The personal stories of more than sixty baseball broadcasters highlight their childhood dreams about America's favorite pastime, their most embarrassing moments, and their observations on the games of today. 12,500 first printing.

The Storytellers: From Mel Allen to Bob Costas : Sixty Years of Baseball Tales from the Broadcast Booth

Sports & Outdoors

Smith, Curt

Baseball

John Wiley&Sons, Inc.

Includes personal stories from such announcers as Joe Angel, Jerry Coleman, Ned Martin, Jay Randolph, Phil Rizzuto, Ned Singleton, and Bob Wolff

Humor & Entertainment

Radio

Macmillan General* Reference

For some people baseball means a memory-of a certain dusty ball field on a certain summer day, or the first time they walked into a major league park and saw the perfect emerald playing field. For some, baseball means one heartbreaking or heroic moment. And for others, it means a father, a friend, or an old flame who shared a game for a day or for a lifetime. To create this marvelous book, more than 150 writers, athletes, celebrities, politicians, presidents, and pundits were asked what baseball means to them. The answers came back with richness, wonder, insight, and poetry. A fascinating portrait of baseball's beautiful nuances, What Baseball means to me marks the greatest collection of original essays ever written about the game. Accompanied by more than 200 classic baseball photographs, the voices in this book bring alive the game in all its venues-in the past and present, in wartime and hard times, in Cuba, in Wrigley Field or Yankee Stadium. We meet players in a different light: including Paul Molitor returning a baseball to a trusting boy named Dan Jansen, Derek Jeter as depicted by his dad, the Toledo Mud Hens as seen through the eyes of Christine Brennan, and Pedro Martinez talking about baseball as a way of life in his native Dominican Republic. Most of all, we meet ordinary Americans, like the kids Rudy Giuliani grew up with in Brooklyn, or the man in Philadelphia who transforms himself for every home game from mild-mannered Tom Burgoyne to the Phillie Phanatic. Funny, moving, and each one a diamond in the rough of the American consciousness, the essays in this book are the ultimate baseball conversation. Paying homage to the perfect sport, here is the perfect companion for all our personal baseball journeys.

What Baseball Means to Me: A Celebration of Our National Pastime

National Baseball Hall of Fame, the

Grand Central Publishing

Traces the history of baseball broadcasting on radio and television, and offers profiles of the top broadcasters

Voices of the Game: The Acclaimed Chronicle of Baseball Radio and Television Broadcasting -- from 1921 to the Present

Fireside

Critically acclaimed author Curt Smith fulfills the wildest dreams of baseball fans everywhere by traveling through space and time in a vast, entertaining volume that spares readers the price of gas, food, lodging (and admission) and puts them in a field box at every big-league park in the pastime’s history—from Fenway and Ebbets to Camden Yards and PNC Park. Just as Smith’s critically acclaimed Voices of the Game is the definitive history of baseball broadcasting, Storied Stadiums chronicles the stories, statistics, and characters behind all of baseball’s venues. From park to park throughout the years, the great game’s triumphs, tragedies, and comedies unfold in a kinetic prose as full of surprises as a wind-aided knuckleball. Illustrated with 36 color lithographs from the Bill Goff Collection, Storied Stadiums is at once a fact-filled almanac of the more than 125 major-league ballparks, past and present, and a paean to our national pastime.

Storied Stadiums: Baseball's History Through Its Ballparks

Carroll&Graf

Russ Hodges’s frantic pronouncement at Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World”: “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” and Jack Buck’s incredulous remark after Kirk Gibson’s heroic home run in the 1988 World Series: “I don’t believe what I just saw!” are just a couple examples. The sometimes downright hysterical commentaries of broadcasters very often become more memorable than even the games they describe. Though countless studies have weighed the merits of our great players, none has assessed the virtues of the men who turn diving catches and soaring home runs into the stuff of myth. In The Voices of Summer, Curt Smith has compiled a list of 101 classic announcers—from national celebrities to local favorites, overlooked giants to upcoming stars—in search of the greatest baseball broadcaster of all time. From the poetic reflections of Dick Enberg to the Falstaffian frenzy of Harry Caray, Smith answers the timeless questions: Was Mel Allen better than Ernie Harwell? Does Joe Buck compare to his legendary dad? Which of today’s young broadcasters really matches the all-time greats? Irreverent, authoritative, and uncommonly addictive, this book will be the definitive guide to baseball announcing for any and all baseball fans.

Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers

Carroll and Graf Publishers

The Presidents and the Pastime draws on Curt Smith’s extensive background as a former White House presidential speechwriter to chronicle the historic relationship between baseball, the “most American” sport, and the U.S. presidency. Smith, who USA TODAY calls “America’s voice of authority on baseball broadcasting,” starts before America’s birth, when would‑be presidents played baseball antecedents. He charts how baseball cemented its reputation as America’s pastime in the nineteenth century, such presidents as Lincoln and Johnson playing town ball or giving employees time off to watch. Smith tracks every U.S. president from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump, each chapter filled with anecdotes: Wilson buoyed by baseball after suffering disability; a heroic FDR saving baseball in World War II; Carter, taught the game by his mother, Lillian; Reagan, airing baseball on radio that he never saw—by “re-creation.” George H. W. Bush, for whom Smith wrote, explains, “Baseball has everything.” Smith, having interviewed a majority of presidents since Richard Nixon, shares personal stories on each. Throughout, The Presidents and the Pastime provides a riveting narrative of how America’s leaders have treated baseball. From Taft as the first president to throw the “first pitch” on Opening Day in 1910 to Obama’s “Go Sox!” scrawled in the guest register at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014, our presidents have deemed it the quintessentially American sport, enriching both their office and the nation. Purchase the audio edition.

The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House

University Of Nebraska Press

Relates the history of the Red Sox and their home, Fenway Park

Our House: A Tribute to Fenway Park

Masters Pr

Combines a portrait of the famous major league pitcher with a look at the development of professional baseball and sports broadcasting in America

America's Dizzy Dean

Chalice Pr

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

Books by Smith, Curt

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

The Storytellers: From Mel Allen to Bob Costas : Sixty Years of Baseball Tales from the Broadcast Booth

The Storytellers: From Mel Allen to Bob Costas : Sixty Years of Baseball Tales from the Broadcast Booth

What Baseball Means to Me: A Celebration of Our National Pastime

Voices of the Game: The Acclaimed Chronicle of Baseball Radio and Television Broadcasting -- from 1921 to the Present

Storied Stadiums: Baseball's History Through Its Ballparks

Storied Stadiums: Baseball's History Through Its Ballparks

Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers

The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House

Our House: A Tribute to Fenway Park

America's Dizzy Dean