Spooky Season Reads

All kinds of spurious rumors had swirled around the 1919 World Series.

Allegations about a fixed game between the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies on August 31, 1920, began a chain of events that led to a grand jury indicting eight White Sox players for conspiring to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds the year before.Outside the courtroom, Shoeless Joe Jackson, just coming off his best overall offensive season with .382 average, was reportedly confronted by a young fan pleading for a denial from his hero.Jackson would later deny the encounter ever occurred and also deny any guilt in the World Series fix.In the almost 100 years since eight White Sox players were banned for life, there has been little historical closure due to a fleeting consensus on a scandal that almost took down Major League Baseball.

The Epicenter of Steel City Sports

From Forbes Field to Pitt Stadium, Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood has been home to some of the most iconic moments in sports history. Including the Fitzgerald Field House and the Duquesne Gardens, Oakland has drawn in both professional and college sports fans alike.

Local authors and sports historians David Finoli, Tom Rooney, Robert Healy III, Douglas Cavanaugh and Chris Fletcher celebrate the glorious victories and heartbreaking losses throughout the history of Pittsburgh's Oakland section, the epicenter of Steel City Sports.

The Boston Red Sox have blown hot and cold over the decades. These lists of Top 5s and 10s cover both the highs and lows of a team that has endured a long history of both joy and sorrow. They won the first World Series ever played and then five more pennants in the next fifteen years. Famously, from 1918 until the magical year of 2004, the Sox endured eighty-six seasons without a championship, although they lost pennants and world championships on the last possible day more times than fans care to remember. Finally, in 2004, they won it all. Loyal fans will always remember the joy of Mo Vaughn’s grand slam on opening day in 1998 and will likely never forget the agony of Game 6 in 1986. Through it all, unforgettable names like Buckner, Yaz, Tony C. and Big Papi still resonate in the shadows of Fenway Park. From the greatest pitchers to the worst opening days, author Bill Nowlin recounts the highs and lows of Boston’s most celebrated sports franchise.

Originally published in 1896, bestselling author and naturalist Frances Theodora Parsons  wanted to create a children's reading book designed to help children develop their reading skills while learning all about plants and developing a lifelong interest in nature.  Full of intricate sketches and illustrations and designed to follow a plant's life throughout a child's school year, this children's botany guide is full of interesting details told in a sweet and friendly narration. Considered one of best children's books of its day, this guide will delight children, adults, and botanical enthusiasts alike.

This is the second book from Arcadia Publishing that covers the history of the Eastern Shore Baseball League (ESHL). Eastern Shore baseball fans watched over three eras of class "D" professional baseball for 15 years, from 1922 to 1949. Many players, such as Don Zimmer, Mickey Cochrane, Red Ruffing, and Sid Gordon, came through the ESHL on their way to the major leagues. There were also many players that played and managed in this league who were former major-league players, including Gene Corbett, Ducky Detweiler, Val Picinich, and Joe Becker, to name a few. Eastern Shore League: Extra Innings, along with Eastern Shore League, will give baseball and history fans a more comprehensive understanding of the league.

Baseball lives, whether one interprets that as meaning that the country's national pastime is still breathing and well after nearly two centuries or as a reference to the people who work in the industry.

More than 50 years ago, one young man became employed by the Chicago White Sox and began photographing virtually everybody with whom he worked. His intention was to have pictures of his friends and coworkers for the future. Now, Arcadia Publishing is proud to add Lloyd Rutzky's memories of his team experiences to its Images of Modern America series in this volume, a companion to the groundbreaking Wrigley Field's Amazing Vendors, published in 2018.

The Chicago White Sox are a charter member of the American League. Through a little over a century of baseball, they have accumulated a history of triumphs, scandals, and heartbreaking setbacks. The photographs in this book come from the collections of Leo Labau, Mark Fletcher, and Gerry Bilek, three lifelong White Sox fans. The images show dramatic, emotional, and light moments that could only happen in a baseball game played on the south side of Chicago. In these pages you will find showmen Bill Veeck and Harry Carey, the 1959 World Series, sluggers like Allen, Melton, Zisk, Gamble, and Kittle, and great pitchers like Peters, Horlen, and Wood. There are no world championships in this story, just the great moments of a team that hasgiven its fans great memories.

The Rocket City Trash Pandas, who made their Class AA South debut last summer, rekindled the interest in professional baseball in this area. As a journalist, it rekindled my interest in looking at the team with some historical context, to the first baseball team in the area (in 1903, with Ty Cobb as a visiting player) to the arrival of the first affiliated team (in 1985) and its ultimate demise. I discovered interesting characters of the early days (the first "graduate" from Huntsville to the majors once placed a dead rat in a sportswriter's bed, perhaps a precursor to the horse's head in The Godfather). The Huntsville Stars era was populated with some legendary players, like Jose Canseco, who was the league MVP in the first year of the franchise, Mark McGwire, Tim Hudson, Ryan Braun and Nelson Cruz. The Huntsville area also produced some fascinating players like Gabby Street, famous for catching a ball dropped from the top of the Washington Monument, Jimmy Key, Craig Kimbrel and our "Mr. Baseball," Don Mincher, who homered in his first World Series at-bat, enjoyed a 14-year career in the majors, became a team general manager, owner and, ultimately, president of the Southern League. Even as people embrace the freshness of the Trash Pandas, so often the conversation will turn to "I remember when…" moments from the Stars' era.

Pictured is the legendary Myers Field c. 1950, where Norfolk ballplayers, visiting major league stars, and Piedmont League opponents once dueled upon its dirt and grass. The story of baseball in Norfolk, Virginia is as fascinating and enduring as the game itself. Christy Mathewson, Phil Rizzuto, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, and a myriad of other charismatic players from the game spent time developing their raw and untested skills on the diamonds of Norfolk. Military stars of the powerful World War II Navy teams and legends of the Negro Leagues performed to the delight and fascination of local fans. Over the years, the mighty New York Yankees with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio showcased their mythical talents during scheduled exhibitions, as did dozens of other big league teams and their stars.

The images depicted within this pictorial feature only a fragment of the vast chronology of the game of baseball as it was played in Norfolk over the years. They allow the reader to revisit the past, examine the present, and ponder the future of baseball in the city of Norfolk. All photographs were painstakingly selected by the authors for their dynamic visual appeal and historical impact to accurately reflect the story of baseball in Norfolk.

Baseball may be the great American pastime, but in New York, it is a religion. Names like Ruth, Mays, Gehrig, Wright and Robinson live in the hearts and minds of New York fans like apostles. From the street corner to the subway car, debates about which Yankee, Giant, Dodger or Met is better than another have raged on for more than one hundred years. Now, the best of the best are chosen for each position as New York’s all-time greatest team is imagined. Shoo-ins like the Babe and Jackie have their stories told with a fresh perspective. The compelling case for Mike Piazza, not Yogi Berra, as catcher is sure to spark arguments. Sportswriter Mark Healey crafts the Gotham baseball team through captivating tales of the legends of the New York game.

The town of Kennesaw was officially incorporated in 1887 and organized a baseball team shortly thereafter. In June 1908, the Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a headline, "Hail to the Amateurs--Here's a Good Georgia Bunch," featuring a photograph of the team with "Kennesaw" emblazoned across their jerseys. Kennesaw's former semiprofessional team, the Smokers; its little league parks; four high schools; and Kennesaw State University have contributed to a robust regional baseball culture. These respected and diverse baseball programs have produced many college-level, minor-league, and major-league players.

Around the horn in the Mahoning Valley The history of baseball in Ohio's Mahoning Valley has been, to say the least, eventful. Murder, the Civil War, the hot dog, a presidential assassination and one of the deadliest known volcanic eruptions all shaped America's pastime in the Valley. African American baseball pioneer and Hall of Fame inductee Bud Fowler began his professional baseball career in the area, and the first ceremonial celebrity first pitch came from the arm of a prominent local. The area also contributed to Cleveland professional ballclubs like the enigmatic 1883 Blues and the 2016 Believeland Indians, which included numerous players from the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a minor-league team with its own rich heritage. Digging up little-known facts about Fowler and sundry other colorful stories, local author and creator of Eastwood Field's Days Gone By exhibit PM Kovach celebrates the proud history of baseball in northeast Ohio.