Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Sports & Outdoors

In 1995, Cal Ripken, Jr. succeeded in toppling baseball’s most unbreakable streak of 2,130 consecutive games played. He has also won the 1982 Rookie of the Year Award, two American League MVP awards, an All-Star Game MVP award, two Gold Gloves, and a World Series title.

Satchel Paige was 42 years old when he became the first Black pitcher in the American League in 1948. Although the oldest rookie around, he was already a legend. For 22 years, beginning in 1926, Paige dazzled throngs with his performance in the Negro Baseball Leagues. Then he outlasted everyone by playing professional baseball, in and out of the majors, until 1965.

Life hit Pat and Tammy McLeod hard when their son Zach collapsed on a high school football field; he had sustained a severe brain injury. Facing the devastating possibility that things would never be the same for their beloved son, they committed to staying strong as a family and finding a way to maintain their footing. But the journey would reshape their faith, their family, and their future in ways they never saw coming.

Tales of Tahitian Waters describes Grey's fishing expeditions to the Tahitian Islands during 1928, 1929, and 1930, in which he claims to be the first big-game fisherman to fish these waters. He came to the area after having passed nearby on other fishing trips. Hearing accounts of there being marlin that were 30 feet long and sharks that measured 50 feet in length, he became determined to pursue these fish and add to his many fishing records. It was here where he describes catching a marlin weighing 1,040 pounds. The catch was recorded as the first 1,000-pound fish ever caught.

One stroke separated the three leaders of the 1960 U.S. Open as they went into the final two holes. Arnold Palmer, who had overcome a seven-stroke deficit in the fourth round, won the championship by two strokes, beating both Ben Hogan and a young amateur named Jack Nicklaus. This remarkable come-from-behind achievement, which still stands as the greatest final-round comeback at the Open, signaled the end of an era and the beginning of modern-day golf.

Stripping away the revisionism to reveal the true nature of the man himself, this new book recounts the life journey of a fighter universally recognized as a unique and treasured world icon. Few global personalities have commanded an all-encompassing sporting and cultural audience like Muhammad Ali. Now, Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest allows us to more fully appreciate the truth - and understand both the man and the ways in which he helped recalibrate how the world perceives its transcendent figures.

"I have had a life which, for variety and romance, could, I think, hardly be exceeded. I have known what it was to be a poor man and I have known what it was to be fairly affluent. I have sampled every kind of human experience. I have known many of the most remarkable men of my time. I have had a long literary career after a medical training which gave me the MD of Edinburgh...I have traveled as Doctor to a whaler for seven months in the Arctic and afterwards in the West Coast of Africa." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Cardboard Gods is the memoir of Josh Wilker, a brilliant writer who has marked the stages of his life through the baseball cards he collected as a child. It also captures the experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what it means to be a fan of the game. Along the way, as we get to know Josh, his family, and his friends, we also get Josh’s classic observations about the central artifacts from his life - the baseball cards themselves.

This book recounts the slugger's life before, during, and after his headline season of 1961, when the taciturn North Dakota native topped Babe Ruth's all-time record by hitting 61 homers. From his youth as a star high-school athlete and American Legion baseball player, Maris went on to big-time sports with the Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Athletics, New York Yankees, and St. Louis Cardinals.

One of the most colorful and beloved characters in major league baseball, Durwood Merrill talks about the game’s many personalities and gives an up-close and personal account of life on the diamond, in the clubhouse, and beyond. With over two decades of laugh-out-loud anecdotes and controversial opinions, Merrill makes the call on managers, relating his explosive relationships with them and the viciously hilarious barbs they trade.

In the fall of 2012, after working on a presidential campaign that suffered a devastating loss, Stuart Stevens, having turned 60, realized that he and his 95-year-old father had spent little time together for decades. His solution: a season of attending Ole Miss football games together, as they'd done when college football provided a way for his father to guide him through childhood - and to make sense of the troubled South of the time.

Greg Norman is golf's most complex and controversial celebrity and perhaps its most gifted and charismatic player. Winner of more than 70 tournaments, including the 1986 and 1993 British Opens, he has reigned as the world's number-one-ranked golfer for most of a decade and began 1998 as the PGA Tour's career-earnings leader with almost $12 million.

From Coney Island sideshows to the brand-new Yankee Stadium, Diamond Ruby chronicles the extraordinary life and times of a girl who rises from utter poverty to the kind of renown only the Roaring Twenties can bestow. But her fame comes with a price, and Ruby must escape a deadly web of conspiracy and threats from Prohibition rumrunners, the Ku Klux Klan, and the gangster underworld.

New Zealand is one of the "hot" fly-fishing spots in the world today, known for brilliant, crystal clear rivers. Zane Grey's account of his adventure in New Zealand conjures up images of huge and mythic trout. In Tales of the Angler's Eldorado, he describes fishing these now legendary streams as well as his pursuit of huge swordfish off the coast of the New Zealand shores. It's both a fishing story and adventure story from one of America's favorite storytellers.

Froome, Wiggins, Merckx - we know the winners of the Tour de France, but Lanterne Rouge tells the forgotten, often inspirational, and occasionally absurd stories of the last-placed rider. We learn of stage winners and former yellow jerseys who tasted life at the other end of the bunch, the breakaway leader who stopped for a bottle of wine and then took a wrong turn, the doper whose drug cocktail accidentally slowed him down, and the rider who was recognized as the most combative despite finishing at the back.

Set against the backdrop of the first world's fair in London, America's Victory takes listeners into a world rich in adventure and history in an unforgettable story of skill, daring, and honor at the heart of our national identity

From Darkness to Dynasty tells the unlikely history of the New England Patriots as it has never been told before. From their humble beginnings as a team bought with rainy-day money by a man who had no idea what he was doing, to the fateful season that saw them win their first Super Bowl, Jerry Thornton shares the wild, humiliating, unbelievable, and wonderful stories that comprised the first 40 years of what would ultimately become the most dominant franchise in NFL history.

Shawn Harrington returned to Marshall High School as an assistant coach years after appearing as a player in the iconic basketball documentary film Hoop Dreams. In January of 2014, Marshall's struggling team was about to improve after the addition of a charismatic but troubled player. Everything changed, however, when two young men opened fired on Harrington's car as he drove his daughter to school. Harrington was struck and paralyzed. The mistaken-identity shooting was followed by a series of events that had a devastating impact on Harrington and Marshall's basketball family.

John Miley has compiled the most comprehensive audio account of baseball history in existence—a vast and wildly entertaining assemblage of game tapes from throughout the sport's history. His archive contains classic moments, like Bill Mazeroski's homer and the Shot Heard 'Round the World, and amazing feats, like Carl Hubbell striking out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin—in order—in the 1934 All-Star Game.

Here are the Paterno principles: the straight word from the curious quarterback and English major who went from Brooklyn to Brown to Penn State, who lost his way to law school and became instead America’s best-loved coach. With the help of a first-rate biographer and friend, Bernard Asbell, Joe Paterno tells his story, sharing his life’s principles and touching on a number of important subjects, including family, heroes, management, leadership, loyalty, teamwork, discipline, motivation, and football strategy.