About this item
The first book in the GAME CHANGERS sports series answers the questions: What were the 50 most revolutionary personalities, rules, pieces of equipment, controversies, organizational changes, radio and television advancements, and more in the history National Pastime? And how, exactly, did they forever change the game? Baseball's Game Changers offers fascinating, detailed explanations along with a ranking system from 1 to 50 that is sure to inspire debate among baseball aficionados. Ranging from each sport's beginnings to today and tackling on-the-field and off-the-field developments, the Game Changers series offers a history of each sport through their turning-points and innovations. Full-color, and including 60 photos plus pull-outs and sidebars, books within the Game Changers series are important and entertaining additions to every sports fan's library.
About the Author
George Castle turned an avocation into a vocation, by simply shifting locations in Chicago's ballparks.Lifelong Chicagoan Castle started out sitting in the cheap seats at a pre-reconstructed (36,000 seats) Wrigley Field and old Comiskey Park.He paid $1 for bleachers at Clark and Addison, forking up the extra quarter each time as the Cubs very slowly raised ticket prices every few years in the 1970s. He also could swear you could get high from second-hand smoke from the sometimes pungent cloudy confines of Comiskey.In 1980 Castle began covering baseball for an eventual multi-media platform. He would go on to look at the proverbial "man behind the curtain" in management with the Cubs, and later the Sox, for newspapers, magazines, on-line site, and for 17 seasons his syndicated weekly "Diamond Gems" baseball radio show.In 1998, Castle began his career as a baseball author with "I Remember Harry Caray." He would go on to write 12 more books through 2016. Starting out 2017, he collaborated with NFL Hall of Fame coach Marv Levy, a lifelong Cubs fan, to produce "Go Cubs Go," a children's book celebrating the world champion Cubs and their "never quit" fans over the many previous decades. As 2017 proceeded, Castle also was hard at work on book No. 15, "Comebackers," focusing on sports figures who staged comebacks from a variety of personal and competitive challenges.Castle developed a reputation as a baseball - particularly Cubs - historian starting in the 1980s. He has served as historian of the Chicago Baseball Museum and helped curate sports-broadcasting historical exhibits for the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. His time-tripping was put to good use in standing segments on "Diamond Gems" with his recall, interviews and thousands of hours of vintage tapes. And Castle conducted regular baseball history talks at institutions throughout the Chicago area.He also taught writing and editing at Columbia College-Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University and Harper College in Palatine, Ill.
