Sports of the Times: A Day-By-Day Selection of the Most Important, Thrilling and Inspired Events of the Past 150 Years - Hardcover

The New York Times

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312312326 ISBN 13: 9780312312329

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2003

Synopsis

From the pages of The New York Times come 365 unforgettable moments in sports-to relive, argue about, and enjoy, including:

* June 22, 1938-Joe Louis beats Max Schmeling for the heavyweight boxing championship
* May 29, 1953-Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norkay become the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest
* January 12, 1969-Joe Namath promises a Super Bowl victory and delivers
* August 3, 1984-Mary Lou Retton becomes the first American gymnast to win the gold medal
* July 10, 1999-In front of the largest crowd to ever watch a woman's sporting event, the U.S. women's soccer team defeats China for the World Championship
* August 20, 2000-Winning his third straight major and second consecutive P.G.A. Championship, Tiger Woods defeats Bob May in a three-hole playoff

Every sports fan has a personal memory book, a treasury of unforgettable achievements, moments in which a game was spectacularly won (or lost) against all odds, a hero was crowned or an unspeakable human error cost an athlete a championship or a team the entire season.

Sometimes it's a scandal, a rule change, or even technology that changes a sport dramatically. Sports of the Times draws from the archives of Times reporting to re-create and select the most important event of each calendar day, from any sport-horse racing to boxing, soccer to the Olympics and more.

With three runners-up for each day, five-star selections of the most significant events in history and exclusive photos throughout, this book makes a wonderful gift, and is sure to start many conversations and debates.

About this title

About the Author

William Taaffe was a staff editor for The New York Times, with more than seven years' deadline experience on the paper's sports desk. For almost a decade he wrote a critically acclaimed biweekly TV sports column for Sports Illustrated, winning a National Headliners Award for best national magazine column of any category. He was also a columnist for The Washington Post and The Washington Star, and wrote Gimme a Break, the autobiography of the TV sportscaster Warner Wolf.

David Fischer is the author of A Thing or Two About Baseball, Do Curve Balls Really Curve? and The 50 Coolest Jobs in Sports. His freelance articles have appeared in The New York Times, Sports Illustrated for Kids, and Yankee Magazine, and he has worked for Sports Illustrated, and NBC Sports.

BRAD SMITH is a sports photo editor at The New York Times, formerly with Sports Illustrated.

PANCHO BERNASCONI, a former sports photo editor at The New York Times, is now the national photo editor for The Times.

From Booklist

Here's a nifty variation on the page-per-day book. Turn to June 9, and read a story (originally published in the New York Times on June 9, 1973) about Secretariat's victory in the Belmont Stakes. Or turn to January 5 and read the Times' 1920 report on the Yankees' buying Babe Ruth's contract from the Boston Red Sox for the then-astronomical sum of $125,000. It's a very clever concept, one year's worth of stories from the Times representing the biggest sporting news to have occurred on each day of the calendar over an entire century. There is something here for nearly every sports fan: baseball, hockey, horseracing, running, basketball, golf, tennis, even skateboarding. The stories appear in their original form, unembellished by contemporary commentary and with their original photographs. There are only two problems with the book: it's an oversize hardcover, which makes it less than ideal for bedtime reading, and it's hard to imagine any sports fan portioning the book out to one page a day. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0312312326
• ISBN 13: 9780312312329
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432
• Editor: Taaffe William, Fischer David