Red Grange

Red Grange stood with Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey in the 1920s as the most heralded figures in America's "Golden Age of Sport." Grantland Rice immortalized Grange in rhyme as "The Galloping Ghost" and named him and Jim Thorpe the halfbacks on his all-time college team. In 1991, when Sports Illustrated published its first special issue celebrating "yesterday's heroes, " Red Grange, "An Original Superstar, " was featured on the cover. A three-time All-American at the University of Illinois in 1923-25, Grange scored 31 touchdowns and ran for 3,637 yards in three eight-game seasons. In 1924 he gave what many consider to be the greatest single-game performance in the history of college football. Playing before 67,000 fans on the dedication day of Illinois' new Memorial Stadium, Grange scored four touchdowns in the first twelve minutes of play, ran for a fifth touchdown in the third quarter, and passed for a sixth touchdown in the final period. When Grange joined the Chicago Bears on Thanksgiving Day 1925, five days after his last college game, it marked the turning point for professional football. His enormous popularity and drawing power became the force that was to transform the NFL into a major sports attraction. This is the first paperback edition of Grange's autobiography, originally published in 1953 and praised by Robert Cromie of the Chicago Tribune as "the literary equivalent of a perfectly planned and executed touchdown march." Illustrated with more than a dozen photographs, it includes a new introduction and afterword by Ira Morton.

This book tells the remarkable story of Red Grange, a two-time NFL champion and three-time consensus All-American. A humble superstar during the early years of the NFL, Grange became the face of professional football first as a player and then as a coach, broadcaster, pitchman, Hall of Famer, pioneer, and hero.

Before the Super Bowl, before "Monday Night Football," even before the NFL, there was Red Grange.

In the 1920s four athletes defined American sports: Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Bobby Jones, and Red Grange. They were the country's first athletic pantheon, its Mount Rushmore, and for a few brief years Red Grange outshone them all. The Galloping Ghost tells the remarkable untold story of this fleet-footed college football player who inspired poetry, dazzled fans as he felled opponents on the field, and, with the help of an unscrupulous and utterly brilliant manager (the first real-life Jerry Maguire), helped launch and legitimize professional football, changing American sports forever. In this first major biography of Red Grange, Gary Andrew Poole draws on exhaustive research and interviews to evoke the golden age of sports in all its splendor and outrageousness. He transports readers from college football rallies to barnstorming tours, from the locker room to the White House to Hollywood, as he recounts Grange’s rise and tragic fall. And he lays bare the fascinating and psychologically complex relationship between a star athlete and the nation’s first real sports agent—a relationship that encapsulated the good and shadowy sides of sports and how they inevitably intersected. For fans of Cinderella Man, The Devil and Sonny Liston, and The Devil in the White City, The Galloping Ghost is a provocative, character-driven, atmospheric sports history that gives us a new understanding of a seminal sports figure, from raw and innocent athletic talent to mortal American icon. A symbol of rebellious manhood and virility, Red Grange is a reminder of the fleeting nature of fame, youth, and physical dominance.

"...provides a detailed look at America's pastime through the lens of pop culture, [an] A-to-Z inventory of how certain aspects of the game affect and reflect broader society."--from publisher description.

In a series that explores the logic-defying comebacks and tough losses, the dramatic interceptions, fumbles, game-winning field goals, and touchdowns that shape a fan’s greatest memories of their beloved team, this book does not disappoint as the ultimate collector’s item for Bears fans. It chronicles the most famous moments in Chicago football history, including Gale Sayers's six-touchdown day against the 49ers, Walter Payton's 275-yard performance in 1977, Devin Hester's Super Bowl XLI kickoff return, and the dominating team performance of Super Bowl XX. The descriptions of each play are accompanied with game information and quotes from participants, players, and observers with firsthand accounts.

In The First Star, acclaimed sports writer Lars Anderson recounts the thrilling story of Harold "Red" Grange, the Galloping Ghost of the gridiron, and the wild barnstorming tour that earned professional football a place in the American sporting firmament. Red Grange's on-field exploits at the University of Illinois, so vividly depicted in print by the likes of Grantland Rice and Damon Runyan, had already earned him a stature equal to that of Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, and other titans of American sports' golden age. Then, in November 1925, Grange made the fateful decision to parlay his fame in pro ball, at the time regarded as inferior to the "purer" college game. Grange signed on with the dapper theater impresario and promoter C. C. Pyle, who had courted him with the promise of instant wealth and fame. Teaming with George Halas, the hard-nosed entrepreneurial boss of the cash-strapped Chicago Bears NFL franchise, Pyle and Grange crafted an audacious plan: a series of seventeen matches against pro teams and college "all-star" squads–an entire season's worth of games crammed into six punishing weeks that would forever change sports in America. With an unerring eye, Anderson evocatively captures the full scope of this frenetic Jazz Age spectacle. Night after night, the Bears squared off against a galaxy of legends–Jim Thorpe, George "Wildcat" Wilson, the "Four Horsemen of Notre Dame": Stuhldreher, Crowley, Miller, and Layden–while entertaining immense crowds. Grange's name alone could cause makeshift stadiums to rise overnight, as occurred in Coral Gables, Florida, for a Bears game against a squad of college stars. Facing constant physical punishment and nonstop attention from autograph hounds, gamblers, showgirls, and headhunting defensive backs, Grange nevertheless thrilled audiences with epic scoring runs and late-game heroics. Grange's tour alone did not account for the rise of the NFL, but in bringing star power to fans nationwide, Grange set the pro game on a course for dominance. A real-life story chock-full of timeless athletic feats and overnight fortunes, of speakeasies and public spectacles, The First Star is both an engrossing sports yarn and a meticulous cultural narrative of America in the age of Gatsby.