Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks: A Rocking History of Roller Hockey International - Softcover

Graham, Richard Neil

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0983406030 ISBN 13: 9780983406037

Publisher: Inline Hockey Central, 2012

Synopsis

Who won the first professional sports championship for the city of Anaheim? Which Roller Hockey International team owner posed for Playboy? Which RHI team’s logo did Sports Illustrated describe as looking like “a malevolent vacuum-cleaner attachment?” Which coach won two championships for two different teams in RHI’s first two seasons? Why were fans nearly ejected from the Oakland Skates’ arena for celebrating a hat trick? All those questions and more are answered in “Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks: A Rocking History of Roller Hockey International.” Author Richard Graham takes you behind the scenes to show how Dennis Murphy created Roller Hockey International, and why Murphy might be the most unlikely, least known and most influential visionary in North American professional sports history. RHI was a professional league that ran from 1993-1999 and soared and then crashed much like the inline skating craze of the 1990s. Full of thrills, spills and body checks, along with an abundance of humor, “Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks” is the story of a niche sport and a professional league that dared to dream big.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Graham is the former editor of such print magazines as Triathlete, Roller Hockey, and InLine Hockey News, and he was an associate editor at Sports Afield. He currently owns a website called Inline Hockey Central, where he continues to write about the sport that captured the imagination of the public in the 1990s -- roller hockey. At Triathlete, Graham won a silver cup from the Miller Brewing Company for his story on the star-crossed triathlon star Lisa Laiti, whose horrific bicycle crashes are the stuff of legend in that sport. At Sports Afield, Graham and the SA staff were awarded the Western Publications Association’s Certificate of Excellence for the December 2003 issue of America’s oldest hunting and fishing magazine (now a big-game hunting magazine). As a freelance writer, Graham has written news and feature articles for the New York Times, Women’s Sports & Fitness, American Golf, Ford Times, Iron Horse, American Hockey, NARCh Player, Roller Hockey Today, Rehab Management, and more. As a photographer, Graham has shot award-winning images for Triathlete, City Sports, Self, the New York Times, Women’s Sports & Fitness, Ford Times, Competitor, Bicycle Guide, Roller Hockey and InLine Hockey News. Graham was also a weekly humor columnist for San Diego State's Daily Aztec in the early 1980s, and he intends to publish a compilation of those columns as his next book. Graham is currently editing the autobiography of Roller Hockey International founder Dennis Murphy, and in early March 2011, Graham was named an associate producer for an upcoming documentary on Murphy's life in sports. The documentary, which the producers hope to sell to ESPN or Fox Sports, will feature many big names from Murphy's countless leagues, including Julius Irving, Dick Sharman and team owner Pat Boone of the American Basketball Association; Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky of the World Hockey Association; and Ralph Backstrom, Larry King, Rob Laurie, Hugo Belanger and Christian Skoryna of Roller Hockey International.

About this edition

• Publisher: Inline Hockey Central
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0983406030
• ISBN 13: 9780983406037
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 340