Crazy About Sports: Volume I

Crazy About Sports is a collection of sports stories about many colorful players, famous teams and special events during the early and mid stages of sports development in this country ranging from the late 1800s to late 1900s.  Although most of the stories are about baseball, the book also includes many stories about basketball, football, and other miscellaneous sports such as softball, golf, and boxing.  The author, James Earl Hester, Jr., provides interesting insights into the subtleties of the game.  He also attempts to explain the interpersonal relationships and pressures between the players, their managers, and the fans.  The details in many of these stories were from the author’s own knowledge and personal experience during his early career as a baseball pitcher himself.  In fact, several stories have been included that explain the author’s own successes and failures in his pursuit of a career in sports.  The reader might notice some repetition between a few of the stories since the author quite often recalled his own personal experiences when relating to certain events.  In spite of this, it was decided to include all stories since each is somewhat unique.  The author’s subsequent career as a newspaper reporter and editor further enhanced his ability to provide honest and straightforward assessments of the circumstances around each story.

For the readers’ convenience, various awards and honors received by athletes mentioned in at least one of the three volumes of Crazy About Sports are listed in Appendices A through D.  Also, a number of interesting sports quotes and expressions recalled by the author over the years are listed in Appendix E.  Appendix F is a list of the website references used to verify many of the facts and figures in the stories.  Unfortunately, since the author is now deceased, the original references he used in writing the stories are not available today.  Finally, two unique cross references are provided in the back of the book.  The Athlete Cross Reference to Titles allows the reader to search for an athlete or individual alphabetically and identify the corresponding volumes, chapters and titles where they are mentioned.  Likewise, the Title Cross Reference to Chapters allows the reader to search for a title alphabetically and identify the corresponding book volume and chapter.

The number of available sport stories in Crazy About Sports was too many to include in a single book, so this book is the first of three volumes.  Also, an attempt has been made to allocate stories evenly to each volume to provide approximately the same number and types of stories on each sport.  This ensures that each volume will be just as interesting and rewarding as the other two in the series.  Volumes II and III are currently in process and are expected to be published in the very near future.