In spring 1914, a new ballpark opened in Chicago. Hastily constructed after epic political maneuvering around Chicago’s and organized baseball’s hierarchies, the new Weeghman Park (named after its builder, fast-food magnate Charley Weeghman) was home to the Federal League’s Chicago Whales. The park would soon be known as Wrigley Field, one of the most emblematic and controversial baseball stadiums in America. In Wrigley Field: The Long Life and Contentious Times of the Friendly Confines, Stuart Shea provides a detailed and fascinating chronicle of this living historic landmark. The colorful history revealed in Wrigley Field shows how the stadium has evolved through the years to meet the shifting priorities of its owners and changing demands of its fans. While Wrigley Field today seems irreplaceable, we learn that from game one it has been the subject of endless debates over its future, its design, and its place in the neighborhood it calls home. To some, it is a hallowed piece of baseball history; to others, an icon of mismanagement and ineptitude. Shea deftly navigates the highs and lows, breaking through myths and rumors. And with another transformation imminent, he brings readers up to date on negotiations, giving much-needed historical context to the maneuvering. Wrigley Field is packed with facts, stories, and surprises that will captivate even the most fair-weather fan. From dollar signs (the Ricketts family paid $900 million for the team and stadium in 2009), to exploding hot dog carts (the Cubs lost that game 6–5), to the name of Billy Sianis’s curse-inducing goat (Sonovia), Shea uncovers the heart of the stadium’s history. As the park celebrates its centennial, Wrigley Field continues to prove that its colorful and dramatic history is more interesting than any of its mythology.

Wrigley Field: The Long Life and Contentious Times of the Friendly Confines

History

Shea, Stuart

Americas

University of Chicago Press

An almanac with the latest information on baseball includes previews of the 1994 season, profiles of current major league players, a look at rookie prospects, complete team overviews, and a year-by-year review of baseball since 1900

1994 Baseball Almanac

Tully, Mike

Schlossberg, Don

Reference

New Amer Library

Profiles six hundred major league players and two hundred rookie prospects, describes each team and its history, lists award winners and records, and provides a year-by-year review of the top stat leaders and league standings

1996 Baseball Almanac

Sports & Outdoors

BRADLEY, MICHAEL

Herman, Bruce

Palmer, Pete

Schlossberg, Dan

Kurowski, Jeff

Baseball

Cooperstown: Hall Of Fame Players

NEMEC, David

Johnson, Dick

Greenberger

Omnigraphics, Inc.

More than four decades since their first album, and 35 years after the release of the iconic Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd continue to inspire and mystify rock fans around the world. Pink Floyd FAQ, by pop culture author Stuart Shea, lays out the band's strange, winding history through a new series of prisms. What were the band's most memorable gigs? What are their greatest moments on record, as a group and individually? What contemporary records influenced them, and which performers follow in their wake? What was it like to be at a Pink Floyd show in 1967, in 1973, in 1980? Pink Floyd FAQ tells the band's story, dissects their most popular work, and provides little-known facts, all adding up to a provocative must-read for fans. With 400 pages of stories, history, observation, opinion, photos, and reminiscences from those who were there, Pink Floyd FAQ will discuss frankly what made the band great – as well as note their not-so-great moments – and their place in modern pop culture, giving credit where credit is due – and maybe puncturing some inflatable pigs along the way.

Pink Floyd FAQ: Everything Left to Know ... and More!

Humor & Entertainment

Backbeat

Presents reports on all thirty major league teams with analysis of player performances, minor-league scouting reports, and predictions of the 1998 baseball season

The Spy: Baseball '98

Gillette, Gary

Total Sports

Baseball fans may argue over the all-time best pitchers, worst plays in history, or which team will win the pennant, but everyone can agree that the baseball stadium holds a sacred place in American cultural life. In this breathtakingly comprehensive tour of ballparks past and present, readers can enjoy an intimate view of every major league park (more than sixty-five in all): cozy Wrigley Field, magnificent Dodger Stadium, historic Fenway Park, newcomer Miller Park, and much more. Packed with nearly a thousand breathtaking photos that zoom right into the action, this massive tome is a box seat for baseball’s evolution from the crude grounds of the 1890s to the opulent new stadiums opened in New York in 2009.

Big League Ballparks: The Complete Illustrated History

Silverman, Matthew

Enders, Eric

Metro_Books

Did you know that the Rolling Stones were originally called The Brian Jones Blues Band? That both U2 and DJ Casey Kasem took legal action against a small San Francisco bay-area band to keep a record from coming out? That Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s only number-one hit was an accident? That TV game show host Chuck Woolery was in a band that had a Top 40 hit in 1968? That 1930s movie sexpot Mae West recorded a version of the Beatles’ “Day Tripper”? That the Bee Gees were found guilty in court of plagiarism? Containing twenty-five lists of groups with the oddest names, haircuts, deaths, and hit songs, Rock and Roll's Most Wanted™ will inform and entertain both longtime rock devotees and relative neophytes.

Rock and Roll's Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Lame Lyrics, Eregious Egos, and Other Oddities

Puzzles & Games

Brassey's, Inc

The 1960s was a decade of contrasts. It had the Summer of Love, but it also witnessed the assassinations of three American leaders. It fulfilled President Kennedy’s promise of successfully landing a man on the moon but also saw the beginning of the ultimately disastrous Vietnam War. It gave us beach tunes on one end, psychedelic songs to trip to on the other, and in between heralded the British Invasion. Now you can look back on and celebrate all the events and fads from the 1960s with Stuart Shea’s trivia-laden The 1960s’ Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Hip Happenings, Swinging Sounds, and Out-of-Sight Oddities from Potomac's Most Wanted™ series.Lucky Charms cereal was introduced in 1964 with more than fifty percent sugar, the first cereal to pass the halfway point in sugar content. In 1967, Louis Washkansky was the recipient of the first-ever heart transplant. In 1961, the entire U.S. Olympic figure skating team was killed in an airplane crash in Belgium. And in 1965, with the now-classic songs "Turn, Turn, Turn," "Satisfaction," "My Girl," and "Yesterday" debuting on the airwaves, the Grammy for best rock-and-roll recording instead went to Roger Miller’s "King of the Road"! Stuart Shea gives you dozens of top-ten lists with entertaining and remarkable trivia on historic events, political revolutionaries, great moments in space, forgotten but once-popular television shows, fashion breakthroughs, great sports stories, and the best and worst of the silver screen. It’s been said that if you remember the 1960s, you didn’t live through them. Whether you lived through them or not, you can remember them in style with The 1960s’ Most Wanted™.

The 1960s' Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Hip Happenings, Swinging Sounds, and Out-of-Sight Oddities

POTOMAC BOOKS

Bathed in sun and suds, Wrigley Field is home to the perfect baseball viewing experience. The ultimate neighborhood ballpark serves as a sort of time capsule, transporting us to an era where every park felt like a day at Wrigley Field. But postcard memories aside, Wrigley’s modern cachet is a unique success story. From its construction in 1914 by the implausibly successful Charlie Weeghman (for a baseball team that was not the Chicago Cubs) to serving as the venue for George Halas’s Bears, Wrigley Field has hosted many different kinds of sporting events for America’s second city. Stuart Shea’s unparalleled history of Wrigley Field documents a park and its place within the surrounding community, its influence on who lives where in Chicago and why, and as a home to teams and events that have helped a city define itself. Beyond Wrigley’s status as both a living treasure and a historical artifact, Shea looks at the current plans to renovate the park; the combative relationship among the team’s owners, the city, and the neighborhood; and the strange blend of interdependence and mutual annoyance that have handicapped efforts to preserve, promote, and adapt the park to the twenty-first century. Unlike any other history of a ballpark, this “unauthorized biography” chronicles the ballpark as a venue for women’s baseball, football, boxing, and soccer, among other sports. As Shea explains, the tension between past and present, memory and the future, or America as we imagine it and as it is, has rarely been so well captured in one place.

Wrigley Field: The Unauthorized Biography

Castle, George

University Of Nebraska Press

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