Sports & Recreation

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.

A Cubs dynasty founded on fastballs and fisticuffs.  Unlike today's Chicago Cubs, the Cubs of 1906-1910 were not at all lovable, and certainly did not always display traits customarily linked with a winning team. Their manager would brawl with his own players, and the players brawled with each other. Their second baseman and shortstop hated each other and didn't speak for years. Their best pitcher pitched with a mutilated hand. Their star catcher got into a spat with management and left the team for a year to play professional billiards. Their manager over time grew to despise the team owner. Yet, this group of brawlers, bickerers, and battlers dominated the National League and established a baseball dynasty, winning four National League pennants and two world championships in 5 years. Author Gary D. Santella follows the story of a team whose toughness and tenacity was a fitting reflection of early twentieth-century Chicago.

One Hundred stories from the last century that salute the legacy of Wrigley Field and its beloved Cubs.

Charge through the turnstiles of this collection of personal stories about baseball's greatest ballpark and the sacred space it occupies in the hearts of Cubs fans and the soul of Wrigleyville. With contributors like Bob Costas, Rick Sutcliffe and Steve Stone, these 100 stories reflect the variety of millions of Cubs fans around the world, from those whose relationship with the Friendly Confines has lasted a lifetime to those who are taking their seats up close to the ivy for the very first time.

Visit the Back of the Yards neighborhood and setting for Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

The Back of the Yards neighborhood, located in back of the Union Stockyards and composed of Packingtown, Town of Lake, and New City, was the setting of Upton Sinclair's classic 1906 novel, The Jungle. Permeated by an unforgettable smell, Back of the Yards was a melting pot of immigrants, many who worked in the stockyards. In 1894, Mary McDowell started the University of Chicago Settlement House in Back of the Yards. She improved living conditions and in 1905 helped create Davis Square Park. The Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council was founded in 1939 by Joseph Meegan, Saul Alinsky, and Bishop Bernard Sheil and is America's oldest not for profit community based organization. It consisted of 185 delegate organizations involving residents, business owners, churches, parks, schools, and social clubs that worked to advocate improvements. The council motto continues on as ""We the people will work out our own destiny."" Relive the bustling activity and the lives of the people in the neighborhood through the historic images in Back of the Yards.

But The National Pastime arrived in Chicago well before the 1876 season, as is proven in this fascinating new book, 19th Century Baseball in Chicago, illustrated with over 150 vintage images.Any local fan of the modern game-whether the action takes place at the Friendly Confines, 35th & Shields, or the cozy setting of a minor league ballpark out in Kane or suburban Cook County-will enjoy the wealth of information offered in 19th Century Baseball in Chicago.

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.

Explore the history of Camp Ma-Ka-Ja-Wan as two camp staff members Ian Hopkins and Matt Horbal detail the adventures and adversities of the camp throughout the years.

Camp Ma-Ka-Ja-Wan opened in the summer of 1929 with a vision of providing an outdoor experience for young people. It is owned and operated by the Northeast Illinois Council, Boy Scouts of America (BSA), in Highland Park, Illinois, and located in Pearson, Wisconsin. The camp's name comes from the Native American phrase meaning ""spring fed lake"" and originated in a contest won by a Scout from the North Shore Area Council, BSA. Thousands of young people and adults have hiked the trails, boated on the lakes, developed their scouting skills, and had countless adventures at the camp. The stories of how the camp was developed, built, and maintained by the North Shore Area Council, BSA, during difficult times, including war and the Great Depression, are shared within. Camp Ma-Ka-Ja-Wan still serves young people, adults, and families from more than 40 communities.

Rockford's baseball history continued with minor league teams, industrial league teams, and other teams both semi-pro and amateur. The city again gained national attention with the four-time champion Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (1943-1954). The excitement of professional ball in the Forest City continues today with the Rockford River Hawks of the Frontier League. Baseball in Rockford tells the players' stories from 1865 to the present, illustrated with vintage photographs throughout.

Like many large American cities in the early 1900s, Chicago's industrialization and waves of immigration spawned crowded, unhealthy urban conditions. The Prairie Club turned to nature for relief from these societal ills. From its first outing on Saturday, April 18, 1908, around Mount Forest District near Willow Springs, members sponsored hikes and outdoor activities from Palos and Tinley, through Hinsdale and Downers Grove, and up to the North Shore. With each of these walks, public support grew for what ultimately became victorious efforts to establish the forest preserves, Indiana Dunes, and other nature spots around the burgeoning cityscape.

The world of sports in the earlier decades of the 20th century certainly wasn't like the one we know today--it's even wilder.

From the Roaring Twenties and up to the golden age of the 1950s, chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. owned both the Chicago Cubs and Santa Catalina Island in Southern California, so despite being over 2000 miles apart, the team would hold their spring training on the island from 1921 to 1951. Despite a rigorous training schedule, the players obviously felt the sunshine on their faces and the sand between their toes, and decided to have some fun as well. It wouldn't be unusual to find a rookie ballplayer (nicknamed Hack) uprooting trees with his bare hands or a future president of the United States getting into a barroom brawl with some grizzled sportswriters. Even movies stars such as Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe were known to drop by. There were grand steamships, big bands, hopes and dreams, and World Series rings--it's Chicago Cubs: Baseball on Catalina Island.

Inside the life of Amos Alonzo Stagg, a man who not only witnessed great change, but was responsible for much of it in college football.

The arc of Amos Alonzo Stagg’s life spanned the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. His career flourished on the Chicago Midway and found an encore on California’s Pacific coast and in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna Valley. Stagg pioneered use of the tackling dummy, the huddle, the forward pass, the shift, the man-in-motion, the quick kick and the short punt. He developed the raw talent of young men with little or no athletic background long before the age of scholarship athletes, and his championship teams at the University of Chicago established the school’s national reputation before it became famous for producing Nobel laureates. He helped shape the modern Olympic Games, and the coaching tree he nurtured continues to bear fruit in football programs across the country. Author Jennifer Taylor Hall traces the remarkable life of the “Grand Old Man of Football.”