXPERIENCE IN UMPIRE SCHOOL AND THE MANY BROKEN PROMISES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS HE HAD BECAUSE OF HIM BEING A NEGRO IN WHITE MAN'S WORLD. I HIGHLY ADVISE THIS FOR ALL BASEBALL FANS.

A must have book on baseball history, and what the Negro Leagues went through.
It's an amazing life that unfolds as you turn the pages. Hard to put down as
each chapter will leave you wanting more.

It's great to focus on some great moments in history. Bob Motley has lived an incredible life. Well worth reading and admiring!

Other reviewers have already been descriptive. My opinion...the food is delicious. It is also what I call "clean" and "architectural"...it isn't covered with gloppy sauces. It is arranged on the plate clearly and attractively. We "eat" with our eyes and nose before our taste buds. You will be happy to have it in your library AND your purchase is supporting a good cause...a win/win situation. Rare in this era!

These recipes are for elegant, delicious dishes to serve your friends and family. They all reflect the ethnic and culinary influences that make up California cuisine, including tips from such people as Arnold Wong and Alice Waters. All of the food is fancy, but not everything is complicated: the Cambazola Apricots are an easy-to-make appetizer, while the Blueberry French Toast can be whipped up the night before for brunch. This is a must-own for anyone who loves food or who loves San Francisco.

Best cook book I ever used. it so easy to follow, you just prepare the incredients as directed and followed the directions. you can't go wrong. I tried using other cook books but only get frustrated trying to follow the instruction, but this book has simple and clrear instruction, anyone can follow it. one thing lacking limited pictures of what you are cooking, but not important.

I've had this book for over 2 years and have loved every recipe I've made from it, many of which have become standards in our house. Try the delicious and easy apple cake with hot caramel sauce, the chicken breasts with wild mushrooms and balsamic vinegar and the awesome chicken pot pie with sage biscuit topping. Easy to follow directions and nice tips from the chefs who submitted the recipes.

I concur with the other reviews on this site. This is my favorite cookbook, and I have quite a collection. The recipes are well-written, good cooking and preparation techniques are given in conjunction with the recipes, and the results always earn me kudos! Can't ask for too much more.

I have given this cookbook as a gift several times and have recommended it to my friends who love to cook.

I am not just saying that because my son is one of the characters in this book, I genuinely thought James did an amazing job at not only capturing the hearts and minds of little leaguers, but the trials and tribulations that they go through on a day to day basis.
Speaking on a personal note~ At one of our sons baseball games, James told me that my son Tyler was going to be a character in this book. Not believing what I heard, I excitedly waited for the book to come out. When it did, I had tears in my eyes, as James nailed Tyler to a Tee, as well as every other character he depicted in this book.
It truly takes a special author and person to spend the amount of time he did with these boys, and come up with an incredible story line!
Kudos to James Preller!!

Tricia~ Delmar, NY

My 9 yr old son who struggles academically LOVED this book.
When he was done he came to me and asked if I would get him more books like this one because he, "liked it better than his other books".
I haven't read it so I don't know exactly what he meant.
For him to enjoy reading is huge!
He is a Red Sox fan and plays baseball. Maybe that had something to do with it?

I got a vivid picture of the action in the Little League championship game. It brought back great memories of when my kids played.

Nice job.

Six Innings by James Preller is just that, the play by play description of six innings of a Little League baseball game. All of our nation's obsession with the sanctity of the game is concentrated in this afternoon of play by two teams of boys. The book opens in Sam Reiser's bedroom, where he is lying in bed, a young amputee now only able to announce his team's play, to speak the words for actions he can no longer perform. We think we are in for a problem novel, a book about adjusting to a handicap. Then the innings begin, and we realize that Preller has found the perfect dramatic structure in which he can write about twenty-four different boys in depth, each member of the team. Using the inexorable action of the six innings, he delineates the interplay of personalities, abilities, the age of the players and their temperaments. The hopelessness of young Patrick Wong in outfield, praying the ball won't go to him, vowing never to play again after his last humiliating strike out, is compared to the hard throwing pitcher, who already shows signs of a moustache. Although everyone cares deeply and intensely, the action is balanced by the humor of the identical twins, the serious one, Eamon Sweeney, and the leftie, Colin Sweeney, referred to by their coach as the Right Sweeney and the Wrong Sweeney and the attitude of the coaches themselves. In a tense moment, a coach takes his team aside and urges them to "Have fun." Six Innings has a lingering effect, the way baseball does, its pace subtle, leaving the lingering promise of summer.

It's the kind of book that. when I got to the end of it, I didn't even know was meant for kids. I went on vacation and brought this book, not ecven glancing at the jacket copy that suggests it was meant for 11 to 13 year olds. I did think that the language of its rambunctious Little Leaguers was a bit on the sanitized side. The boys love to stage impromptu contests involving dialogue from their favorite baseball movies, everything from THE BAD NEWS BEARS to FIELD OF DREAMS, and evcen the mildest of these has dialogue racier than anything you'll find in James Preller's novel. So that might have tipped me off, but what do I know! I would definitely recommend it to adults.

The emotionally involving parts of the story take place during rhw championship game between Earl Grubb's Pool Supplies and NE Gas & Electric. The boy who does the scorekeeping for EGPS has a rare disease which has resulted in benching his once promising career at bat, but does he cry or whimper? Well, you'll have to see for yourself. At the other end of the spectrum is the boy who, while enjoying himself at baseball, has now found himself interested in other things, and today might be his very last day playing in organized sport. What a range of players, some with comic subplots, some with underdeveloped storylines, but most of them genuine individuals. The only defect in the story is Preller's working up the actual game pictured in "Six Innings," which is made up of one classic play after another, each one more spectacular than the last, and each reminiscent of a famous major league moment, so it's a bit unbelievable these ordinary kids would wind up in a game this exciting, but hear that whistle? It's time to -- play ball.