Showing titles in Sports History

The Magical Season 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers: And the Greatest Record in Pro Sports History profiles the Los Angeles Lakers’ first championship since moving to LA 15 years earlier, but also covers their record-setting 33-game winning streak that season. This record of 33 straight wins, covering over two months of play, still stands unbroken even after 50 years. This accomplishment is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest team records in pro sports history. No other team in any major pro sport has even come close to breaking that record since that achievement in 1972.

One. Two. Three. That’s as long as it took to sear the souls of a dozen young American men, thanks to the craziest, most controversial finish in the history of the Olympics - the 1972 gold-medal basketball contest between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world’s two superpowers at the time. The U.S. team believed it had won the gold medal that September in Munich - not once, but twice. The American players became the only Olympic athletes in the history of the games to refuse their medals.

In the half-century since its birth, as Sports Illustrated grew from a struggling start-up to America's preeminent sports magazine, one thing has remained constant: the commitment to great storytelling. That part of the magazine's mission has always been easy to define: Identify the most compelling sports stories of our time and get the best writers in the business to tell them. This book brings together a lineup of writing talent worthy of the Hall of Fame and the classic stories they produced for Sports Illustrated over the past 50 years. Many of the writers whose work is collected here are longtime favorites of SI readers (Frank Deford, Rick Reilly, Steve Rushin, Gary Smith).

By 2002, The Streak - a historic 13-year run of consecutive wins by the Spartans, a high-school football team from Concord, California, that couldn't be beat - was still going strong. In this revised edition of When the Game Stands Tall, author Neil Hayes, who had unrestricted access to the De La Salle team, writes from the inside about the games, the players, and their visionary coach, Bob Ladouceur, who managed to amass the highest winning percentage in football history (.995) through standing for something greater than winning.

A Nigerian native who emigrated to the United States at age 11, Alex Owumi's exploits on the basketball court earned him a college scholarship to Georgetown University. Undrafted by the NBA, Owumi pursued his basketball dream overseas, eventually signing with Al-Nasr of Libya, a state-run athletic club privately funded by the family of Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi.

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of America's most beloved sporting event - the Super Bowl - an authoritative collection of the most pivotal plays through the decades, compiled by the legendary Jerry Rice.

The victory and legend of the Super Bowl XLV-winning Green Bay Packers continues in Chuck Carlson’s Tales from the Green Bay Packers Sideline. In this behind-the-scenes look at the NFL’s second oldest franchise, Carlson captures the determination, aggression, and vision that have constantly spurred the Packers to greatness. Through interviews and extensive research, Carlson brings to life stories from Packers legends such as Curly Lambeau, Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, Brett Favre, and the stars of today’s Packers like Aaron Rodgers and Clay Matthews, Jr.

For more than 100 years, the NFL has been a showcase for some of the most jaw-dropping, gravity defying, breathtaking displays of human excellence. The greatest games come down to a single moment: an unbelievable catch, a show-stopping run, an astonishing interception. These performances stay in the minds and hearts of football fans long after the game is over. On Play By Play, host and former NFL wide receiver Andrew "Hawk" Hawkins breaks down these iconic moments with firsthand stories that drop you right into the middle of the most epic plays in football history.

Eager to celebrate its history, and display its athletic potential, the United States hosted the nation’s first Olympic games in 1904 St. Louis. But within a few years, the publication of Coubertin’s memoirs turned the praised Olympics into the failed Olympics. America’s First Olympics corrects common misconceptions that began with Coubertin’s memoirs, and presents a fresh view of the 1904 games, which featured first-time African American Olympians, an eccentric and controversial marathon, and documentation by pioneering photojournalist Jessie Tarbox Beals.

The summer of 1984 was a watershed moment in the birth of modern sports when the nation watched Michael Jordan grow from college basketball player to professional athlete and star. That summer also saw ESPN’s rise to media dominance as the country’s premier sports network and the first modern, commercialized, profitable Olympics. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird’s rivalry raged, Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe reigned in tennis, and Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon made pro wrestling a business, while Donald Trump pierced the national consciousness as a pro football team owner.

An entertaining collection of insider yarns by an Aussie Test cricket legend. 'In the Test arena, Dennis Lillee was never beaten. West Indian champion Viv Richards had taken the sword to all the international bowlers of his era. But when he came up against Lillee, it was a heavyweight fight between unrelenting combatants. Their contests were always take-no-prisoners affairs.'

The 1890s was the peak of the American bicycle craze, and consumers, including women, were buying bicycles in large numbers. Despite critics who tried to discourage women from trying this new sport, women took to the bike in huge numbers, and mastery of the bicycle became a metaphor for women’s mastery over their lives. Spurred by the emergence of the “safety” bicycle and the ensuing cultural craze, women’s professional bicycle racing thrived in the United States from 1895 to 1902.

The glory years for the Toronto Maple Leafs—four Stanley Cups in the 1960s—may be distant memories, but what the team lacks in recent accomplishments is made up for by their history, which is rich in drama, pathos, and, most of all, humor. Figures connected to the Maple Leafs from the 1950s to the present offer their best stories, including some new takes on the team’s legends

Fanny Bullock Workman was a complicated and restless woman who defied the rigid Victorian morals she found as restrictive as a corset. With her frizzy, brown hair tucked under a topee, Workman was a force on the mountain and off. Instrumental in breaking the British stranglehold on Himalayan mountain climbing, this American woman climbed more peaks than any of her peers, became the first woman to map the far reaches of the Himalayas, the first woman to lecture at the Sorbonne, and the second to address the Royal Geographic Society of London.

Since the creation of the Minnesota Vikings in 1960, this football team has been more than just another franchise. To the fans who love them, and the haters who can’t help but admire them, the Minnesota Vikings are an unstoppable force in the NFL. In this heartwarming and inspirational book, Jim Bruton takes a look beyond the game and examines what the Minnesota Vikings have meant to fans and communities across the country.

In Kings of the Garden, Adam J. Criblez traces the fall and rise of the New York Knicks between the 1973, the year they won their last NBA championship, and 1985, when the organization drafted Patrick Ewing and gave their fans hope after a decade of frustrations. During these years, the teams led by Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe, Bob McAdoo, Spencer Haywood, and Bernard King never achieved tremendous on-court success, and their struggles mirrored those facing New York City over the same span.

The inspiring true story of the first female pilots taking their rightful place in the exciting world of aviation. In 1929, 19 gutsy women blazed out of the darkness by setting out from California in propeller-driven planes, each competing to be the winner of the first female cross-country air race. The hazards were many, from disastrous weather to possible sabotage, but by facing the dangers with skill and determination, the racers thrilled the nation and pioneered a new future for female pilots and women's rights.

In a mere twelve months, between May 2020 and May 2021, horse racing's most recognizable face—Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert—had five horses that failed postrace drug tests. Among those was the 2021 Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit. While the incident was a major scandal in the Thoroughbred racing world, it was only the latest in a series of drug-related infractions among elite athletes. Milton C. Toby addresses the historical and contemporary context of the Thoroughbred industry's most pressing issue.

One of the most exciting teams in the NBA, the Dallas Mavericks have taken the sports world by storm. Now readers and fans will finally get the chance to hear the stories and witness the action that defines the powerhouse team that captured the 2011 NBA title.In this newly updated edition of Tales from the Dallas Mavericks Locker Room, Jaime Aron brings all the power and passion of the Dallas Mavericks recent glory years to life.

In celebration of the Women’s Tennis Association’s 50th anniversary, this updated and expanded edition—based on the 1988 original We Have Come a Long Way: The Story of Women's Tennis—includes more than 33 years’ worth of stories about inspiring women and their achievements. The book arrives 53 years after King and eight other women players broke with the male tennis establishment and launched their own professional tour.