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cubs spring training stadium: The Cactus League Emily Nemens, 2020-02-04 Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR and Lit Hub. A Los Angeles Times Bestseller. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice In The Cactus League [Emily Nemens] provides her readers with what amounts to a miniature, self-enclosed world that is funny and poignant and lovingly observed. --Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review An explosive, character-driven odyssey through the world of baseball Jason Goodyear is the star outfielder for the Los Angeles Lions, stationed with the rest of his team in the punishingly hot Arizona desert for their annual spring training. Handsome, famous, and talented, Goodyear is nonetheless coming apart at the seams. And the coaches, writers, wives, girlfriends, petty criminals, and diehard fans following his every move are eager to find out why—as they hide secrets of their own. Humming with the energy of a ballpark before the first pitch, Emily Nemens's The Cactus League unravels the tightly connected web of people behind a seemingly linear game. Narrated by a sportscaster, Goodyear’s story is interspersed with tales of Michael Taylor, a batting coach trying to stay relevant; Tamara Rowland, a resourceful spring-training paramour, looking for one last catch; Herb Allison, a legendary sports agent grappling with his decline; and a plethora of other richly drawn characters, all striving to be seen as the season approaches. It’s a journey that, like the Arizona desert, brims with both possibility and destruction. Anchored by an expert knowledge of baseball’s inner workings, Emily Nemens's The Cactus League is a propulsive and deeply human debut that captures a strange desert world that is both exciting and unforgiving, where the most crucial games are the ones played off the field. |
cubs spring training stadium: Chicago Cubs Jim Vitti, 2010 It's not quite like today's spring training: one might 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. The team was the Chicago Cubs, and the place was Santa Catalina Island-through the Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, and World War II. William Wrigley owned both island and ballclub; from 1921 to 1951, they came together. There were movie stars, like Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe. There were grand steamships, big bands, hopes and dreams, and World Series rings. It's Chicago Cubs: Baseball on Catalina Island, and it's a trip like no other. |
cubs spring training stadium: Mr. Wrigley's Ball Club Roberts Ehrgott, 2013-04-01 Chicago in the Roaring Twenties was a city of immigrants, mobsters, and flappers with one shared passion: the Chicago Cubs. It all began when the chewing-gum tycoon William Wrigley decided to build the world’s greatest ball club in the nation’s Second City. In this Jazz Age center, the maverick Wrigley exploited the revolutionary technology of broadcasting to attract eager throngs of women to his renovated ballpark. Mr. Wrigley’s Ball Club transports us to this heady era of baseball history and introduces the team at its crazy heart—an amalgam of rakes, pranksters, schemers, and choirboys who take center stage in memorable successes, equally memorable disasters, and shadowy intrigue. Readers take front-row seats to meet Grover Cleveland Alexander, Rogers Hornsby, Joe McCarthy, Lewis “Hack” Wilson, Gabby Hartnett. The cast of characters also includes their colorful if less-extolled teammates and the Cubs’ nemesis, Babe Ruth, who terminates the ambitions of Mr. Wrigley’s ball club with one emphatic swing. |
cubs spring training stadium: 100 Things Cubs Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die Jimmy Greenfield, 2016-05-01 This lively, detailed book explores the personalities, events, and facts every Cubs fan should know. More than a look at the century-long wait for another World Series win, the book contains crucial information for Cubs fans, such as important dates, player nicknames, memorable moments, and outstanding achievements by singular players. This guide to all things Cubs also includes a list of must-do Cubs-related activities, which include taking in Wrigley field, traveling to Arizona for spring training, and sipping beers at the best Cubs bars around the country.This new, updated edition features the new generation of Cubs stars, including manager Joe Maddon, sluggers Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant, and ace Jon Lester. |
cubs spring training stadium: The Cubs Way Tom Verducci, 2018-04-03 The New York Times Bestseller With inside access and reporting, Sports Illustrated senior baseball writer and FOX Sports analyst Tom Verducci reveals how Theo Epstein and Joe Maddon built, led, and inspired the Chicago Cubs team that broke the longest championship drought in sports, chronicling their epic journey to become World Series champions. It took 108 years, but it really happened. The Chicago Cubs are once again World Series champions. How did a team composed of unknown, young players and supposedly washed-up veterans come together to break the Curse of the Billy Goat? Tom Verducci, twice named National Sportswriter of the Year and co-writer of The Yankee Years with Joe Torre, will have full access to team president Theo Epstein, manager Joe Maddon, and the players to tell the story of the Cubs' transformation from perennial underachievers to the best team in baseball. Beginning with Epstein's first year with the team in 2011, Verducci will show how Epstein went beyond Moneyball thinking to turn around the franchise. Leading the organization with a manual called The Cubs Way, he focused on the mental side of the game as much as the physical, emphasizing chemistry as well as statistics. To accomplish his goal, Epstein needed manager Joe Maddon, an eccentric innovator, as his counterweight on the Cubs' bench. A man who encourages themed road trips and late-arrival game days to loosen up his team, Maddon mixed New Age thinking with Old School leadership to help his players find their edge. The Cubs Way takes readers behind the scenes, chronicling how key players like Rizzo, Russell, Lester, and Arrieta were deftly brought into the organization by Epstein and coached by Maddon to outperform expectations. Together, Epstein and Maddon proved that clubhouse culture is as important as on-base-percentage, and that intangible components like personality, vibe, and positive energy are necessary for a team to perform to their fullest potential. Verducci chronicles the playoff run that culminated in an instant classic Game Seven. He takes a broader look at the history of baseball in Chicago and the almost supernatural element to the team's repeated loses that kept fans suffering, but also served to strengthen their loyalty. The Cubs Way is a celebration of an iconic team and its journey to a World Championship that fans and readers will cherish for years to come. |
cubs spring training stadium: Cactus League Susie Steckner, The Mesa Historical Museum, 2012 Arizona's baseball roots run long and deep, but the star of the show is the Cactus League. The state's spring training history is filled with social, political, and cultural intrigue, not to mention a roster of baseball greats. Early on, fans watched Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, and the American League's first black player, Larry Doby. Beyond the field, baseball became part of the state's social fabric, as players and fans alike flocked to watering holes, hotels, parades, and a desert resort famous for its mineral baths. History also saw a political battle to save the Cactus League and fend off Florida's attempts to dominate spring training. Today, the Cactus League is a 15-team powerhouse that holds court in Arizona each spring. |
cubs spring training stadium: Cubs Nation Gene Wojciechowski, 2005 From Ernie Banks, the legendary Mr. Cub, to Sammy Sosa, today's record-setting sensation, Cubs Nation traces the history of a team that often had everything going for it and yet was so hampered by losses that it came to define the term lovable losers. |
cubs spring training stadium: Field of Schemes Neil deMause, Joanna Cagan, 2015-03 |
cubs spring training stadium: The League of Outsider Baseball Gary Cieradkowski, 2015-05-05 From an award-winning graphic artist and baseball historian comes a strikingly original illustrated history of baseball’s forgotten heroes, including stars of the Negro Leagues, barnstorming teams, semi-pro leagues, foreign leagues, and famous players like Shoeless Joe Jackson, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, and Joe DiMaggio before they achieved notoriety. From a young age, Gary Cieradkowski had a passion for baseball’s unheralded heroes. Inspired by his father and their shared love of the sport, Cieradkowski began creating “outsider” baseball cards, as a way to tell the little-known stories of baseball’s many unsung heroes—alongside some of baseball’s greatest players before they were famous. The League of Outsider Baseball is a tribute to all of those who’ve played the game, known and unknown. Shining a light into the dark corners of baseball history—from Mickey Mantle’s minor league days to Negro League greats like Josh Gibson and Leon Day; to people that most never knew played the game, such as Frank Sinatra, who had his own ball club in 1940s Hollywood; bank robber John Dillinger, who was a promising shortstop and took time out between robberies to attend Cubs games; and even a few US presidents—this book is a rich, visual tribute to America’s pastime. Meticulously researched, beautifully illustrated using a unique, vintage baseball-card-style, and filled with a colorful and rich cast of characters, this book is a prized collector’s item and will be cherished by fans of all ages. |
cubs spring training stadium: Spring Training Handbook Josh Pahigian, 2013-06-04 Spring training is a time of renewal for baseball, when teams and fans descend on Florida and Arizona to begin the ever hopeful new season. The pace is a little slower, the fans are closer to the action, and the players are more accessible: the sport returns to its idyllic roots. When the first edition of this book was released, 18 of the MLB teams trained in Florida and 12 in Arizona. As 2013 arrives each league consists of 15 teams; together they utilize 14 parks in Florida and 10 in Arizona. This heavily illustrated work dedicates a chapter to each park, including modern Cactus League marvels like Camelback Ranch and Salt River Fields, and Grapefruit League bastions like Joker Marchant Stadium and McKechnie Field. Florida's Fenway Park replica, which opened in 2012, is included. In addition to profiling the five parks that have opened since the first edition, the author has updated the other chapters. Each provides a description of the park, and a recounting of its history, followed by a summary of the home team or teams' spring history. Next is a review of the park's seating, concessions and fan traditions. Each chapter concludes with information about nearby baseball landmarks and attractions. |
cubs spring training stadium: The 1969 Cubs Fergie Jenkins, George Castle, 2019-01-19 In 1969 at Wrigley Field, the lights didn't shine at night, but they did in the eyes of every hopeful Chicago Cubs fan. The team that didn't go all the way, but they did more for the franchise and the role of its fans than many teams before them. Hall-of-Fame legend Fergie Jenkins gives his first-hand accounts on that loved team and painful seaso |
cubs spring training stadium: The Baseball Whisperer Michael Tackett, 2016-07-05 “Field of Dreams was only superficially about baseball. It was really about life. So is The Baseball Whisperer . . . with the added advantage of being all true.” —MLB.com From an award-winning journalist, this is the story of a legendary coach and the professional-caliber baseball program he built in America's heartland, where boys would come summer after summer to be molded into ballplayers—and men. Clarinda, Iowa, population 5,000, sits two hours from anything. There, between the cornfields and hog yards, is a ball field with a bronze bust of a man named Merl Eberly, who specialized in second chances and lost causes. The statue was a gift from one of Merl’s original long-shot projects, a skinny kid from the Los Angeles ghetto who would one day become a beloved Hall-of-Fame shortstop: Ozzie Smith. The Baseball Whisperer traces the “deeply engrossing” story (Booklist, starred review) of Merl Eberly and his Clarinda A’s baseball team, which he tended over the course of five decades, transforming them from a town team to a collegiate summer league powerhouse. Along with Ozzie Smith, future manager Bud Black, and star player Von Hayes, Merl developed scores of major league players. In the process, he taught them to be men, insisting on hard work, integrity, and responsibility. More than a book about ballplayers in the nation’s agricultural heartland, The Baseball Whisperer is the story of a coach who put character and dedication first, reminding us of the best, purest form of baseball excellence. “Mike Tackett, talented journalist and baseball lover, has hit the sweet spot of the bat with his first book. The Baseball Whisperer takes one coach and one small Iowa town and illuminates both a sport and the human spirit.” —David Maraniss, New York Times-bestselling author of Clemente and When Pride Still Mattered |
cubs spring training stadium: The Game from Where I Stand Doug Glanville, 2010-05-11 Glanville, a former major league outfielder and Ivy League graduate, draws on his nine seasons in the big leagues to reveal the human side of baseball and of the men who play it. |
cubs spring training stadium: Why Baseball Matters Susan Jacoby, 2018-03-20 Baseball, first dubbed the “national pastime” in print in 1856, is the country’s most tradition-bound sport. Despite remaining popular and profitable into the twenty-first century, the game is losing young fans, among African Americans and women as well as white men. Furthermore, baseball’s greatest charm—a clockless suspension of time—is also its greatest liability in a culture of digital distraction. These paradoxes are explored by the historian and passionate baseball fan Susan Jacoby in a book that is both a love letter to the game and a tough-minded analysis of the current challenges to its special position—in reality and myth—in American culture. The concise but wide-ranging analysis moves from the Civil War—when many soldiers played ball in northern and southern prisoner-of-war camps—to interviews with top baseball officials and young men who prefer playing online “fantasy baseball” to attending real games. Revisiting her youthful days of watching televised baseball in her grandfather’s bar, the author links her love of the game with the informal education she received in everything from baseball’s history of racial segregation to pitch location. Jacoby argues forcefully that the major challenge to baseball today is a shortened attention span at odds with a long game in which great hitters fail two out of three times. Without sanitizing this basic problem, Why Baseball Matters remind us that the game has retained its grip on our hearts precisely because it has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to reinvent itself in times of immense social change. |
cubs spring training stadium: The Cubs Glenn Stout, Dick Johnson, 2007 A narrative history of the Chicago Cubs journeys inside the once-successful baseball team that has not won a World Series in nearly one hundred years, bringing together more than two hundred photographs with essays by noted fans and sportswriters. |
cubs spring training stadium: The Called Shot Thomas Wolf, 2020-05-01 In the summer of 1932, at the beginning of the turbulent decade that would remake America, baseball fans were treated to one of the most thrilling seasons in the history of the sport. As the nation drifted deeper into the Great Depression and reeled from social unrest, baseball was a diversion for a troubled country—and yet the world of baseball was marked by the same edginess that pervaded the national scene. On-the-field fights were as common as double plays. Amid the National League pennant race, Cubs’ shortstop Billy Jurges was shot by showgirl Violet Popovich in a Chicago hotel room. When the regular season ended, the Cubs and Yankees clashed in what would be Babe Ruth’s last appearance in the fall classic. After the Cubs lost the first two games in New York, the series resumed in Chicago at Wrigley Field, with Democratic presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt cheering for the visiting Yankees from the box seats behind the Yankees’ dugout. In the top of the fifth inning the game took a historic turn. As Ruth was jeered mercilessly by Cubs players and fans, he gestured toward the outfield and then blasted a long home run. After Ruth circled the bases, Roosevelt exclaimed, “Unbelievable!” Ruth’s homer set off one of baseball’s longest-running and most intense debates: did Ruth, in fact, call his famous home run? Rich with historical context and detail, The Called Shot dramatizes the excitement of a baseball season during one of America’s most chaotic summers. |
cubs spring training stadium: The Christian at Play Robert K. Johnston, 1997-09-09 Play, as an event of the inventive human spirit, invites our most able Christian reflection. The person at play is expressing his or her God-given nature. Unable to understand our play as God-given, Christians are often inauthentic players. Johnston tries to help us to see that Christians are created to work and to play. |
cubs spring training stadium: Boiling Out at the Springs Don Duren, 2006 The book is about the colorful baseball history that took place over many years in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Between 1886 and 1942, every major league team came to the city for the spring training at one time or another. |
cubs spring training stadium: The Chicago Cubs Rich Cohen, 2017-10-03 After his first Cubs game when Rich Cohen was eight, his father asked him to make a promise. Promise me you will never be a Cubs fan. The Cubs do not win, he explained, and because of that, a Cubs fan will have a diminished life determined by low expectations. That team will screw up your life. Here he captures the story of the team, its players and crazy days-- not just what happened, but what it felt like and what it meant. He searches for the cause of the famous curse, and came to see the curse as a burden but also as a blessing. |
cubs spring training stadium: Baseball Road Trips: The Midwest and Great Lakes Timothy Mullin, 2014-04-01 The perfect travel guide for baseball fans who want to see more of the great ballparks in America’s heartland, this handy guide gives you the tips for best lodging, great restaurants, and local attractions for the Major League and minor league cities and towns that dot the Midwest. With details about every ballpark from Major League Baseball to the Frontier League, this travel companion tells you the best places to sit, the best ballpark food to eat, and the best places to go around town when you are not at the ballpark. From taking in a AAA game with the Iowa Cubs in Des Moines and visiting the Field of Dreams to knowing how to best experience Target Field in the Twin Cities, Baseball Road Trips: The Midwest and Great Lakes is all you need to plan a dream baseball road trip. |
cubs spring training stadium: Calico Joe John Grisham, 2013-03-26 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A surprising and moving novel of fathers and sons, forgiveness and redemption, set in the world of Major League Baseball… “Grisham knocks it out of the park.”—The Washington Post It’s the summer of 1973, and Joe Castle is the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone has ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas, dazzles Chicago Cubs fans as he hits home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shatters all rookie records. Calico Joe quickly becomes the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing New York Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren Tracey finally faces Calico Joe, Paul is in the stands, rooting for his idol but also for his dad. Then Warren throws a fastball that will change their lives forever. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM! |
cubs spring training stadium: Mom's Big Catch Marla McKenna, 2011-07-26 Ashley's dream was to catch a ball hit by her favorite team, so at the last game of the season, she wouldn't dare leave her seat. If she had, she might have missed, Mom's Big Catch! Join Marla McKenna in this exciting tale and heartwarming story of one family's adventure at the ballpark. |
cubs spring training stadium: Baseball Fantography Fantography LLC, Andy Strasberg, 2012-04-01 Baseball Fantography is a celebration of baseball through the eyes of fans via photos they've taken of players, ballparks, and related subjects over the past nine decades, along with essays, sidebars, and quotes. The project originated when the author discovered an old 1960s snapshot of himself as a teenager with his idol, Roger Maris, at Yankee Stadium. Realizing that he couldn't be the only one with these hidden photographic gems, he began collecting baseball photos taken by fans. The book contains more than 250 never-before-published images (Roberto Clemente, Mickey Mantle, Derek Jeter, Josh Hamilton) in chapters on subjects like ballparks, spring training, broadcasters, dugouts, and baseball cards, and features contributions from baseball aficionados and notables like Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith, a 35-year veteran Topps baseball photographer, and a former president of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Praise for Baseball Fantography:The never-before-published shots are cool, offering a new look at the familiar. --New York Post |
cubs spring training stadium: Baseball in New Orleans S. Derby Gisclair, 2004 In July of 1859, seventy-five young New Orleanians came together to form the seven teams that comprised the Louisiana Base Ball Club. They played their games in the fields of the de la Chaise estate on the outskirts of New Orleans near present-day Louisiana Avenue. As America's population grew through immigration, so did the popularity of what the largest newspaper in New Orleans, the Daily Picayune, called in November of 1860 the National Game. Baseball quickly replaced cricket as the city's most popular participant sport. In 1887, local businessmen and promoters secured a minor league franchise for the city of New Orleans in the newly formed Southern League, beginning the city's 73-year love affair with the New Orleans Pelicans. From Shoeless Joe Jackson, to Hall of Famers Dazzy Vance, Joe Sewell, Bob Lemon, and Earl Weaver, to today's stars such as Jeff Cirillo and Lance Berkman, the road to the majors brought many notable players through New Orleans. From these early beginnings to the present-day New Orleans Zephyrs of the AAA Pacific Coast League, local fans have continued the tradition of baseball in New Orleans. |
cubs spring training stadium: Roadside Baseball Chris Epting, 2009-04-01 Capturing such quintessentially American pastimes as baseball and road trips in one fascinating work, this updated and expanded guide chronicles more than 500 important events in baseball history with detailed descriptions of the event and information on each location. Packed with historical data, trivia, photographs, and baseball lore, entries include the birthplaces of baseball legends, ballparks, museums and halls of fame, final resting places, and many locations that are no longer standing. From out-of-the-way spots to the most popular stadiums in the U.S. and Canada, no site is too small or insignificant to be included in this comprehensive directory. Entries include the Buckminster Hotel in Boston, where the Black Sox planned their fix of the 1919 World Series; the original little league field and museum in Williamsport, Pennsylvania; the birthplace of Jackie Robinson; the place where Mickey Mantle was discovered by a scout from the New York Yankees; and the site of the original Wrigley Field, erected in Los Angeles in 1925. |
cubs spring training stadium: Billy Ball Dale Tafoya, 2020-03-24 In the early 1970s, the Oakland Athletics became only the second team in major-league baseball history to win three consecutive World Series championships. But as the decade came to a close, the A's were in free fall, having lost 108 games in 1979 while drawing just 307,000 fans. Free agency had decimated the A’s, and the team’s colorful owner, Charlie Finley, was looking for a buyer. First, though, he had to bring fans back to the Oakland Coliseum. Enter Billy Martin, the hometown boy from West Berkeley. In Billy Ball, sportswriter Dale Tafoya describes what, at the time, seemed like a match made in baseball heaven. The A’s needed a fiery leader to re-ignite interest in the team. Martin needed a job after his second stint as manager of the New York Yankees came to an abrupt end. Based largely on interviews with former players, team executives, and journalists, Billy Ball captures Martin’s homecoming to the Bay area in 1980, his immediate embrace by Oakland fans, and the A’s return to playoff baseball. Tafoya describes the reputation that had preceded Martin—one that he fully lived up to—as the brawling, hard-drinking baseball savant with a knack for turning bad teams around. In Oakland, his aggressive style of play came to be known as Billy Ball. A’s fans and the media loved it. But, in life and in baseball, all good things must come to an end. Tafoya chronicles Martin’s clash with the new A’s management and the siren song of the Yankees that lured the manager back to New York in 1983. Still, as the book makes clear, the magical turnaround of the A’s has never been forgotten in Oakland. Neither have Billy Martin and Billy Ball. During a time of economic uncertainty and waning baseball interest in Oakland, Billy Ball filled the stands, rejuvenated fans, and saved professional baseball in the city. |
cubs spring training stadium: Waiting for the Cubs Floyd Sullivan, 2014-01-10 This is a memoir of a diehard--a diehard fan who drove himself and his family half crazy to get to Cubs games that were 700 miles away from their home. Along the way Sullivan recounts the history of Cubs baseball, including events from the 1908 season, as well as reminiscences from other fans and stories of his own experience following a team that has gone more than a century without attaining that final win that would make them world champions. |
cubs spring training stadium: Roadside Baseball: The Locations of America's Baseball Landmarks Chris Epting, 2019-06-04 Capturing such quintessentially American pastimes as baseball and road trips in one fascinating work, the updated and expanded third edition of Chris Epting’s Roadside Baseball chronicles more than 500 important events in baseball history with detailed descriptions of the event and information on each location. Packed with historical data, trivia, photographs, and baseball lore, entries include the birthplaces of baseball legends, ballparks, museums and halls of fame, final resting places, and many locations that are no longer standing. From out-of-the-way spots to the most popular stadiums in the U.S. and Canada, no site is too small or insignificant to be included in this comprehensive guide. The third edition of Roadside Baseball includes hundreds of newly discovered landmarks, including the former locations of stadiums that have been torn down since the last edition of the book (Yankee stadium, Shea stadium, Tiger stadium, etc.), information on the Negro Leagues Baseball Marker project which has placed headstones around the country to honor forgotten African-American ballplayers, new exhibits at existing MLB parks, and suggested daytrip itineraries located near your favorite stadiums. Other new entries include the actual diamond used for the classic film, The Sandlot; the exact location where Mickey Mantle’s legendary 565-foot blast landed; the baseball field in Orange County, California where many believe Babe Ruth hit the longest home run of his career against the great Walter Johnson (along with extremely rare photos of Ruth both batting and pitching during that very game); the newly marked location in Kekionga, Indiana where the first major league game was played in 1871; all 29 markers along the new “Hot Springs Baseball Trail” celebrating baseball history in Arkansas; and Heckscher Fields in Central Park, New York, where Larry David’s softball team played in an episode of “Curb Your Enthusisam.” Entries from the previous edition include the Buckminster Hotel in Boston, where the Black Sox planned their fix of the 1919 World Series; the original little league field and museum in Williamsport, Pennsylvania; the birthplace of Jackie Robinson; the place where Mickey Mantle was discovered by a scout from the New York Yankees; and the site of the original Wrigley Field, erected in Los Angeles in 1925. The third edition of Roadside Baseball is the most comprehensive book ever written on the locations of baseball landmarks, and the perfect gift for baseball fans of all ages! |
cubs spring training stadium: The Franchise: Chicago Cubs Bruce Miles, Jesse Rogers, 2023-06-20 In The Franchise: Chicago Cubs, take a more profound and unique journey into the history of an iconic team. This thoughtful and engaging collection of essays captures the astute fans' history of the franchise, going beyond well-worn narratives of yesteryear to uncover the less-discussed moments, decisions, people, and settings that fostered the Cubs' one-of-a-kind identity. Through wheeling and dealing, mythmaking and community building, explore where the organization has been, how it got to prominence in the modern major league landscape, and how it'll continue to evolve and stay in contention for generations to come.Cubs fans in the know will enjoy this personal, local, in-depth look at baseball history. |
cubs spring training stadium: Drinks Jacques Straub, 1914 |
cubs spring training stadium: Our Team—Our Dream , 2007-08-01 A trip into the world of a Cubs fan, this brilliant collection of photos and insightful essays highlights 15 years with the Chicago Cubs, from the winter Cubs Convention to their springs in Mesa and, finally, to the Friendly Confines during the season. This passionate photo documentary is a must-have for any and all Cubs fans who love to reminisce about past seasons while looking forward to the future with unguarded optimism. Our Team—Our Dream puts the Cubbies and the throngs of fans who flock to Wrigleyville on display in one memorable collection. |
cubs spring training stadium: Try Not to Suck Bill Chastain, Jesse Rogers, Ben Zobrist, 2018-04-01 With his irreverant personality, laid-back approach, and penchant for the unexpected, Joe Maddon is a singular presence among Major League Baseball managers. Whether he's bringing clowns and live bear cubs to spring training or leading the Chicago Cubs to their first World Series victory in 108 years, Maddon is always one to watch. In Try Not to Suck, ESPN's Jesse Rogers and MLB.com's Bill Chastain fully explore Maddon's life and career, delving behind the scenes and dissecting that mystique which makes Maddon so popular with players and analysts alike. Packed with insight, anecdotes, and little-known facts, this is the definitive account of the curse-breaker and trailblazer at the helm of the Cubs' new era. |
cubs spring training stadium: Ballparks of North America Michael Benson, 2024-10-16 What grandstand collapsed during a game, killing twelve? How high is the Green monster in Fenway? In what park was the outfield fence only 187 feet from home plate? Ballparks of North America is a comprehensive encyclopedia of the grounds, yards and stadiums used for organized baseball from the invention of the sport in the 1840s to the year 1988. Entries, listed alphabetically by community, cover everything from cornfields to Yankee Stadium. Each entry gives the location of the park, who played there and when, home run dimensions, seating capacity, architectural comments, attendance records, and anecdotes. More than 100 photos and drawings are included, some rare. |
cubs spring training stadium: The Devil Wears Pinstripes Jim Caple, 2005 In The Devil Wears Pinstripes, Jim Caple, ESPN.com’s “designated Yankee hater,” takes on the rabid fans of baseball’s twenty-six-time World Champions, and offers a decidedly different slant on the New York Yankees—the losers of thirteen World Series. Caple delivers his send-up of the evil empire with scathing irony, laying waste to all things Yankees. A creative and unauthorized timeline pokes fun at the organization’s trades, its legendary vanity, and its near-lethal stadium food. He skewers the owners, coaches and players—from the target of all targets George Steinbrenner to the pinstriped icons in the House That Ruth Built. Heroes and lesser mortals appear in all their tarnished glory, whether they’re participating in a World Series shutout, in drunken brawls at strip joints, or engaging in the notorious wife-swapping incident of the 1970s. Die-hard Yankee haters and the fans of all other baseball teams are sure to appreciate this hilariously provocative diatribe. |
cubs spring training stadium: 500 Ballparks Eric Pastore, Wendy Pastore, 2016 Everything there is to know about the greatest baseball stadiums in America. |
cubs spring training stadium: Mashi Robert K. Fitts, 2020-04-01 In the spring of 1964, the Nankai Hawks of Japan’s Pacific League sent nineteen-year-old Masanori Murakami to the Class A Fresno Giants to improve his skills. To nearly everyone’s surprise, Murakami, known as Mashi, dominated the American hitters. With the San Francisco Giants caught in a close pennant race and desperate for a left-handed reliever, Masanori was called up to join the big league club, becoming the first Japanese player in the Major Leagues. Featuring pinpoint control, a devastating curveball, and a friendly smile, Mashi became the Giants’ top lefty reliever and one of the team’s most popular players—as well as a national hero in Japan. Not surprisingly, the Giants offered him a contract for the 1965 season. Murakami signed, announcing that he would be thrilled to stay in San Francisco. There was just one problem: the Nankai Hawks still owned his contract. The dispute over Murakami’s contract would ignite an international incident that ultimately prevented other Japanese players from joining the Majors for thirty years. Mashi is the story of an unlikely hero caught up in an American and Japanese baseball dispute and forced to choose between his dreams in the United States and his duty in Japan. |
cubs spring training stadium: Spring Training Dan Shaughnessy, Stan Grossfeld, 2003 Before the purpose-pitch that zips inches from the batter's head, before greenfly autograph-seekers stalk hotel lobbies, before thousands of fans stand up and boo in 50,000-seat stadiums, before the proverbial dog days of summer and the pressure-packed moments of October . . . there is sweet spring. The long hello. Baseball's early season. The words spring training have long held special power over baseball fans. They signal the arrival of fresh air and sunshine after a long winter devoid of bare feet and box scores. The chance to see the game up close and personal, in beautiful slow motion. No other sport undergoes this slow, glorious unfolding. And no other book captures baseball's rite of passage in all its magic. Come on a wild ride through spring training's many attractions and peculiarities, from Florida to Arizona, the National to the American League, the dugouts to Section D. Glimpse retirees in Hawaiian shirts singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game, million-dollar players taking it easy on the field and in the bars, young rookies flashing their skills, grizzled vets going through the motions, wide-eyed children dressed from head to toe in their favorite team's garb. It's all here, from Alligator Alley to Cactus Way, sit-ups to sunblock, home runs to hangovers -- a lively tribute to America's favorite pastime in its purest, most wonderful form. |
cubs spring training stadium: Baseball Has Done it Jackie Robinson, 1964 Jackie Robinson's theme is that integration in baseball has proved that Americans can live together in peaceful competition. The theme is developed with a history of Negroes in baseball. Excerpts from their lives as players are given in their own words, by Larry Doby, for instance, and by Roy Campanella. Ball club managers, prominently Branch Rickey, tell why they hired Negroes and how the barriers were broken down. |
cubs spring training stadium: Uncle Robbie Jack Kavanagh, Norman Lee Macht, 1999 Hall of Fame member Wilbert Robinson began his career as a catcher. As a Baltimore Oriole in the 1890s the hard-nosed but congenial receiver joined John McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler, and other greats on the roughest team of the game’s toughest era. He went on to make a reputation with McGraw’s New York Giants as a great developer of pitchers. Subsequently he took over the Brooklyn Dodgers, quickly turning them into pennant winners and gradually becoming the borough’s beloved Uncle Robbie. |
cubs spring training stadium: Brain Freeze - 321 °F J. P. Polidoro, 2011-03-04 |
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Bleed Cubbie Blue, a Chicago Cubs community
Cubs record, standings, upcoming schedule, broadcast info. Here you will always be able to find the most up …
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Oct 11, 2024 · Breaking Cubs news- 3B coach Willie Harris and the Cubs front office have agreed to part ways. Both …
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