Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Sports & Outdoors

Welcome to Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, in a working-class corner of the Bronx, where a driven coach inspires his teams to win games and championships - and learn Russian history and graduate and go on to college.

Bill Strickland believed he was cursed. No matter how secure his life outwardly seemed, the happiness he had attained with his wife and daughter hung by a thread, threatened by the monster Bill lived in constant fear of, a demon inside him that had been created by horrific childhood abuse.

He was a 1930s golf legend and Hollywood trickster who adamantly refused to be photographed. He never played professionally, yet sports-writing legend Grantland Rice still heralded him as "the greatest golfer in the world". Then, in 1937, the secrets of John Montague's past were exposed - leading to a sensational trial that captivated the nation.

Life is going pretty well for Raymond "Stick" Hart. He's happily married to the former Ponkaquogue Municipal Golf Club assistant pro, the beauteous Cajun firecracker Dannie, raising his rambunctious son, Charlie, and getting by writing smart-mouthed greeting cards for 50 bucks a pop. Then, one disaster of a day, Stick's world does a 10-car pile-up. Luckily, Stick has a solution to all his problems. He'll qualify for the British Open.

Pete Sampras is arguably the greatest tennis player ever, a man whose hard-nosed work ethic led to an unprecedented number one world ranking for 286 weeks, and whose prodigious talent made possible a record-setting 14 Grand Slam titles. While his more vocal rivals sometimes grabbed the headlines, Pete always preferred to let his racket do the talking. Until now.

The most popular sports columnist in America puts his life (and dignity) on the line in search of the most absurd sporting event on the planet. What is the stupidest sport in the world? Not content to pontificate from the sidelines, Rick Reilly set out on a global journey - with stops in Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Denmark, England, and even a maximum security prison at Angola, Louisiana - to discover the answer to this enduring question.

This classic essay from Jon Krakauer is now available as an unabridged audiobook download. This essay is also included in the Classic Krakauer collection. From the best-selling author of Missoula and Into the Wild: a selection of the singular investigative journalism that made Krakauer famous, covering topics from avalanches on Mt. Everest to a volcano in Washington state; from a wilderness therapy program for teens to an extraordinary cave in New Mexico so unearthly that is used by NASA to better understand Mars.

"Watch this little guy," Pete Hamill's dad tells him. The little guy is Eddie Stanky, an ex-soccer player who bounced around the minor leagues until getting a call to the majors. It's 1944, and a young Pete Hamill is with his father watching the Brooklyn Dodgers play the Boston Braves. Hamill's memories of that game and his dad make an appealing story for baseball fans and anyone who has rooted for the underdog.

Reggie Jackson and Bob Gibson offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to understand America's pastime from their unique insider perspective. Legendary. Insightful. Uncompromising. Candid. Uncensored. Mr. October and Hoot Gibson unfortunately never faced each other on the field. But now, in Sixty Feet, Six Inches, these two legends open up in fascinating detail about the game they love and how it was, is, and should be played. Their one-of-a-kind insider stories recall a who's who of baseball nobility.

In Knowledge in a Nutshell, you'll find out about the U.S. state that no longer exists; why hamburgers are called hamburgers, even though there's no ham in them; who was the youngest U.S. President (it wasn't John F. Kennedy); what were the biggest animals who ever lived (it wasn't the dinosaurs), and much more.

Libraries and Internet sites are filled to groaning with debates about who the best ballplayers of all time were - but how many times can you argue about Mantle vs. Mays? Since baseball is a game of failure, it's much more fun to dive into the fray and explore baseball's worst: Who was the lousiest pitcher of all-time? The biggest goat? The most despicable owner? The greatest cheater? Filip Bondy wields formidable research, advanced sabermetrics and his considerable wit to provide this indispensable guide.

Forty years ago, author and photographer Jon Waterman took his first paddling journey into the Noatak headwaters in the Alaskan Arctic. In this fully illustrated book, he ventures once again, this time “into the thaw,” documenting the changes – both environmental and cultural – wrought by climate change. Sharing this eye-opening adventure with his son, Waterman documents the effects on altered land, wildlife and the Inuit-Inupiat life.

Sixteen-year-old Matthew McGough was a fairly typical teenager, obsessed with getting through high school, girls, and baseball, not necessarily in that order. His passion for the New York Yankees was absolute, complete with a poster of his hero, Yankees first baseman Don Mattingly, hanging on his bedroom wall.

Thirty-year-old Catriona Menzies-Pike defined herself in many ways: voracious reader, pub crawler, feminist, backpacker, and, since her parents' deaths a decade earlier, orphan. "Runner" was nowhere near the list. Yet when she began training for a half marathon on a whim, she found herself an instant convert. Soon she realized that running, "a pace suited to the precarious labor of memory", was helping her to grieve the loss of her parents in ways that she had been, for 10 messy years, running away from.

Pep Guardiolas jahrelange Arbeit beim FC Barcelona, erst als Spieler, dann als Trainer, war eine Erfolgsgeschichte der Superlative: 2009 - nach einigen titellosen Jahren - erreichte der FC Barcelona das bisher nie dagewesene Sextuple, d.h. den Gewinn aller bedeutenden nationalen und internationalen Titel im gleichen Jahr .

For more than a decade, Mahendra Singh Dhoni has captivated the world of cricket and more than a billion Indians with his incredible ingenuity as captain, wicketkeeper, and batsman. Bharat Sundaresan tracks down the cricketer's closest friends in Ranchi and artfully presents the different shades of Dhoni - the Ranchi boy, the fauji, the diplomat, Chennai's beloved Thala, the wicketkeeping Pythagoras - and lays bare the man underneath. He discovers a certain je ne sais quoi about the man who has a magical ability to transform and elevate everything that comes into his orbit.

This classic essay from Jon Krakauer is now available as an unabridged audiobook download. This essay is also included in the Classic Krakauer collection. From the best-selling author of Missoula and Into the Wild: a selection of the singular investigative journalism that made Krakauer famous, covering topics from avalanches on Mt. Everest to a volcano in Washington state; from a wilderness therapy program for teens to an extraordinary cave in New Mexico so unearthly that is used by NASA to better understand Mars.

Babe Ruth was more than baseball's original superstar. For 85 years, he has remained the sport's reigning titan. He has been named Athlete of the Century...more than once. But who was this large, loud, enigmatic man? In The Big Bam, Leigh Montville brings his trademark touch to this groundbreaking, revelatory portrait of the Babe.

Lost in the annals of boxing is the sport's true Cinderella story. James J. Braddock, dubbed "Cinderella Man" by Damon Runyon, was a once promising light heavyweight for whom a string of losses in the ring and a broken right hand happened to coincide with the Great Crash of 1929.

Butch Harmon is the world's number one golf coach. He taught Tiger Woods through one of the greatest stretches of victories in golf history (and, perhaps even more conspicuously, did not teach Tiger Woods following his unprecedented run), as well as superstars like Greg Norman, Adam Scott, Fred Couples, Darren Clarke, Natalie Gulbis, and Davis Love III. How did he become such a legendary teacher and mentor? The answer is simple: He learned from watching his father.