Gibson S Last Stand

During star-pitcher Bob Gibson’s most brilliant season, the turbulent summer of 1968, he started thirty-four games and pitched every inning in twenty-eight of them, shutting out the opponents in almost half of those complete games. After their record-breaking season, Gibson and his teammates were stunned to lose the 1968 World Series to the Detroit Tigers. For the next six years, as Bob Gibson struggled to maintain his pitching excellence at the end of his career, changes in American culture ultimately changed the St. Louis Cardinals and the business and pastime of baseball itself. Set against the backdrop of American history and popular culture, from the protests of the Vietnam War to the breakup of the Beatles, the story of the Cardinals takes on new meaning as another aspect of the changes happening at that time. In the late 1960s, exorbitant salaries and free agency was threatening to change America’s game forever and negatively impact the smaller-market teams in Major League Baseball. As the Cardinals’ owner August A. Busch Jr. and manager Albert “Red” Schoendienst attempted to reinvent the team, restore its cohesiveness, and bring new blood in to propel the team back to contention for the pennant, Gibson remained the one constant on the team. In looking back on his career, Gibson mourned the end of the Golden Era of baseball and believed that the changes in the game would be partially blamed on him, as his pitching success caused team owners to believe that cash-paying customers only wanted base hits and home runs. Yet, he contended, the shrinking of the strike zone, the lowering of the mound, and the softening of the traditional rancor between the hitter and pitcher forever changed the role of the pitcher in the game and created a more politically correct version of the sport. Throughout Gibson’s Last Stand, Doug Feldmann captivates readers with the action of the game, both on and off the field, and interjects interesting and detailed tidbits on players’ backgrounds that often tie them to famous players of the past, current stars, and well-known contemporary places. Feldmann also entwines the teams history with Missouri history: President Truman and the funeral procession for President Eisenhower through St. Louis; Missouri sports legends Dizzy Dean, Mark McGwire, and Stan “the Man” Musial; and legendary announcers Harry Caray and Jack Buck. Additionally, a helpful appendix provides National League East standings from 1969 to 1975. Bob Gibson remains one of the most unique, complex, and beloved players in Cardinals history. In this story of one of the least examined parts of his career—his final years on the team—Feldmann takes readers into the heart of his complexity and the changes that swirled around him.

"An engrossing and tautly written account of a critical chapter in American history." --Los Angeles Times Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Hurricane's Eye, Pulitzer Prize finalist Mayflower, and Valiant Ambition, is a historian with a unique ability to bring history to life. The Last Stand is Philbrick's monumental reappraisal of the epochal clash at the Little Bighorn in 1876 that gave birth to the legend of Custer's Last Stand. Bringing a wealth of new information to his subject, as well as his characteristic literary flair, Philbrick details the collision between two American icons- George Armstrong Custer and Sitting Bull-that both parties wished to avoid, and brilliantly explains how the battle that ensued has been shaped and reshaped by national myth.

Cal Gibson rode horses with his father as a boy. Now, fifty years later and a lone rural relic, his lifestyle continues in the countryside of Missouri as well as in its neighboring states, the South, and West, despite the impersonal advances of technology. He is a cowboy.Southwest Missouri¿s oak forests, native prairies, grass-covered hills, and cattle operations second only to Texas, are Cal¿s home. Here as a young man, he gains the devotion of a lovely woman, but is forced to walk away. He makes do, however painfully, throughout his remaining years. Yet, here, too, Cal has held tight to friends that last and stand with him when the going gets tough. Cal and his six lifelong companions provide a final burst of heartfelt determination and courage that unknowingly fosters revolution in a land written off as soft, spoiled, and doomed by greed.Cal¿s violent but heroic end spells out how this brave cowboy near sixty contributes more to his small community, his state, and his country during a cold December and January, than anyone could dare hope in a string of lifetimes.This intense but uplifting story tells of the heartland and its real people, their loves, tragedies, and spirit in terrible times. Cal Gibson grows to be a lone rock of decency and hope holding on in midstream as a fearful river rises. He provides the steady hand his community needs to cope with a calamity that today is all too possible.Impressed by the independence of American farmers and ranchers, the author has chronicled measured doses of their wisdom and grit in his writing. Although leaving rural Missouri repeatedly, his love of the land and family have always drawn him back and added a keener edge to his storytelling.

Defeat and death at the Little Bighorn gave General George Custer and his Seventh Cavalry a kind of immortality. In Custer's Last Stand, Brian W. Dippie investigates the body of legend surrounding that battle on a bloody Sunday in 1876. His survey of the event in poems, novels, paintings, movies, jokes, and other ephemera amounts to a unique reflection on the national character.

The story of the remarkable 1968 baseball season: an epic battle of pitchers, Bob Gibson and Denny McClain, which culminated in one of the greatest World Series of all time

Colonel Nathan Wrights Army career had been on the fast track. He beat the odds to even have that career. The learningdisabled kid whose teachers said couldnt be taught had proved his naysayers wrong. After twenty-five years in the Special Forces, he had also beaten the odds to stay alive through countless covert operations and combat missions. Now, after a tragic accident in Afghanistan, his soaring career has come crashing down. His injuries force him to leave the Army he loves, but once again Nathan has beaten the odds. He has lived and is walking on his own two feet. Through it all, Nathan knew God had a plan for his life. Now God has opened a new door for him by dropping a job at a military academy in Northeast Tennessee in his lap. Nathan knows God has a purpose for him at this school. All he has to do is go and find it. Lori Kittridge has never put much thought behind finding Mr. Right. She has always been happy in her career. She never thought that much about her Christianity either. Then, Nathan Wright enters her life, and her world is turned upside down. His unbound openness in his faith in Jesus has her questioning her own faith. But worse than that, suddenly this handsome wounded warrior has her thinking of nothing but Mr. Rightor, more accurately, Colonel Right.

Robert F. Hoke was the youngest Southern general in the Civil War, rumored to be Lee's successor, but once he returned home, "he declined every honor offered him by North Carolinians, including the governorship."--Jacket.

Custer’s Last Stand remains one of the most iconic events in American history and culture. Had Custer prevailed at the Little Bighorn, the victory would have been noteworthy at the moment, worthy of a few newspaper headlines, but only a few among the many battles with the Plains Indians. In defeat, however tactically inconsequential in the larger conflict, Custer became legend. In Inventing Custer, Edward Caudill and Paul Ashdown bridge the gap between the Custer who truly existed and the one we’ve immortalized and mythologized into legend in our generally accepted reading of American history and his significance to it.