The National Football League has long reigned as America's favorite professional sports league. In its early days, however, it was anything but a dominant sports industry, barely surviving World War II. Its rise began after the war, and the 1950s was a pivotal decade for the league. Run to Glory and Profits tells the economic story of how in one decade the NFL transformed from having a modest following in the Northeast to surpassing baseball as this country's most popular sport. To break from the margins of the sports landscape, pro football brought innovation, action, skill, and episodic suspense on "any given Sunday." These factors in turn drove attendance and rising revenues. Team owners were quick to embrace television as a new medium to put the league in front of a national audience. Based on primary documents, David George Surdam provides an economic analysis in telling the business story behind the NFL's rise to popularity. Did the league's vaunted competitive balance in the decade result from its more generous revenue sharing and its reverse-order draft? How did the league combat rival leagues, such as the All-America Football Conference and the American Football League? Although strife between owners and players developed quickly, pro-football fans stayed loyal because the product itself remained so good.

Since its inception in 1938, the Liga de Beisbol Professional de Puerto Rico has launched the careers of numerous island players, including Ruben Gomez, Jerry Morales, Orlando Cepeda, Vic Power, Ruben Sierra and the greatest of all Puerto Rican stars, Roberto Clemente. For many "imports," the league has been a stepping stone to major league stardom. In its early years, many of the league's stars came from the Negro Leagues: Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Monte Irvin and Roy Campanella were just a few of the African American stars who graced the Puerto Rican diamonds in the 1940s and early 1950s. The Santurce outfield of 1954 featured one of the finest outfields in baseball history: Clemente, Willie Mays, and Puerto Rican star Bob Thurman. Through the mid-1980s, many major league teams sent their up-and-coming stars to Puerto Rico for a final bit of seasoning--Cal Ripken, Jr., Tony Gwynn, Johnny Bench, Rickey Henderson, Phil Niekro, Hank Aaron and Robin Yount were among them. They played for such future league big league managers as Frank Robinson, Jim Fregosi and Kevin Kennedy, while the balls and strikes were called by Nestor Chylak, Doug Harvey, Dale Ford and many other future major league umpires.

"The business of baseball and player transactions by David Ball"-- t.p.

This combination reference book and history covers the inroads and achievements made on professional ball fields by Latin American athletes, the Major Leagues' greatest international majority. Following an "on this date in Hispanic baseball history" format, the author takes a commemorative look at generations of players from Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America, from the earliest pioneers through the well-known stars of today. There are two appendices: first Latinos by franchise; and an extensive chronological listing of Latino milestones by country. The book is fully indexed by players, teams, ballparks, and other contributors to Latino baseball history.

Sports events represent, for many, landmarks for memories, contexts that securely fix moments in past time. And in America, perhaps more than in any other country, they are part of what connects the individual to the multitude. When we add them to our remembrances, they subtly suggest that, like sporting contests, our personal tales are fit for public consumption. How easy and natural it is to add a little referential sidebar to the stories we tell: “I started work in January, I remember because the Bills had just lost the Super Bowl—the fourth one.” On a broader scale, sports have left their imprint on the stony history of the nation. Beginning slowly with a game of bowls (1611), something like miniature golf in New England (1652), horse racing on Long Island, and billiards in Charlestown (1722), the sporting life then gained momentum—and a firmer grip on the national conscience—with the early play of baseball, basketball, and football, games that would come to dominate the sports scene in 20th century America. Organized by day of the year, this volume provides the browser, the trivia buff and the sports historian a record of thousands of frames, matches, series, and championships. Whether it's the day a bases-loaded walk gave the National League its 16th All-Star victory in 17 seasons (July 17, 1979) or the day Harvard defeated Yale and Brown in the first-ever intercollegiate regatta (July 26, 1859), there's something new buried within the tome’s 365 layers for even the most knowledgeable fans.