Under The Grandstand

Not only did God leave us the Holy Spirit to walk alongside us during our earthly pilgrimage, He also surrounds us with those who "were commended for their faith"-"a great cloud of witnesses," or as Williams translates Hebrews 11 and 12, a vast "crowd of spectators in the grandstands" to encourage us in our walk of faith. These are stories of some of these people told by those who knew them best-friends, relatives and, in one case, an enemy-who knew them when they were not wearing their public masks, walking on earth just like us, and who were often misunderstood, ridiculed, persecuted, sometimes killed, and always making mistakes. Yet they persevered and endured, gaining a place in the Hall of Faith.

250 book titles that have never seen the light of day (and one haiku). Family-friendly fun for chronic quipsters and perpetual punsters! Guaranteed G-rated groans on every page."Managed to read it all in one sitting. For me, that's quite an accomplishment."Ivan Auflitch, author of Can't Sit Still."Took this along on our latest expedition and roared with laughter."Claude Yarmoff, author of The Lion Attacked."Captivating!"Barb Dweyer, author of Prison Security.

Cleveland and the surrounding area was home to one of the earliest and most active baseball scenes outside of the eastern seaboard. This extraordinarily detailed history combines author commentary with first-hand accounts to document baseball's rapid development and popularization in the region during the decades following the Civil War. Ordered chronologically and then geographically by town, chapters follow the game's rise from the earliest reports on ball in 1841, to the era of loosely organized, town-to-town rivalries and semipro clubs, and finally through the early era of the professional, and eventually major league, sport.

As baseball was becoming the national pastime, Kansas was settling into statehood, with hundreds of towns growing up with the game. The early history of baseball in Kansas, chronicled in this book, is the story of those towns and the ballparks they built, of the local fans and teams playing out the drama of the American dream in the heart of the country. Mark Eberle's history spans the years between the Civil War–era and the start of World War II, encapsulating a time when baseball was adopted by early settlers, then taken up by soldiers sent west, and finally by teams formed to express the identity of growing towns and the diverse communities of African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans. As elsewhere in the country, these teams represented businesses, churches, schools, military units, and prisons. There were men's teams and women's, some segregated by race and others integrated, some for adults and others for youngsters. Among them we find famous barnstormers like the House of David, the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry who played at Fort Wallace in the 1860s, and Babe Didrikson pitching the first inning of a 1934 game in Hays. Where some of these games took place, baseball is still played, and Kansas Baseball, 1858–1941 takes us to nine of them, some of the oldest in the country. These ballparks, still used for their original purpose, are living history, and in their stories Eberle captures a vibrant image of the state's past and a vision of many innings yet to be played—a storied history and promising future that readers will be tempted to visit with this book as an informative and congenial guide.

"No, I'm..." George never got the chance to complete the sentence. His head exploded and showered Molly with blood, broken bone and brain matter. She screamed as the car went out fo control and veered left through the left lane, across the median strip and headlong into a twin trailer, eighteen wheeler. The last thought Molly had was that she was not going to see Little George Three today. Or ever.