Bøger af Ryan McGee

"A gloriously funny, nostalgic memoir of a popular ESPN reporter who, in the summer of 1994, was a fresh-out-of-college intern for a minor league baseball team. Madness ensues as Ryan McGee spends the season steeped in sweat, fertilizer, nacho cheese sauce and pure, unadulterated joy in North Carolina with the Asheville Tourists. In the spring of 1994, Ryan McGee (new college graduate) bombed his coveted interview with ESPN--the only place he ever wanted to work. But he did receive one job offer: to work for $100 a week for the Asheville Tourists, a proud minor league baseball team in the heart of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains. McCormick Field, home to the Tourists, had once been graced by Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson. What could go wrong? Welcome to the Circus of Baseball is McGee's hilarious, charming memoir of his first summer working in the sporting world. He has since risen the ESPN ranks to national TV, radio and internet host, but his time in Asheville still looms large. Among the many jewels of his experience ... McGee recounts one of the most entertaining on-field brawls you'll ever know (between the fourteen league mascots who had assembled for the all-star game--an eight-foot tall foam-costumed crustacean, a pudgy red fox, a giant skunk ... and they were really fighting), as well as the day he oversaw the game-day entertainer known as 'Captain Dynamite and His Exploding Coffin of Death'--let's just say, things went wrong. Most important, McGee details a magical summer of baseball, of learning the ropes, of working with players on their way up to the Majors or down to extinction, and of coming to understand how the pulse of a community can beat happily through a minor league ballclub"--

In the spirit of Three Nights in August and The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, veteran sports writer Ryan McGee goes behind the scenes, into the stands, and onto the field to reveal an exciting yet personal look at one of the hottest sports championships in the country--the College World Series. Every summer, college baseball teams from around the nation come to Omaha, Nebraska, to play pure move-the-man-over, run-manufacturing baseball in a series that's part college bowl game, part county fair. In 2008, the ten-day, eight-team tournament was the scene of one of the greatest series in its illustrious history. And Ryan McGee puts the reader behind closed doors with the underdog champs, the Fresno State Bulldogs, as well as with their seven opponents, from the first batting practice session, to bus rides to the ballpark, to the locker room and the dugout. It's the CWS as few ever see it.But The Road to Omaha goes far beyond the 2008 season. It's an in-depth look at the managing strategies and playing style of college baseball, as well as a series of profiles that examine the people behind and around the CWS--the players, coaches, and fans who keep that feeling of good-old-days innocence alive through their reverence for the Great American Pastime.McGee also takes up residence at Rosenblatt Stadium itself, reliving its rich history and tapping into the electricity around it, from the tailgating fans to the surrounding neighborhoods. "The Blatt" is America's last real connection to the baseball belief that Field of Dreams can actually happen: a wooden-framed ballpark with cramped concourses where teams share locker rooms, change clothes in the parking lot, and sign autographs for kids until their fingers cramp. "The Blatt" is a monument to tradition--and the last of its kind to keep that tradition alive.Thanks to Ryan McGee's quick eye for play-by-play action, as well as his deep love for sports, The Road to Omaha is a rare glimpse into the kind of baseball our grandfather's knew--a snapshot of the one of the last remaining vestiges of pure Americana: a hometown, baseball, and the people who shape it and are shaped by it in turn.