1971, 3rd ptg Negro Baseball, Like New in Like New DJ

Only the Ball Was White

Literature & Fiction

PETERSON, Robert W.

Ancient & Medieval Literature

PRENTICE/HALL

Robert Peterson has emerged as one of America's finest writers on sports history. His groundbreaking book Only the Ball Was White won wide acclaim as a compelling account of baseball's Negro leagues in the days before Jackie Robinson. Now comes Cages to Jump Shots, an insightful and entertaining look at early professional basketball from the birth of the sport through the first years of the NBA. In Cages to Jump Shots, Peterson paints a vibrant portrait of how this sport gained its place in American life. He traces the game from the day in 1891 when the father of basketball, James Naismith, drew up the first rules, through the early barnstorming professional teams playing in gaslit social halls, to the advent of NBA games in Madison Square Garden. His richly detailed account brings to life every aspect of the changing game and the society that grew to love it: the players, the fans, the owners, the officials, the rules, techniques, and equipment. Peterson draws on interviews with old playes to recreate the experience of this dramatically evolving sport, as it went from a brutal, slow-moving game (with a sewn leather ball, underhand set shots, center jumps after every score, and a wire or rope cage around the court) to the high-scoring contests that emerged in the 1950s, with the start of the team foul limit and the 24-second shot clock. Along the way, he illuminates the impact of a changing society, such as the YMCA's early hopes that basketball would foster Christian values, the indignities suffered by black teams in a segregated society, and the influx of Jewish players during the Depression. Peterson brings the story up through the founding of the NBA and its final success in overtaking the popularity of college basketball. Cages to Jump Shots offers a unique and vivid look at a fascinating side of American life. Whether capturing the flavor of the rough-and-tumble early games, discussing the career of the Harlem Globetrotters, or tracing the origins of today's big teams, Peterson lends a lively and perceptive voice to the story of America's most popular sport.

Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years (Sports History and Society)

Sports & Outdoors

Basketball

Oxford University Press

In Cages to Jump Shots, Robert Peterson--one of America's foremost writers on sports history--paints a vibrant portrait of how this sport gained its place in American life. He traces it from the day in 1891 when the father of the game, James Naismith, drew up the first rules, through the early barnstorming professional teams playing in gaslit social halls, to the advent of NBA games in Madison Square Garden. His richly detailed account brings to life every aspect of the changing game and the society that grew to love it: the players, the fans, the owners, the officials, the rules, techniques, and equipment. Peterson draws on interviews with old playes to recreate the experience of this dramatically evolving sport, as it went from a brutal, slow-moving game (with a sewn leather ball, underhand set shots, center jumps after every score, and a wire or rope cage around the court) to the high-scoring contests that emerged in the 1950s, with the start of the team foul limit and the 24-second shot clock. Along the way, he illuminates the impact of a changing society, such as the YMCA's early hopes that basketball would foster Christian values, the indignities suffered by black teams in a segregated society, and the influx of Jewish players during the Depression. Peterson brings the story up through the founding of the NBA and its final success in overtaking the popularity of college basketball. Lending a lively and perceptive voice to the story of America's most popular sport, Peterson offers a unique and vivid look at a fascinating side of American life.

Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years

United States

If the National Football League is now a mammoth billion-dollar enterprise, it was certainly born into more humble circumstances. Indeed, it began in 1920 in an automobile showroom in Canton, Ohio, when a car dealer called together some owners of teams, mostly in the Midwest, to form a league. Unlike the lavish boardrooms in which NFL owners meet today, on this occasion the owners sat on the running boards of cars in the showroom and drank beer from buckets. A membership fee of $100 was set, but no one came up with any money. (As one of those present, George Halas, the legendary owner of the Chicago Bears, said, "I doubt that there was a hundred bucks in the room.") From such modest beginnings, pro football became far and away the most popular spectator sport in America. In Pigskin, Robert W. Peterson presents a lively and informative overview of the early years of pro football--from the late 1880s to the beginning of the television era. Peterson describes the colorful beginnings of the pro game and its outstanding teams (the Green Bay Packers, the New York Giants, the Chicago Bears, the Baltimore Colts), and the great games they played. Profiles of the most famous players of the era--including Pudge Heffelfinger (the first certifiable professional), Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski, and Fritz Pollard (the NFL's first black star)--bring the history of the game to life. Peterson also takes us back to the roots of the pro game, showing how professionalism began when some stars for Yale, Harvard, and Princeton took money--under the table, of course--for their services to alma mater. By 1895, the money makers--still unacknowledged--had moved to amateur athletic associations in western Pennsylvania and subsequently into Ohio. After the NFL formed in 1920, pro football's popularity grew gradually but steadily. It burst into national prominence with the Bears-Redskins championship game of 1940. As one sportswriter put it: "The weather was perfect. So were the Bears." The final score was 73-0. Peterson shows how, after World War II, the newly-created All America Football Conference challenged the NFL. Though dominated by a gritty Cleveland team, the AAFC was never viewed by NFL teams as much of a threat. That is, not until 1950 when the two leagues merged, bringing about the Cleveland Browns-Philadelphia Eagles game in which the Browns buried the Eagles 35-10. An elegy to a time when, for many players, the game was at least as important as the money it brought them (which wasn't much), Pigskin takes readers up to the 1958 championship game when the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in overtime. By that time, the great popularity of the game had moved from newspapers and radio to television, and pro football had finally arrived as a major sport.

Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football

History

Americas

Tells the forgotten story of African American star-quality athletes excluded from professional baseball because of the big league's color line

Gramercy

Basketball is now over a century old. Cages to Jump Shots offers an unforgettable glimpse of its exciting and eccentric early years, beginning in 1891 when James Naismith drew up the first rules, through decades of growing popularity and professionalism, and culminating with its fundamental transformation in the 1950s, when the twenty-four-second shot clock and team foul limit were instituted. Along the way we learn about all those who were drawn to the game—players, officials, owners, and fans—and why so many came to love it. Drawing on extensive research and a host of interviews with veteran players, Robert W. Peterson vividly recreates the rough-and-tumble basketball games of long ago and shows why basketball has become such a celebrated part of American life today. This Bison Books edition features an updated appendix of early pro basketball teams.

Bison Books

Traces the seventy-five year history of the Boy Scouts of America, shares the memories of former boy scouts, and looks at the activities of modern scouting

The Boy Scouts: An American Adventure

Teen & Young Adult

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

Space: from Gemini to the moon & beyond, (Interim history)

FACTS ON FILE+

South Africa and Apartheid

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by PETERSON, Robert W.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by PETERSON, Robert W.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by PETERSON, Robert W.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Only the Ball Was White

Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years (Sports History and Society)

Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years

Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football

Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football

Only the Ball Was White

Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years

The Boy Scouts: An American Adventure

Space: from Gemini to the moon & beyond, (Interim history)

South Africa and Apartheid