Reynolds: 2056 books

The University of Nebraska went 3-3 and 4-6 in the 1956 football season. Pete Elliott coached the team for only one year. He accepted the University of California head coach position in January 1957. Elliott was an innovator. As offensive backfield coach at the University of Oklahoma, he taught the...

The National Football League expanded in 1960 and 1961, adding two teams that would be an incremental part of the NFL in years to come. The Dallas Cowboys came first followed by the Minnesota Vikings who began their first season in September 1961. There were some differences in the expansions as they...

Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker are both legendary Hall of Fame baseball players. The men were icons in the early 20th Century sports world where baseball was truly the national pastime and the biggest sport of them all in America. In the summer and fall of 1926 a former major league pitcher, Hubert Dutch...

Hope High School in Providence, Rhode Island was once a model city school, graduating a wide range of students from different backgrounds. But the tumult of the 1960s and the drug wars of the 70s changed both Providence and Hope. Today, the aging school is primarily Hispanic and African-American,...

Bill Spivey was a star center on the University of Kentucky basketball teams of 1949-1950 and 1950-1951. He won the Most Valuable Player in the NCAA Finals in March 1951. He was also the recipient of the coveted Helms Foundation Award. Spivey admitted being approached by a gambler who asked him to...

The Syracuse Nationals NBA team moved to Philadelphia in 1963,, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers.. The Philadelphia Warriors moved to the west coast, becoming the San Francisco Warriors. My e-book looks at the first year of the 76ers with old pro Dolph Schayes, the NBA's all-time leading scorer,...

Auburn's climb into the upper ranks of collegiate football powers began in the early 1950s. At the end of the 1955 regular season the Tigers would be invited to their third straight Gator Bowl. At the time there were only 5 bowls for NCAA to compete in. Auburn contended for the Southeastern Conference...

One sportswriter predicted that the Philadelphia Eagles of 1962 would host the NFL Championship. In a preseason summary a columnist assessed the main weakness of the club as its ground game. The 1960 Eagles had won the NFL title with a victory over the Green Bay Packers. The 1961 team went as far...

Marshall Teague was an early NASCAR driver who drove Hudsons to victory in the early 1950s. My e-book looks at Teague's performances from news clippings that were published in newspapers of the era. Teague and Herb Thomas were teammates in Hudson cars during an era when this American marque was...

Fred Lorenzen was an outsider in the world of stock car racing. A midwesterner, he came from Elmhurst, Illinois, near Chicago. Most all of the stock car racers were southern born, where the tradition was that boys began to drive when they were 10 or 11 years old. Fred became so successful in NASCAR...

Jake Hehl, the subject of my e-book, was a German-American athlete from Brooklyn's Williamsburg section. He was a standout all-around athlete at Brooklyn Prep High School. Hehl's father was a bartender, whose parents were native Germans. Jake married a German-American woman and, in later...

Ed Holley pitched in major league baseball during the years of the Great Depression. He came up with the Chicago Cubs in 1928. However, his best years were with the Philadelphia Phillies, in 1932-1933. In those seasons he accounted for 24 wins, pitching for a team that finished annually in last place....

Nell Stewart was a farmer's daughter from Steele, Alabama. She left a job as a waitress and trained under wrestling veteran Gladys Kill-em Gillem. Nell entered professional wrestling in the late 1940s. The sport was dominated by all-time greats like Mildred Burke, Dot Dotson, Mae Young, and June...

Perhaps no other heavyweight fight elevated the common man as a boxing fan than the Baer-Carnera title bout of June 1935. Braddock had fought on the undercard of the Carnera-Baer heavyweight championship fight in June 1933. Just two years later he was fighting to become world champion. Small bettors...