Showing titles in Sports History

The seven-foot Dirk Nowitzki is one of the great players in basketball history. With a devastating fadeaway and unexpected agility, the Dallas Mavericks superstar helped to pioneer the modern three-shooting game and became a global ambassador for the sport. Award-winning novelist and sportswriter Thomas Pletzinger traveled with Nowitzki for more than seven years, seeking the secret of his success and longevity. In novelistic detail, Pletzinger tells the dramatic story of how a lanky kid from the German suburbs became a top-five all-time scorer and NBA champion.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Dabo's World and learn about how Dabo Swinney used his energy, faith, and determination to turn the Clemson Tigers into a football powerhouse.

Over its seventy-plus years of history, Formula 1 racing has grown from a niche motorsport with just a few events per season into a global phenomenon followed by more than a billion fans. With just twenty drivers competing at speeds of over 220 miles per hour on more than twenty of the world’s most glamorous and challenging racetracks, Formula 1 is the ultimate test of machine and humankind. To become a champion means to be counted among the most elite athletes the world has ever known.

On June 26, 1976, Muhammad Ali fought in a mixed-rules contest against iconic pro wrestling champion Antonio Inoki for the so-called "martial arts championship of the world." Broadcast from Tokyo to a potential audience of 1.4 billion in 34 countries, the spectacle foreshadowed and, in many ways, led to the rise of mixed martial arts as a major sport.

More than any other sport, boxing has a history of being easy to rig. There are only two athletes and one or both may be induced to accept a bribe; if not the fighters, then the judges or referee might be swayed. In such inviting circumstances, the mob moved into boxing in the 1930s and profited by corrupting a sport ripe for exploitation. In Boxing and the Mob: The Notorious History of the Sweet Science, Jeffrey Sussman tells the story of the coercive and criminal underside of boxing, covering nearly the entire 20th century.

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."

The 1988 Seoul Olympics played host to what has been described by some as the dirtiest race of all time, by others as the greatest. The final of the men's 100 metres at those Olympics is certainly the most infamous in the history of athletics, and more indelibly etched into the consciousness of the sport, the Olympics, and a global audience of millions, than any other athletics event before or since.

It's hard for modern listeners to truly grasp the spectacle that was arena sports in ancient Rome, which pitted man against man and man against beast in mortal combat. Our modern games of football and hockey, or even boxing and MMA, truly pale in comparison. The Gladiators is a comprehensive survey of these ancient sports, focusing on gladiatorial combat and the beast hunts (venationes).

In 2003, after winning six of the 12 majors from 2000 to 2002, Tiger Woods struggled with his swing, leaving him lagging behind the field at both the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship. With Woods out of the picture, the stage was set for a newcomer to claim the top position. Nobody expected that four virtually unknown players would rise to become first-time champions.

"I can lick any son of a bitch in the world." So boasted John L. Sullivan, the first modern heavyweight boxing champion of the world, a man who was the gold standard of American sports for more than a decade and the first athlete to earn more than a million dollars. He had a big ego, a big mouth, and even bigger appetites. His womanizing, drunken escapades, and chronic police-blotter presence were godsends to a burgeoning newspaper industry.

The most popular college football team in the early 20th century belonged to an institution called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Its story begins with Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, a fierce abolitionist who believed that Native Americans deserved a place in American society. In 1879, Pratt made a treacherous journey to the Dakota Territory to recruit Carlisle's first students. Years later, three students approached Pratt with the notion of forming a football team.

Muhammed Ali and Howard Cosell, a legendary athlete and a television icon, were individually interesting, but together they were mesmerizing. They were profoundly different, young and old, black and white, a Muslim and a Jew, Ali barely literate, Cosell an editor of his university's law review. Yet they had in common forces that made them unforgettable: both were unprecedented performers who covered enormous insecurities by demanding, loudly and often, public acclaim.

The Wrestlers' Wrestlers spotlights elite performers and analyzes exactly what made them your favorite wrestler's favorite wrestlers. Authors Dan Murphy and Brian Young interviewed more than 40 in-ring veterans, historians, referees, and promoters to get a unique insider's look at the people who have made a lasting impact on the world of professional wrestling. It offers a special peek "behind the curtain" and a rare look into the top stars' thoughts on their peers, their influences, and their personal favorites.

Twelve years after Tim Moore toiled around the route of the Tour de France, he senses his achievement being undermined by the truth about "Horrid Lance". His rash response is to take on a fearsome challenge from an age of untarnished heroes: the notorious 1914 Giro d'Italia. History's most appalling bike race was an ordeal of 400-kilometer stages filled with cataclysmic storms, roads strewn with nails, and even the loss of an eye by one competitor - and it was all on a diet of raw eggs and red wine.

The 1972 Miami Dolphins had something to prove. Losers in the previous Super Bowl, a ragtag bunch of overlooked, underappreciated, or just plain old players, they were led by Don Shula, a genius young coach obsessed with obliterating the reputation that he couldn't win the big game. And as the Dolphins headed into only their seventh season, all eyes were on Miami. For the last time, a city was hosting both national political conventions, and the backdrop to this season of redemption would be turbulent.

The authors of the New York Times best seller 50 Years, 50 Moments celebrate the first 100 years of the National Football League, interweaving history, personal stories, memories, and observations of some of its greatest players, coaches, and advocates to chronicle football’s amazing evolution from a fledgling regional fly-by-night operation into a multi-billion global brand and one of America’s leading franchises.

In the last two decades, innovation, data analysis, and technology have driven a tectonic shift in the sports business. Game of Edges is the story of how sports franchises evolved, on and off the field, from raggedly run small businesses into some of the most systematically productive companies around.

Tearing open the deepest wound in professional sports, Feinstein uncovers the secrets of the NBA before and after that fateful moment in December of 1977 when the face of professional hoops was changed forever.

In Angels with Dirty Faces, Jonathan Wilson chronicles the operatic drama of Argentinian soccer: the appropriation of the British game, the golden age of la nuestra, the exuberant style of playing that developed as Juan Perón led the country, a hardening into the brutal methods of anti-fútbol, the fusion of beauty and efficacy under César Luis Menotti, and the emergence of all-time greats.

In Written in the Snows, renowned local skiing historian Lowell Skoog presents a definitive and visually rich history of the past century of Northwest ski culture, from stirring and colorful stories of wilderness exploration to the evolution of gear and technique. He traces the development of skiing in Washington from the late 1800s to the present, covering the beginnings of ski resorts and competitions, the importance of wild places in the Olympic and Cascade mountains (including Oregon's Mount Hood), and the friluftsliv, or open-air living spirit, of backcountry skiing.