Written by acclaimed sports author and oral historian Harvey Frommer and with an introduction by pro football Hall of Famer Frank Gifford, When It Was Just a Game tells the fascinating story of the ground-breaking AFL–NFL World Championship Football game played on January 15, 1967: Packers vs. Chiefs. Filled with new insights, containing commentary from the recently discovered unpublished memoir of Kansas City Chiefs coach Hank Stram, and featuring oral history from many who were at the game—media, players, coaches, fans—the book presents back story and front story in the words of those who lived it and saw it go on to become the Super Bowl, the greatest sports attraction the world has ever known. Archival photographs and drawings help bring the event to life.

When It Was Just a Game: Remembering the First Super Bowl

History

Frommer sports historian journalist and author of Remembering Yankee Stadium, Harvey

Americas

LYONS PRESS+

In this delightful history of the sport, Frommer captures the flavor, smell, and craziness of the early days of baseball. Starting with its invention in 1842 by the descendant of a British sea captain (and not Abner Doubleday), Frommer traces the development of the sport from the first games on a vacant lot at 27th and Madison in New York to the turn of the century, when the National League was emerging as the preeminent forum for truly professional baseball.

Old Time Baseball: America's Pastime in the Gilded Age

Taylor Trade Publishing

In the heady days after World War II, the nation was ready for excitement and heroes, and a city—New York—was eager for entertainment. Baseball provided the heroes, and the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers—with their rivalries, their successes, their stars—provided the show. New York City Baseball recaptures the extraordinary decade of 1947–1957, when the three New York teams were the uncrowned kings of the city. In those ten years, Casey Stengel’s Bronx Bombers went to the World Series seven times; “Joltin’” Joe DiMaggio stepped gracefully aside to make room for a young slugger named Mickey Mantle; Bobby Thomson hit “the shot heard ’round the world”; and the Brooklyn Dodgers achieved the impossible by beating the Yankees in the 1955 World Series. Over the decade, the teams averaged an astounding 90 wins against 63 losses a season, making it, according to The New York Times, “a helluva ten years.” Including a new introduction to the 2013 edition and rare interviews with Monte Irvin, Rachel Robinson (Jackie's widow), Mel Allen, Duke Snider, Eddie Lopat, Phil Rizzuto, and many more, this book is a must-have for those who want to experience baseball’s golden age.

New York City Baseball: The Golden Age, 1947–1957

Experience the mosaic of mid-century Manhattan in this exuberant oral history that begins in the post–World War II years when the city came into its own, and ends in the mid-1970s when it nearly went bust. This is the story of a time when great ocean liners were docked in the Hudson River ports, Checker cabs hurtled across a two-way Fifth Avenue, and the Third Avenue el cast long shadows onto the street below. There are recollections of Friday night boxing matches at the old Madison Square Garden, of peddling tunes in the heart of Tin Pan Alley at the Brill Building, of a Harlem that had a nightclub on every corner, and a SoHo that was saved from a wrecker’s ball by a “bunch of mothers.” Eleven daily newspapers covered the city beat back then, Automats and five-and-dimes were in each neighborhood, and the New York Philharmonic performed free summer concerts at Lewisohn Stadium on the City College campus. Zabar’s was a small dairy store; Balducci’s was an open-air fruit and vegetable stand. New York was becoming the center of haute cuisine and haute couture; the New York School of abstract expressionists had taken the lead from Paris in avant-garde art. This transformative time when New York City became the capital of the world is captured here in myriad memories that create an often humorous, sometimes poignant, occasionally bitter—but always loving—testament to the magical mystique of Manhattan. Includes interviews with Jimmy Breslin, Bill Gallo, Monte Irvin, Robert Merrill, Herman Badillo, Elaine Kaufman, Jerry Della Femina, Pauline Trigère, Sirio Maccioni, Jane Jacobs, Saul Zabar, Margaret Whiting, and many more.

Manhattan at Mid-Century: An Oral History

Biographies & Memoirs

Frommer, Myrna Katz

Community & Culture

In this deliciously revealing oral history of Broadway from World War II through the early 1980s, more than one hundred theater veterans—including Carol Channing, Hal Prince, Donna McKechnie, Hal Holbrook, Andrea McArdle, and Al Hirschfeld—deliver the behind-the-scenes story of the hits, the stars, the feuds, and the fiascoes. Along the way there are evocations of the great comedians and dramatic actors who had that indefinable magic that made them stand out above the rest. With verve, love, and passion, this book gives us the story of more than half a century of great theater—from the inside out.

It Happened on Broadway: An Oral History of the Great White Way

Humor & Entertainment

The rivalry between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox involves not just the teams, but the cities, owners, ballparks, fans, and the media. Its roots reach back to before even Babe Ruth and Harry Frazee, yet it is as contemporary as the next Red Sox–Yankees game. This book tells the story of the rivalry from the first game these epic teams played against each other in 1901 through the 2013 season in what former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called “the best rivalry in any sport.”

Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry

Sports & Outdoors

Frommer, Frederic J.

Baseball

Just in time for the one-hundredth anniversary of Miami Beach, It Happened in Miami, the Magic City: An Oral History features nearly seventy fabulous voices including more than fifteen mini-memorists, telling stories, offering perceptions on subject matter as far back as memory allows up to the exciting headlines of today. Sun and fun, yes, but the story is much more than that. We are there through the dramatic days of World War II, the segregated south that Miami was, Meyer Lansky and cops and robbers, the Cocaine Cowboys, the post–war glamour of the flashy hotels and famed architect Morris Lapidius, the Fountainbleau and Eden Roc, the Jewish presence and contributions, the swinging Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. We are witness to Muhammad Ali and the iconic Fifth Street Gym, the preserving of art deco, the days of the Mariel and Pedro Pan and the Cuban impact. We are brought inside modern day Miami—an international city, a place of culture and dreamers, a city of tomorrow.

It Happened in Miami, the Magic City: An Oral History

Blending exclusive rare interviews with Rachel Robinson (Jackie’s widow), Mack Robinson (Jackie’s brother), Hall of Famers Monte Irvin, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Ralph Kiner, and others, celebrated author Harvey Frommer evokes the lives of general manager Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson by describing how they worked together to shatter baseball's color line. Rickey and Robinson is a dual biography tracing the convergence of the lives of two of baseball's most influential individuals in a marker moment in sports and cultural history.

Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Barrier

An entertaining read about the greatest baseball team, the 1927 New York Yankees, who beat up on American League rivals during the regular season and then swept the World Series. With verve, facts, and stories, Harvey Frommer evokes the Murderers' Row of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Miller Huggins, Tony Lazerri, Bob Meusel, and more.

Five O'Clock Lightning: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and the Greatest Baseball Team in History, the 1927 New York Yankees

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Frommer sports historian journalist and author of Remembering Yankee Stadium, Harvey. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Frommer sports historian journalist and author of Remembering Yankee Stadium, Harvey

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Frommer sports historian journalist and author of Remembering Yankee Stadium, Harvey. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

When It Was Just a Game: Remembering the First Super Bowl

Old Time Baseball: America's Pastime in the Gilded Age

New York City Baseball: The Golden Age, 1947–1957

Manhattan at Mid-Century: An Oral History

It Happened on Broadway: An Oral History of the Great White Way

Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry

When It Was Just a Game: Remembering the First Super Bowl

It Happened in Miami, the Magic City: An Oral History

Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Barrier

Five O'Clock Lightning: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and the Greatest Baseball Team in History, the 1927 New York Yankees