Books in the Sport and Society series

Before the Super Bowl, before Monday Night Football, even before the NFL, there was Red Grange. This title depicts the career of this soft spoken pioneer who helped lift pro football above its reputation as a dirty little business run by rogues and bargain-basement entrepreneurs.

Through the figure of Harry Hooper (1887-1974), star of four World Series championship teams and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Paul Zingg describes baseball's transformation from an often rowdy spectacle to a respectable career choice and entertainment institution. Zingg chronicles Hooper's rise from a sharecropper background in California to college and then to the pinnacle of his sport. Boston's lead-off hitter and right fielder from 1909 to 1920, Hooper later played for the Chicago White Sox, managed in the Pacific Coast League, and coached Princeton's team. When he retired in 1925, he held every major fielding record for an American League right fielder. Hooper's diaries, memoirs, and six decades of letters offer a rich and colorful commentary on the evolution of the game, as well as insight into the tensions between a player's public and private lives.

Reveals the reality behind the glamour of college football and the tough experiences in the life of a benchwarmer. This work reflects the experiences of so many overlooked players and is of interest to those who have watched or played competitive sports.

College football's collected "tales of the tape".

A wide-ranging history of Chicago sports