Baseball In Long Beach

Organized baseball in Long Beach dates to 1910, when the Long Beach Clothiers of the Southern California Trolley League played opponents wherever a streetcar could take them. Exhibition games later featured Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Bob Feller, and other Major League barnstormers. Homegrown talent includes Baseball Hall of Famers Bob Lemon and Tony Gwynn. Pioneering entrepreneur Bill Feistner built the first accommodating baseball park in 1922 at Redondo Avenue and Stearns Street in the shadow of oil-rich Signal Hill. When ballplayers weren't on the Shell Park diamond, they worked the derricks.

More than two hundred Major League Baseball players have hailed from Long Beach and its suburbs. This hotbed of horsehide heroics includes Hall of Famers Bob Lemon, Duke Snider and Tony Gwynn, as well as longtime stars Ron Fairly, Bob Bailey, Bobby Grich, Chase Utley and Jered Weaver. Negro League and Pacific Coast League clubs enjoyed Long Beach connections. Many players whose cleats tore up legendary Rec Park and Blair Field are enshrined in the city's baseball/softball hall of fame. The winning tradition continues as Long Beach State's "Dirtbags" sent more players to the bigs in 2010 and 2011 than any other college. Join baseball historian Bob Keisser as he recounts Long Beach's greatest baseball stars, teams and stories.

The roots of football run deep in Long Beach, where Long Beach Polytechnic High School has produced more players who have played in the National Football League than any other high school in the United States. Poly's storied program has fed the NFL a wide variety of top players, including such receivers as Johnny Morris, Gene Washington, Tony Hill, Stephone Paige, Marcedes Lewis and DeSean Jackson. This authoritative citywide pigskin history by Mike Guardabascio includes the football sagas of other area high schools, as well as the legacies of Long Beach State and Long Beach City College, which have enjoyed their own brands of national recognition.

Most Padres fans have taken in a game or two at PETCO Park, have seen highlights of Steve Garvey, and remember the 1984 and 1998 World Series runs. But only real fans know the significance of .394, the original team colors, or how long Benito Santiago's hitting streak lasted. 100 Things Padres Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die is the ultimate resource for true fans of the San Diego Padres. Whether you're a die-hard booster from the days of Ollie Brown or a recent supporter of the team, these are the 100 things every fan needs to know and do in their lifetime. Padres writer Kirk Kenney has collected every essential piece of Padres knowledge and trivia, as well as must-do activities, and ranks them all from 1 to 100, providing an entertaining and easy-to-follow checklist as you progress on your way to fan superstardom.

“The wildest college basketball story ever told.” —Adrian Wojnarowski

While most fans know that baseball stars Ted Williams, Hank Greenberg, and Bob Feller served in the military during World War II, few can name the two major leaguers who died in action. (They were catcher Harry O'Neill and outfielder Elmer Gedeon.) Far fewer still are aware that another 125 minor league players also lost their lives during the war. This book draws on extensive research and interviews to bring their personal lives, baseball careers, and wartime service to light.

In baseball, injuries to players fall into two main categories: overuse and traumatic. Over 162 games, repetitive pitching and batting motions and the stress of base running can damage joints, bones, and soft tissues, making overuse injuries the most common. Traumatic injuries like beanings, sliding injuries, and concussions, while less frequent, add to the DL list each year. This work explores the various types of injuries in baseball and provides case studies of individual player injuries to demonstrate the cause of injuries, the different treatment options, and the effect of injuries on a player's career. Throughout, discussions show the link between injuries and innovations in the game, like the batting helmet and padded outfield walls, and innovations in medicine, such as Tommy John surgery.

The 1984 Detroit tigers roared out of the gate, winning their first nine games of the season and compiling an eye-popping 35-5 record after the campaign’s first 40 games--still the best start ever for any team in major league history. The tigers led wire-to-wire in 1984, becoming only the third team in the modern era of the majors to have done so. And Detroit’s determination and tenacity resulted in a sweep of the Kansas City Royals in the AL playoffs and a five-game triumph over the San Diego Padres in the World Series. And Tigers fans will tell you that the bottom of the eighth inning in Game Five was the first time Kirk Gibson hit an iconic home run in the Fall Classic. Detroit Tigers 1984: What a Start! What a Finish!, an effort by the society of American Baseball research’s BioProject Committee, brings together biographical profiles of every Tiger from that magical season, plus those of field management, top executives, the broadcasters--even venerable Tiger Stadium and the city itself.