The History Press [New Releases]

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.

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.

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.

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.