Showing results by publisher "Tantor Audio" in Sports & Outdoors

In Paddleways of Mississippi: Rivers and People of the Magnolia State, listeners will discover flowing details of virtually every waterway in the state—the features, wildlife, vegetation, geology, hydrology, and specific challenges to be expected—alongside many wonderful historical and social accounts specific to each system.

The stories of thirteen Black Minor League baseball players during the post-Jackie Robinson era, from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, who were figuratively and literally left behind even as both baseball and the country claimed a newfound racial progressiveness.

Waite "Schoolboy" Hoyt's improbable baseball journey began when the 1915 New York Giants signed him as a high school junior, for no pay and a five-dollar bonus. Based on a trove of Hoyt's writings and interview transcripts, Tim Manners has reanimated the baseball legend's untold story, entirely in Hoyt's own words. Over his twenty-three-year professional baseball career, Hoyt won 237 big league games across 3,845 2/3 innings—and one locker room brawl with Babe Ruth. He writes at length about the art of pitching and how the game and its players changed—and didn't—over his lifetime.

The Gas and Flame Men explores how these famous baseball men, along with an eclectic mix of polo players, collegiate baseball and football stars, professors, architects, and prominent social figures all came together in the Chemical Warfare Service. Jim Leeke examines their service and its long-term effects on their physical and mental health-and on Major League Baseball and the world of sports.

What's it like to be a trail angel and can romance truly blossom from first meeting to marriage on the Pacific Crest Trail? How do trail names get bestowed and what does it mean when you find yourself roaring back at a mountain lion? How have climate change, technology, and the sheer number of hikers affected life on the PCT? Find the answers to all these questions, and so many more, in the diverse writings gathered in Crossing Paths, an anthology of stories and poems written by PCT hikers.

Those who have been lured by the sound of skate blades slicing into fresh ice and everything-or-nothing attitude of the game know that hockey can seem like its own world. Yet in another light, that tight community can turn insular; the values of teamwork and humility can manifest as collective silence in the face of abuse and discrimination. In Game Misconduct, reporters Evan Moore and Jashvina Shah reveal hockey's toxic undercurrent which has permeated the sport throughout the junior, college, and professional levels.

The last time Canada qualified for a men's World Cup was in 1986. For a generation afterwards, the Canadian national men's soccer team struggled in obscurity, an afterthought in a country that was not yet soccer-mad. The twenty-first century brought a wave of soccer passion and expertise to this frozen country—and a crop of new superstar players who lifted the forgotten team into the international spotlight.

Why do some Americans find pleasure in sleeping outside, particularly when so many others, past and present, have had to do so for reasons other than recreation? Never only a vacation choice, camping has been something people do out of dire necessity and as a tactic of political protest. Yet the dominant interpretation of camping as a modern recreational ideal has obscured the connections to these other roles. Camping Grounds rediscovers unexpected and interwoven histories of sleeping outside.

Over forty years since Thurman Munson's death, Thurm: Memoirs of a Forever Yankee revives the life of the famous New York Yankees catcher. In collaboration with longtime Yankee historian Marty Appel, Munson chronicles in his own words his path to the majors, his career success, his approach to being the first team captain in nearly forty years since Lou Gehrig, the Yankees return to glory when they won the 1977 and 1978 World Series, the breakdown of his body as he gave his all to the sport, and his absolute dedication to his wife and children above all else.

Four geologists and two mountain guides face the brutal beauty of West Antarctica eight hundred miles from the United States main base. Their search reaches far into the treacherous mountains of Marie Byrd Land. Over six weeks of living in tents and traveling by snowmobile, the team endures endless cold and furious blizzards. They cross ice fields and hidden crevasses, which one of the team learns about the hard way.

Don Perkins led a life as one of the most honored athletes in the history of the University of New Mexico and the Dallas Cowboys. But Perkins's life was far more complex and, at times, controversial. He experienced the traumas of racial discrimination, death, divorce, football-related injuries, and a never-ending search for his own identity. In his search, Perkins ventured into sportscasting, public speaking, community relations, big-rig trucking, government work, and even amateur theater, where he portrayed Frederick Douglass and other famous Black leaders.

On the Water is a gorgeously written collection of essays that all take place on or near the water and pay tribute to the flora and fauna associated with those ecosystems. There are essays about the finer points of tickling rainbow trout in the streams of Normandy, and of eagles and ospreys fishing for bass while barely breaking the surface of the water. There are stories of droughts and floods, of dogs and boats, of worms and rattlesnakes, and even of catching and cooking soft-shell turtles that taste like osso-bucco.

For fifty years, bestselling author Peter Golenbock has been interviewing some of the most fascinating figures in baseball. Their conversations are a journey back in time to the days of Ruth and Gehrig, Gehringer and Greenberg, Robinson and Reese, and Howard and Mantle, as they reflect on the sport's greatest moments and biggest issues.

Arguably the most famous Canadian athlete on the planet, Alphonso Davies has been the subject of global attention after bursting onto the scene as a fifteen-year-old soccer sensation. Since then, he's won every trophy imaginable with German giant FC Bayern Munich and helped Canada reach the men's World Cup for the first time in thirty-six years. Based on years of original reporting and extensive interviews with his friends, family members, teachers, coaches, teammates, and others from his inner circle, Alphonso Davies: A New Hope paints a complete portrait of the soccer star.

On a snowy winter day in 1945 at age twelve, Marika Roth barely escaped her own death only to witness the execution of hundreds of Jews by the side of the Danube. Running, starved and shoeless, through the streets of Budapest, All the Pretty Shoes is the story she survived to write.

In Mallparks, Michael Friedman observes that just as cathedrals represented power relations in medieval towns, and skyscrapers epitomized those within industrial cities, sports stadiums exemplify urban America at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Life in the G League is far from glamorous. Players make enormous sacrifices and work unimaginable hours in the hope that someone in the NBA will give them a chance. To this day, very few fans—even the most passionate followers of the NBA—know much about the G League. In the fall of 2021, the Birmingham Squadron granted author Alex Squadron complete access to the team to capture the experience of playing in the league.

Each essay illuminates the life of a single species and its relationship to humans, and how these species can help us understand birds in general. A dedicated birdwatcher and teacher, Gedney finds wonder not only in the speed and glistening beauty of the Anna's hummingbird, but also in her nest building. He acclaims the turkey vulture's and red-tailed hawk's roles in our ecosystem, and he venerates the inimitable California scrub jay's work planting acorns.

Isaac Murphy, born enslaved in 1861, still reigns as one of the greatest jockeys in American history. Black jockeys like Murphy were at the top of the most popular sport in America at the end of the nineteenth century. They were internationally famous, the first African American superstar athletes—and with wins in three Kentucky Derbies and countless other prestigious races, Murphy was the greatest of them all.

Seeing more birds than you ever imagined and witnessing exciting avian drama is possible-whether you're on the go or in your own neighborhood, local park, or backyard. As Heather Wolf explains, it all comes down to how you tune in to the show happening around you, the one in which birds-highly skilled at staying under the radar-are the stars. In Find More Birds, Heather shares her very best tactics.