Bøker av William F. McNeil

Covering Mike Tyson's rise through the amateur and professional boxing ranks, this book follows the Brooklyn native from his early years as a young criminal in Brownsville to his 1988 heavyweight unification match with Michael Spinks. The book focuses on the Catskill Boxing Club--where boxing guru Cus D'Amato trained the 210-pound teenager in the finer points of the sport and developed his impregnable defense--and on his home life with D'Amato and surrogate mother Camille Ewald and the other young fighters who lived with them. Tyson's boxing education began in the unauthorized "smokers" held every week in the Bronx, matching his skills against older, more experienced fighters. He won the 1981 Amateur Heavyweight Boxing Championship in Colorado Springs at the age of 14 and repeated the amazing feat the following year. By 1985, finding no other challenging amateur competition, he was forced to join the professional ranks where, in November 1986, he became the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history. Less than two years later, he unified the crown, establishing himself as one of the most dominant heavyweight fighters the sport had ever seen.

The California Winter League was the first to bring together Negro League teams and white professional teams in one league. This work presents the complete history of the California Winter League from its murky beginnings around 1912 to its golden years from 1924 to 1935 to its final demise in the mid 1940s.

Explores rule changes, adaptations to pitching and pitching strategies, and the effect of pitcher injuries and conditioning, among other influences. An appendix gives stats for major league starting pitchers with comparisons by era, those with more than 5,000 career innings pitched, relief pitchers, and their single season save records.

This book discusses the history of catching and catchers and employs sabermetric formulas to rank the 50 greatest catchers since 1920. Also included is a chapter on catchers of the 19th century, deadball era, and Negro Leagues, whose statistics are either incomplete, inaccurate, or produced under markedly different conditions and rules.

This work is a comprehensive study of the evidence suggesting that ancient European and Asian mariners visited the United States more than 1000 years ago, looking at evidence that would support the theory of ancient incursions to America.

This history recounts the experiences of American black ballplayers outside of the Negro Leagues - often in places where a lack of prejudice contrasted sharply with conditions at home. Tracing the development of the game in each location and the unique character of each winter league, it details the contributions of the Negro League players and collects their statistics in each of the winter leagues.

Profiles 200 of the most memorable players to have donned Boston's red, white, and blue. Some, like Ted Williams, enjoyed long, illustrious careers with the Red Sox. Others, like Smokey Joe Wood, shone brightly for only a brief period. Together, these legends, idols, and heroes made Red Sox history and forever changed American baseball.