Gary Webster – författare

During the Cleveland Indians' checkered 110-year history, only two of its teams have brought home baseball's ultimate prize. While the 1948 team continues to be revered by Clevelanders, little has been written about the 1920 team that won the city's first pennant and World Series. Few, if any, World Series championship teams faced as much adversity as did the 1920 Indians. Among the obstacles they faced were the death of their star pitcher's wife in May; the shadow of the Chicago "Black Sox" scandal; and the tragic deadly beaning of shortstop Ray Chapman, the only fatal injury ever sustained by a major league player on the field of play. This chronicle of that extraordinary season highlights an overlooked chapter in the history of one of baseball's most beloved underdogs.

This book is the day by day story of the 1954 Indians, whose .721 winning percentage is still the highest in American League history. It tells how down the city of Cleveland was on the team following three straight second-place finishes, how little was expected of it by its fans, and even some of its players, and how it exceeded all expectations by winning a league-record 111 games and a pennant, before flopping in the World Series.

The book chronicles almost 300 in-season changes of managers in the major leagues since 1900. It elaborates on the circumstances that led to the change, whether it was a firing or a resignation and includes, in many cases, remarks of the dismissed manager, the manager who replaced him, and the executive (owner or general manager) who orchestrated the change. It then examines how the team fared under the new manager. The central purpose of the book is to study the effects of the changes: how many had a positive impact, how many had a negative impact, and how many had little if any impact on the team's won-lost record.

According to the National Football League, the 1972 Miami Dolphins are the only undefeated, untied Super Bowl champions. But pro football's first undefeated championship team was crowned in 1948, when the Cleveland Browns won their third straight All-America Football Conference title with a record of 15 victories, no losses and no ties. They were led by Hall of Fame head coach Paul Brown, whose methods revolutionized the game and influenced every coach who followed. On the field, the '48 Browns' roster featured six future Hall of Famers, including Marion Motley and Bill Willis, who broke pro football's color barrier with the first snap of the 1946 season.

The All-American Football Conference was the only challenger to the NFL (except for the American Football League of the 1960s) to survive more than two seasons in competition with the established league. It ultimately failed to achieve its goal of a peaceful coexistence with the NFL and folded in 1949. Its Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers, which were absorbed by the NFL in 1950, are still in business.This book takes a brief look at all of the NFL's challengers (and would-be challengers) from 1926 to 1945. It looks particularly at the All-American Conference, which overcame obstacles that proved too difficult for others and opened the 1946 season with teams on the East Coast, in the Midwest, on the West Coast, and in the deep South, making it a truly "All-American" enterprise. Each season and off-season is examined in detail.

The Cleveland Barons should never have existed. Born when the National Hockey League's California Golden Seals--another team that should never have existed--were transplanted to Cleveland in 1976 and greeted with apathy by the dwindling number of hockey fans in northeastern Ohio, the Barons were an embarrassment to the city and to the NHL. The only thing the team had going for them was the state-of-the-art arena they played in, which was all but empty for nearly every game they played. This book chronicles the Barons' two regrettable seasons--a case study in what happens when an ill-conceived professional sports team created in an expansion splurge is moved, in an effort to save it, to a city that doesn't really want it.