Ed Gruver - Böcker

Unable to buy into an existing team and rebuffed by National Football League owners who had no desire to expand, 27-year-old Lamar Hunt, the son of Texas billionaire H.L. Hunt, formed the American Football League in 1959. He placed his team in Dallas, called them the Texans, and invited other young entrepreneurs to join him. The seven men who did called themselves members of the "Foolish Club," but on September 9, 1960, the AFL made its regular season debut and went on to change the face of football forever.Unlike the NFL, the American Football League featured wide open offenses and innovative coaching strategies, capturing a new generation of fans dedicated to the league and its players. The AFL aggressively pursued college stars--Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon in its inaugural season and Joe Namath in 1965. The eight teams signed a collective television agreement that split the money equally among the franchises, thus providing far more stability and balance than earlier start-up leagues. Based on interviews with owners, coaches, players, scouts, broadcasters and writers from the era, this is a colorful account of the AFL and its place in sports history.

Hairs vs. Squares is an ode to an unforgettable season that began with the first major players' strike in the history of North American sports and ended with a record-setting World Series played by two of the game's greatest and most colorful dynasties. In a sign of the times it was Hippies vs. Hardhats, a clash of cultures with the hirsute, mod Mustache Gang colliding with the clean-cut, conservative Big Red Machine on the game's grandest stage.When the Oakland A's met the Cincinnati Reds in the 1972 Fall Classic, more than a championship was at stake. The more than two dozen interviews bring to life a time when controversy was commonplace, both inside and outside the national pastime. In baseball, Willie Mays was traded, Hank Aaron was chasing down Babe Ruth's home run record, and Dick Allen was helping to save the Chicago White Sox franchise while winning the American League's Most Valuable Player award. Outside the American pastime the war in Vietnam was raging, campus protests spread throughout the country, and Watergate and the Munich Olympics headlined the tumultuous year.The 1972 Major League Baseball season was marked by the rapid rise of rookies and young stars, the fall of established teams and veterans, courageous comebacks, and personal redemptions. Along with the many unforgettable and outrageous characters inside baseball, Hairs vs. Squares emphasizes the dramatic changes that took place on and off the field in the 1970s. Owners' lockouts, on-field fights, maverick managers, controversial trades, artificial fields, the first full five-game League Championship Series, and the closest, most competitive World Series ever, combined to make the 1972 season as complex as the social and political unrest that marked the era.

Bringing The Monster to its Knees: Ben Hogan, Oakland Hills, and the 1951 U.S. Open is the first full-length book on a victory that the four-time U.S. Open champion always maintained was the "most satisfying" of his long and storied Hall of Fame career. It fills an important void in previous books on Hogan's tournament play, books covering his championship quests from Merion in 1950 to the Olympic Club in San Francisco in 1955 to Cherry Hills in 1960.The 1951 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills is unique in that it represents the first time the USGA deliberately altered a course for a championship, a practice that became common in the years that followed and continues to this day. The result was "The Monster," a creation of famed course architect Robert Trent Jones. It remains the most infamous course layout in history and arguably the most torturous test ever presented to golfers anywhere.Overcoming chronic pain that was a vestige of his near-fatal car crash in 1949, a field filled with future Hall of Fame players, and a course so devilish in its design that it was labeled "Oakland Hells," Hogan called his record-setting final round 67 in the '51 Open the "greatest round I have ever played." He then issued one of the most famous quotes in sports history: "I'm glad I brought this course—this monster—to its knees."

The day of the Ice Bowl game was so cold, the referees' whistles wouldn't work; so cold, the reporters' coffee froze in the press booth; so cold, fans built small fires in the concrete and metal stands; so cold, TV cables froze and photographers didn't dare touch the metal of their equipment; so cold, the game was as much about survival as it was about skill and strategy. On New Year's Eve, 1967, the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers met for a classic NFL championship game, played on a frozen field in sub-zero weather. The "Ice Bowl" challenged every skill of these two great teams. Here's the whole story, based on dozens of interviews with people who were there—on the field and off—told by author Ed Gruver with passion, suspense, wit, and accuracy.

In late 1975 and early 1976, at the height of the Cold War, two of the Soviet Union’s long-dominant national hockey teams traveled to North America to play an eight-game series against the best teams in the National Hockey League. The culmination of the “Super Series” was HC CSKA Moscow’s faceoff against the reigning champion Flyers in Philadelphia on January 11, 1976. Known as the “Red Army Club,” HC CSKA hadn’t lost a game in the series. Known as the “Broad Street Bullies,” the Flyers were determined to bring the Red Army team’s winning streak to an end with their trademark aggressive style of play.Based largely on interviews, Ed Gruver’s book will tell the story of this epic game and series as it lays out the stakes involved: nothing less than the credibility of the NHL. If the Red Army team had completed its series sweep by defeating the two-time Stanley Cup champion Flyers, the NHL would no longer have been able to claim primacy of place in professional-level hockey. Gruver also describes how the game and series affected the styles of both Russian and NHL teams. The Soviets adopted a more physical brand of hockey, while the NHL increasingly focused on passing and speed.

Hell with the Lid Off looks at the ferocious five-year war waged by Pittsburgh and Oakland for NFL supremacy during the turbulent seventies. The roots of their rivalry dated back to the 1972 playoff game in Pittsburgh that ended with the “Immaculate Reception,” Franco Harris’s stunning touchdown that led the Steelers to a win over the Raiders in their first postseason meeting. That famous game ignited a fiery rivalry for NFL supremacy. Between 1972 and 1977, the Steelers and the Raiders-between them boasting an incredible twenty-six Pro Football Hall of Famers-collided in the playoffs five straight seasons and in the AFC title game three consecutive years. Both teams favored force over finesse and had players whose forte was intimidation. Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain defense featured Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham, and Mel Blount, the latter’s heavy hits forcing an NFL rule in his name. The Raiders countered with “The Assassin,” Jack Tatum, Skip Thomas (aka “Dr. Death”), George Atkinson, and Willie Brown in their memorable secondary. Each of their championships crowned the eventual Super Bowl winner, and their bloodcurdling encounters became so violent and vicious that they transcended the NFL and had to be settled in a U.S. district court. With its account of classic games, legendary owners, coaches, and players with larger-than-life personalities, Hell with the Lid Off is a story of turbulent football and one of the game’s best-known rivalries.