Touching Base

The revised and expanded edition of Touching Base examines the myths, realities, symbols, and rituals of America's national pastime. Steven Riess details the relationships among urban politics, communities, and baseball while exploring how Progressive Era sensibilities shaped debates over issues like Sunday games, ballpark construction, and promotion of the games. Focusing on Atlanta, New York, and Chicago, Riess looks at all the participants--from spectators to owners to players--in analyzing how baseball both influenced and mirrored broader society.

This book helps teachers, principals, superintendents, and all educators develop a repertoire of tools and skills for comfortable and effective interaction with parents. It shows you how to deal with the parent who is bossy, volatile, argumentative, aggressive, or maybe the worst - apathetic. It provides specific phrases to use with parents to help you avoid using "trigger" words which unintentionally make matters worse. It will show you how to deliver bad news to good parents, how to build positive credibility to all types of parents, and how to foster the kind of parent involvement which leads to student success.

Previous editions published : 1997 (2nd) and 1989 (1st).

Tips, strategies, tactics, forms, and real-word advice for starting - or building - a family law practice. Written by a successful and happy family lawyer, this book explains the skills and knowledge necessary to thrive in a challenging area of the law. It takes a no-nonsense approach in explaining the most critical issues for developing a successful career. Examples and practice tips show how to gain experience, understand the business aspects of a practice, develop and maintain the ideal client mix, and manage staff and finances. CD-ROM with forms and related materials.

Do you hate going forward? Do you shudder when a colleague wants to reach out? Are you disgusted by low-hanging fruit, sick of being on the team, and reluctant to open the kimono? Does the phrase blue-sky thinking make you see red? Do you really want to drill down or take a helicopter view? Are you past caring whether the key drivers are going to move the needle? Should anyone really punch a puppy? And can you bear to hear about a big hairy audacious goal? If modern office jargon makes you want to throw up, this book is for you. Taking a hilarious and scathing deep dive into the most hated and absurd examples of corporate-speak it is a come to Jesus moment for verbally downtrodden workers everywhere.

Chicago has garnered national recognition by winning the World Series, the Super Bowl, and a string of titles in the National Basketball Association. But amateur sports also play a large role in the city's athletic traditions, especially in schools and youth leagues. In fourteen chapters, experts focus on multiple aspects of Chicago sports, including long looks at amateur boxing, the impact of gender and ethnicity in sports, the politics of horse racing and stadium building, the lasting scandal of the Black Sox, and the perpetual heartbreak of the Cubs. Well illustrated with forty photographs, this volume will help historians and sports fans alike appreciate the longstanding importance of sports in Chicago. Contributors are Peter Alter, Robin F. Bachin, Larry Bennett, Linda J. Borish, Gerald Gems, Elliott J. Gorn, Richard Kimball, Gabe Logan, Daniel A. Nathan, Timothy Neary, Steven A. Riess, John Russick, Timothy Spears, Costas Spirou, and Loic Wacquant.

All Cub fans know from heartbreak and curse-toting goats. Fewer know that, prior to moving to the north side in 1916, the team fielded powerhouse nines that regularly claimed the pennant. Before the Ivy offers a grandstand seat to a golden age: • BEHOLD the 1871 team as it plays for the title in nine different borrowed uniforms after losing everything in the Great Chicago Fire • ATTEND West Side Grounds at Polk and Wolcott with its barbershop quartet • MARVEL as superstar Cap Anson hits .399, makes extra cash running a ballpark ice rink, and strikes out as an elected official • WONDER at experiments with square bats and corked balls, the scandal of Sunday games and pre-game booze-ups, the brazen spitters and park dimensions changed to foil Ty Cobb • THRILL to the poetic double-play combo of Tinker, Evers, and Chance even as they throw tantrums at umpires and punches at each other Rich with Hall of Fame personalities and oddball stories, Before the Ivy opens a door to Chicago's own field of dreams and serves as every Cub fan's guide to a time when thoughts of "next year" filled rival teams with dread.

These nine essays selected by Lawrence Baldassaro and Richard A. Johnson present for the first time in a single volume an ethnic and racial profile of American baseball. These essayists show how the gradual involvement by various ethnic and racial groups reflects the changing nature of baseball-- and of American society as a whole-- over the course of the twentieth century. Although the sport could not truly be called representative of America until after Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947, fascination with the ethnic backgrounds of the players began more than a century ago when athletes of German and Irish descent entered the major leagues in large numbers. In the 1920s, commentators noted the influx of ballplayers of Italian and Slavic origins and wondered why there were not more Jewish players in the big leagues. The era following World War II, however, saw the most dramatic ethnographic shift with the belated entry of African American ballplayers. The pattern of ethnic succession continues as players of Hispanic and Asian origin infuse fresh excitement and renewal into the major leagues.