The History of Sports category has 186 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 543 ratings. The most-rated is The Boys in the Boat.
Tales from the Toronto Maple Leafs Locker Room
Summary
Skate into the rink with the best in Toronto hockey—newly updated! The glory years for the Toronto Maple Leafs—four Stanley Cups in the 1960s—may be distant memories, but what the team lacks in recent accomplishments is made up for by their history, which is rich in drama, pathos, and, most of all, humor. Figures connected to the Maple Leafs from the 1950s to the present offer their best stories, including some new takes on the team’s legends. Players, coaches, broadcasters, and team executives come together to share a long list of funny anecdotes about their time with the Leafs. Bobby Baun recalls the unprecedented moment in the 1964 Stanley Cup finals when he slammed a game-winning goal into the net while skating on a broken leg. Bob Haggert, a former Leafs trainer, shares his memories of Conn Smythe, the unyielding military man who founded the team. Also telling tales is Jim McKenny, defenseman-turned-forward-turned broadcaster, whose sense of humor is as deft as his skating. Joe Bowen, long the voice of the Maple Leafs on radio and television, is along for the ride, as are Bob McGill, Glenn Healy, Walter Gretzky, and so many more.
©2007, 2012 David Shoalts (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
NFL Century
Summary
From the former executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame comes a sweeping and lively history of the National Football League, timed to coincide with the NFL's 100th-anniversary season. "I can think of no one better qualified - or more enthusiastic - to chronicle the National Football League’s century-long history than Joe Horrigan." (Marv Levy, Hall of Fame NFL coach) The NFL has come a long way from its founding in Canton, Ohio, in 1920. In the 100 years since that fateful day, football has become America’s most popular and lucrative professional sport. The former scrappy upstart league that struggled to stay afloat has survived a host of challenges - the Great Depression and World War II, controversies and scandals, battles over labor rights, and competition from rival leagues - to produce American icons like Vince Lombardi, Joe Montana, and Tom Brady. It is an extraordinary and entertaining history that could be told only by Joe Horrigan, former executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and perhaps the greatest living historian of the NFL, by drawing upon decades of NFL archives. Compelling, eye-opening, and authoritative, NFL Century is a must-hear for NFL fans and anyone who loves the game of football. Advance praise for NFL Century "Joe Horrigan takes the reader on a delightful tour of the seminal moments of the NFL in the past one hundred years - the players, owners, coaches, executives, and historical events that made the game of football the most popular in America. It’s a wonderful walk down memory lane for any football fan, young or old." (Michael Lombardi, author of Gridiron Genius) “There is no one - and I mean no one - who knows more about the history of the NFL than Joe Horrigan, the heart and soul of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. As the gold standard of sports leagues celebrates its 100th season, it’s appropriate that the gold standard of sports historians has written NFL Century, an entertaining and educational journey.” (Gary Myers, New York Times best-selling author)
©2019 Joe Horrigan (P)2019 Random House Audio
Driving with the Devil
Summary
“Moonshiners put more time, energy, thought, and love into their cars than any racer ever will. Lose on the track and you go home. Lose with a load of whiskey and you go to jail.” - Junior Johnson, NASCAR legend and one-time whiskey runner. Today’s NASCAR is a family sport with 75 million loyal fans, which is growing bigger and more mainstream by the day. Part Disney, part Vegas, part Barnum & Bailey, NASCAR is also a multibillion-dollar business and a cultural phenomenon that transcends geography, class, and gender. But dark secrets lurk in NASCAR’s past. Driving with the Devil uncovers for the first time the true story behind NASCAR’s distant, moonshine-fueled origins and paints a rich portrait of the colorful men who created it. Long before the sport of stock-car racing even existed, young men in the rural, Depression-wracked South had figured out that cars and speed were tickets to a better life. With few options beyond the farm or factory, the best chance of escape was running moonshine. Bootlegging offered speed, adventure, and wads of cash—if the drivers survived. Driving with the Devil is the story of bootleggers whose empires grew during Prohibition and continued to thrive well after Repeal, and of drivers who thundered down dusty back roads with moonshine deliveries, deftly outrunning federal agents. The car of choice was the Ford V-8, the hottest car of the 1930s, and ace mechanics tinkered with them until they could fly across mountain roads at 100 miles an hour. After fighting in World War II, moonshiners transferred their skills to the rough, red-dirt racetracks of Dixie, and a national sport was born. In this dynamic era (1930s and ’40s), three men with a passion for Ford V-8s - convicted criminal Ray Parks, foul-mouthed mechanic Red Vogt, and crippled war veteran Red Byron, NASCAR’s first champion - emerged as the first stock car “team.” Theirs is the violent, poignant story of how moonshine and fast cars merged to create a new sport for the South to call its own. Driving with the Devil is a fascinating look at the well-hidden historical connection between whiskey running and stock-car racing. NASCAR histories will tell you who led every lap of every race since the first official race in 1948. Driving with the Devil goes deeper to bring you the excitement, passion, crime, and death-defying feats of the wild, early days that NASCAR has carefully hidden from public view. In the tradition of Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit, this tale not only reveals a bygone era of a beloved sport, but also the character of the country at a moment in time.
©2006 Neal Thompson (P)2013 Native Intelligence
Hockey Card Stories (Booktrack Edition)
Summary
Hockey Card Stories: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience!* Hockey Card Stories reveals what was really going on in your favorite old hockey cards through the eyes of the players depicted on them. Some of the cards are definitely worth a few bucks, some a few cents - but every story told here is priceless. Sportsnet’s Ken Reid presents the cards you loved and the airbrushed monstrosities that made you howl, the cards that have been packed away in boxes forever, and others you can’t believe ever existed. Whether it’s a case of mistaken identity or simply a great old photo, a fantastic 1970s haircut and ’stache, a wicked awesome goalie mask or a future Hall of Famer’s off-season fashion sense, a wide variety of players - from superstars like Bobby Orr, Denis Potvin, and Phil Esposito to the likes of Bill Armstrong who played only one game in the NHL - chime in on one of their most famous cards. *Booktrack is an immersive listening experience that pairs traditional audiobook narration to complementary music and sound effects. The tempo and rhythm of the score are in perfect harmony with the action and characters throughout the audiobook. Gently playing in the background, the music never overpowers or distracts from the narration, so listeners can enjoy every minute. When you purchase this Booktrack edition, you receive the exact narration as the traditional audiobook available, with the addition of music throughout.
©2014 Martha Baillie (P)2018 ECW Press
King of the Court
Summary
Bill Russell was not the first African American to play professional basketball, but he was its first black superstar. From the moment he stepped onto the court of the Boston Garden in 1956, Russell began to transform the sport in a fundamental way, making him, more than any of his contemporaries, the Jackie Robinson of basketball. In King of the Court, Aram Goudsouzian provides a vivid and engrossing chronicle of the life and career of this brilliant champion and courageous racial pioneer. Russell's leaping, wide-ranging defense altered the game's texture. His teams provided models of racial integration in the 1950s and 1960s, and, in 1966, he became the first black coach of any major professional team sport. Yet, like no athlete before him, Russell challenged the politics of sport. Instead of displaying appreciative deference, he decried racist institutions, embraced his African roots, and challenged the nonviolent tenets of the civil rights movement. This beautifully written book - sophisticated, nuanced, and insightful - reveals a singular individual who expressed the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. while echoing the warnings of Malcolm X.
©2010 Aram Goudsouzian (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Players
Summary
For fans of Michael Lewis, the astounding untold story of how professional sports transformed, in the span of a single generation, from a cottage industry into a massive global business.
In the cash-soaked world of contemporary sports, where every season brings news of higher salaries, endorsement deals, and television contracts, it is mind-boggling to remember that as recently as the 1970s elite athletes earned so little money that many were forced to work second jobs in the off-season to make ends meet. Roger Staubach, for example, made only $25,000 in his first season as the starting quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys and wound up selling commercial real estate in the summer. Today, when Fortune reports that every athlete on its Top 50 list makes more than $20 million per year, it's clear that a complete reversal of power occurred under our eyes.
Players is the first book to chronicle the astonishing business story behind modern sports - a true revolution that moved the athletes from the bottom of the financial pyramid to the top. It started in 1960, when a Cleveland lawyer named Mark McCormack convinced a golfer named Arnold Palmer to sign with him. Within a few years, McCormack raised Palmer's annual income off the course from $5,000 to $500,000 and forever changed the landscape of the sports industry.
Futterman introduces a wide-ranging cast of characters to tell the story of athletes, agents, TV executives, coaches, and owners who together created the dominating and multifaceted industry we know today. Players is a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the creation and rise of the modern sports world and the people who fought to make it happen. From landmark moments such as the 1973 Wimbledon boycott and baseball pitcher Catfish Hunter's battle to become MLB's first free agent to the outsize influence of companies like IMG, Nike, and ESPN, this fascinating book details the wild evolution of sports into the extravaganza we experience today and the inevitable trade-offs those changes have wrought.
©2016 Matthew Futterman (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
Coyote Lost at Sea
Summary
When Coyote and its skipper, Mike Plant, went missing mid-Atlantic in November 1992, the sailing world held its breath. Now, 20 years later, the story around the mystery, tragedy, and enigma is told at last. Mike Plant came to ocean racing late; as an American in a sport dominated by European sailors he was an underdog. And yet he won his class in the 1986-87 Around Alone 24,000-mile race, beating competitors with more experience, among them Hal Roth. Plant led an adrenaline-fueled life, full of seemingly suicidal adventures and yet his charismatic personality attracted hundreds of friends. Told in the style of Into the Wild, Coyote Lost at Sea transcends the sailing story and explores the intimate details of Plant's intense personality, upbringing, and experiences that created the fiercely original character of Mike Plant. It explores the events and circumstances leading to Plant's phenomenal success as a singlehanded ocean-racer, as well as the factors contributing to the failure of his high-tech and controversial boat, Coyote.
©2013 International Marine/McGraw Hill Education (P)2014 New Street Communications, LLC
Ghosts of K2
Summary
At 28,251 feet, K2 might be almost 800 feet shorter than Everest, but it’s a far harder climb. It will kill you on the way up and the way down. Mick Conefrey guides us through the early story of the legendary mountain and the extraordinary attempts that led up to its first ascent in 1954 - these are tales of riveting drama and unimaginable tragedy. Starting with the ill-fated attempts of the drug-addicted occultist Aleister Crowley and the wealthy Italian Duke of Abruzzi, the book then focusses on the three dramatic expeditions of 1939, 1953 and 1954. The thread joining them together is the American Charlie Houston - a brilliant but tortured expedition leader who dreamed of being the first man to make it all the way to the top. Based on exclusive interviews with surviving team members and their families and access to diaries and letters that have been archived around the world, this is a narrative that evokes the true atmosphere of the 'Savage Mountain' and explores the complicated legacy of the first ascent. Wrought with tension and populated by tragic heroes and eccentric dreamers, Ghosts of K2 is a masterpiece of mountaineering literature.
©2015 Mick Conefrey (P)2015 Audible, Ltd
Homer Kelley's Golfing Machine
Summary
The remarkable true story of a lone genius whose quest to unlock the science behind the perfect swing changed golf forever. In 1939, Homer Kelley played golf for the first time and scored 116. Frustrated, he did not play again for six months; when he did he carded a 77. Determined to understand why he was able to shave nearly 40 strokes off his score, Kelley spent three decades of trial and error to unlock the answer and to recapture that one wonderful day when golf was easy and enjoyable. In 1969, Kelley self- published his findings in The Golfing Machine: The Computer Age Approach to Golfing Perfection. The best-selling instruction books of the day required golfers to conform their swings to the author's ideals, but Homer Kelley configured swings to fit every golfer. He found an enthusiastic disciple in a Seattle teaching pro named Ben Doyle, who in turn found an eager student in 13-year-old prodigy Bobby Clampett. Clampett's initial success in amateur golf shined a bright spotlight on Homer Kelley and The Golfing Machine, but when the young star suffered a painfully public collapse and faltered as a pro, critics were quick to blast Kelley and his complex and controversial ideas. With exclusive access to Homer Kelley's archives, author Scott Gummer paints a fascinating picture of the man behind the machine, the ultimate outsider who changed the game once and for all of us.
©2009 Scott Gummer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Bowerman and the Men of Oregon
Summary
No man has affected more runners in more ways than Bill Bowerman. During his 24-year tenure as track coach at the University of Oregon, he won four national team titles and his athletes set 13 world and 22 American records. He also ignited the jogging boom, invented the waffle-sole running shoe that helped establish Nike, and coached the US track and field team at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. With the full cooperation of the Bowerman family and Nike, plus years of taped interviews with friends, relatives, students, and competitors, two-time Olympic marathoner Kenny Moore - himself one of Bowerman's champion athletes - brilliantly re-creates the legendary track coach's life.
©2006 Kenny Moore (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
For the Glory
Summary
The untold and inspiring story of Eric Liddell, hero of Chariots of Fire, from his Olympic medal to his missionary work in China to his last brave years in a Japanese work camp during WWII. Many people will remember Eric Liddell as the Olympic gold medalist from the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire. Famously, Liddell would not run on Sunday because of his strict observance of the Christian Sabbath, and so he did not compete in his signature event, the 100 meters, at the 1924 Paris Olympics. He was the greatest sprinter in the world at the time, and his choice not to run was ridiculed by the British Olympic committee, his fellow athletes, and most of the world press. Yet Liddell triumphed in a new event, winning the 400 meters in Paris. Liddell ran - and lived - for the glory of his God. After winning gold, he dedicated himself to missionary work. He travelled to China to work in a local school and as a missionary. He married and had children there. By the time he could see war on the horizon, Liddell put Florence, his pregnant wife, and his children on a boat to Canada, while he stayed behind, his conscience compelling him to stay among the Chinese. He and thousands of other Westerners were eventually interned at a Japanese work camp. Once imprisoned, Liddell did what he was born to do: practice his faith and his sport. He became the moral center of an unbearable world. He was the hardest worker in the camp, he counseled many of the other prisoners, he gave up his own meager portion of meals many days, and he organized games for the children there. He even raced again. For his ailing, malnourished body, it was all too much. Liddell died of a brain tumor just before the end of the war. His passing was mourned around the world, and his story still inspires. In the spirit of The Boys in the Boat and Unbroken, For the Glory is both a compelling narrative of athletic heroism and a gripping story of faith in the darkest circumstances.
©2016 Duncan Hamilton (P)2016 Penguin Audio
K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches
Summary
From the New York Times baseball columnist, an enchanting, enthralling history of the national pastime as told through the craft of pitching, based on years of archival research and interviews with more than 300 people from Hall of Famers to the stars of today. The baseball is an amazing plaything. We can grip it and hold it so many different ways, and even the slightest calibration can turn an ordinary pitch into a weapon to thwart the greatest hitters in the world. Each pitch has its own history, evolving through the decades as the masters pass it down to the next generation. From the earliest days of the game, when Candy Cummings dreamed up the curveball while flinging clamshells on a Brooklyn beach, pitchers have never stopped innovating. In K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, Tyler Kepner traces the colorful stories and fascinating folklore behind the 10 major pitches. Each chapter highlights a different pitch, from the blazing fastball to the fluttering knuckleball to the slippery spitball. Infusing every moment with infectious passion for the game, Kepner brings listeners inside the minds of combatants 60 feet, six inches apart. Filled with priceless insights from many of the best pitchers in baseball history, including 22 Hall of Famers - from Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan to Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Clayton Kershaw - K will be the definitive guide on pitching and join such works as The Glory of Their Times and Moneyball as a classic of the genre.
©2019 Tyler Kepner (P)2019 Random House Audio
Too Sweet
Summary
The first and only in-depth look at the indie wrestling revolution In 2017, after being told that no independent wrestling group could draw a crowd of more than 10,000, a group of wrestlers took up the challenge. For several years, these gladiators had been performing in front of rabid crowds and understood the hunger for wrestling that was different from the TV-slick product. In September 2018, they had the numbers to prove it: 11,263 fans filled the Sears Center Arena for the All In pay-per-view event, ushering in a new era. A year later, WWE had its first major head-to-head competitor in nearly two decades when All Elite Wrestling debuted on TNT. Acclaimed wrestling historian Keith Elliot Greenberg's Too Sweet takes listeners back to the beginning, when a half century ago outlaw promotions challenged the established leagues, and guides us into the current era. He paints a vivid picture of promotions as diverse as New Japan, Ring of Honor, Revolution Pro, Progress, and Chikara, and the colorful figures who starred in each. This is both a dynamic snapshot and the ultimate history of a transformational time in professional wrestling.
©2020 Keith Elliot Greenberg (P)2020 Tantor
Where Nobody Knows Your Name
Summary
From the acclaimed number one best-selling author...a riveting journey through the world of minor-league baseball. “No one grows up playing baseball pretending that they’re pitching or hitting in Triple-A.” (Chris Schwinden, Triple-A pitcher) “If you don’t like it here, do a better job.” (Ron Johnson, Triple-A manager) John Feinstein gave readers an unprecedented view of the PGA Tour in A Good Walk Spoiled. He opened the door to an NCAA basketball locker room in his explosive best seller A Season on the Brink. Now, turning his eye to our national pastime, sports journalist John Feinstein explores the colorful and mysterious world of minor-league baseball - a gateway through which all major-league players pass in their careers...hoping never to return. Baseball’s minor leagues are a paradox. For some players, the minors are a glorious launching pad toward years of fame and fortune; for others, a crash-landing pad when injury or poor play forces a big leaguer back to a life of obscure ballparks and cramped buses instead of Fenway Park and plush charter planes. Focusing exclusively on the Triple-A level, one step beneath Major League Baseball, Feinstein introduces listeners to nine unique men: three pitchers, three position players, two managers, and an umpire. Through their compelling stories, Feinstein pulls back the veil on a league that is chock-full of gifted baseball players, managers, and umpires who are all one moment away from getting called up - or back - to the majors. The stories are hard to believe: a first-round draft pick and pitching ace who rocketed to major-league success before finding himself suddenly out of the game, hatching a presumptuous plan to get one more shot at the mound; a home run-hitting former World Series hero who lived the dream, then bounced among six teams before facing the prospects of an unceremonious end to his career; a big-league All-Star who, in the span of five months, went from being completely out of baseball to becoming a star in the ALDS, then signing a $10 million contract; and a well-liked designated hitter who toiled for 18 seasons in the minors - a record he never wanted to set - before facing his final, highly emotional chance for a call-up to the big leagues. From Raleigh to Pawtucket, from Lehigh Valley to Indianapolis and beyond, Where Nobody Knows Your Name gives listeners an intimate look at a baseball world not normally seen by the fans. John Feinstein gets to the heart of the human stories in a uniquely compelling way, crafting a masterful audiobook that stands alongside his very best works.
©2014 John Feinstein (P)2014 Random House Audio
Swim
Summary
Swim is a celebration of swimming and the effect it has on our lives. It's an inquiry into why we swim - the lure, the hold, the timeless magic of being in the water. It's a look at how swimming has changed over the millennia, how this ancient activity is becoming more social than solitary today. It's about our relationship with the water, with our fishy forebearers, and with the costumes that we wear. You'll even find a few songs to sing when you push out those next laps. Swimming enthusiast Lynn Sherr explores every aspect of the sport, from the biology of swimming to the fame of Esther Williams; from turquoise pools and wild water to the training of Olympians; and she reveals the secret of buoyancy so that anyone can avoid the example of the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who lamented, "Why can't I swim, it seems so very easy?" When his friend, the biographer Edward John Trelawny, said, "Gecause you think you can't," Shelley plunged into Italy's Arno River and dropped like a rock. With Swim, you can avoid that happening to you.
©2012 Lynn Sherr (P)2012 Lynn Sherr
Those Guys Have All the Fun
Summary
ESPN began as an outrageous gamble with a lineup that included Australian Rules Football, rodeo, and a rinky-dinky clip show called Sports Center. Today the empire stretches far beyond television into radio, magazines, mobile phones, restaurants, video games, and more, while ESPN's personalities have become global superstars to rival the sports icons they cover. Chris Berman, Robin Roberts, Keith Olbermann, Hannah Storm, Bill Simmons, Tony Kornheiser, Stuart Scott, Erin Andrews, Mike Ditka, Bob Knight, and scores of others speak openly about the games, shows, scandals, gambling addictions, bitter rivalries, and sudden suspensions that make up the network's soaring and stormy history. The result is a wild, smart, effervescent story of triumph, genius, ego, and the rise of an empire unlike any television had ever seen.
©2011 Tom Shales, James Andrew Miller (P)2011 Hachette
The Ashes: It's All About the Urn
Summary
An entertaining look at one of sport's greatest rivalries - the Ashes - by former England spin bowler Graeme Swann.
Graeme Swann leads us on a compelling adventure through one of world sport's most engrossing rivalries. He knows as much as anybody about the heat of England vs. Australia battles, having played in three series wins and also the whitewash defeat of 2013-14, when its intensity ended his international career. However, it brought out some of his best displays in Test cricket. But he is just one of dozens of colourful characters to have added their chapters to this great tome.
The mock obituary of English cricket in the Sporting Times of 1882 was the forerunner of summers and winters of heaven and hell, depending on which side of the divide you were situated on. When it comes to on-field relations, nothing quite compares to the over-my-dead-body feel of the Ashes.
From Grace to Sir Don, the most graceful of them all. From the foulest play to the fairest - contrast the 1932-33 Bodyline series affair to the image of Andrew Flintoff hunched over a distraught Brett Lee in 2005. From Ray Illingworth's famous walk-off in the '70s, when an England teammate was assaulted by a spectator, to Steve Waugh's hugely emotional lap of honour when he retired a quarter of a century later. Swann's book reveals the magic of a series that first gripped him in his front room in Northampton as an aspiring spin bowler in the mid-1980s.
©2017 Graeme Swann (P)2017 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime
Summary
Thoroughbred racing was one of the first major sports in early America. Horse racing thrived because it was a high-status sport that attracted the interest of both old and new money. It grew because spectators enjoyed the pageantry, the exciting races, and, most of all, the gambling. As the sport became a national industry, the New York metropolitan area, along with the resort towns of Saratoga Springs (New York) and Long Branch (New Jersey), remained at the center of horse racing with the most outstanding race courses, the largest purses, and the finest thoroughbreds. The sport's survival depended upon the racetrack being the nexus between politicians and organized crime. The powerful alliance between urban machine politics and track owners enabled racing in New York to flourish. Racetracks became a key connection between the underworld and Tammany Hall, enabling illegal poolrooms and off-course bookies to operate. Organized crime worked in close cooperation with machine politicians and local police officers to protect these illegal operations. In The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime, Riess fills a long-neglected gap in sports history, offering a richly detailed and fascinating chronicle of thoroughbred racing's heyday. "This impressive work deserves the attention of scholars even if they care little about sports per se." (The Journal of American History) "This work will stand as a source-of-record for historians for years to come." (Saratoga Living) "Riess has broken new ground with his richly-textured study of the dynamic relationship between horse racing, politics, and gambling as they built New York's thoroughbred industry a century ago." (Field Horne, author of The Saratoga Reader)
©2011 Syracuse University Press (P)2018 Redwood Audiobooks
Brady vs. Manning
Summary
Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are perhaps the two greatest quarterbacks of all time. They are living legends who have come to embody the quarterback position and shape an entire generation of the NFL. They have also been fierce rivals every step of the way, and their many epic duels have not only ranked among the best and most exciting games ever played; they have fundamentally shaped the lives and careers of both men. But until now there has never been a definitive account of this rivalry - one that tells the real story. What do Tom and Peyton actually think of each other? What do their coaches think of them? What about teammates and opposing players? What are they like behind closed doors and in the locker room? How did their vastly different upbringings shape them, and how has each handled the injuries, setbacks, and defeats they've dealt with over their careers? In this extraordinary book, veteran NFL correspondent Gary Myers tackles this subject from every angle and with unprecedented access and insight, drawing on a huge number of never-before-heard interviews with Brady and Manning, their coaches, their families, and those who have played with them and against them.
©2015 Gary Myers (P)2016 Tantor
Mad Dog
Summary
The true story of one of pro wrestling's most charismatic, feared, and beloved icons Who was Maurice the man, and who was Mad Dog the character? Maurice "Mad Dog" Vachon was a gold medalist, a pro-wrestling legend, and a pop culture icon - but he was also a son, husband, and father. Mad Dog explores Vachon's career and personal struggles with painstakingly detailed historical research and through both Maurice's own recollections and those of the people who knew him best. As a young man, Maurice could have chosen a dark criminal path, but then wrestling and family changed him. Chronicling his slow but steady rise to prominence across America and internationally in some of pro wrestling's most important territories, this in-depth biography shows how Vachon's life came to be defined by the words of Mark Twain: "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." Fiercely proud, motivated, and supremely talented, Vachon's story is also the amazing tale of how a lifelong make-believe heel became a real-life hero outside of the ring. With a foreword by his brother, Paul Vachon, and an afterword by his widow, Kathie Vachon.
©2017 Bertrand Hébert and Patric Laprade (P)2017 Audible, Inc.