Books about Shropshire from Amazon.com

The legendary Charles C. "Cash and Carry" Pyle, considered by most to be the first sports agent, negotiated a $3,000-per-game contract for Red Grange to play professional football for the Chicago Bears in 1933. Today, salaries in the tens of millions of dollars are commonplace, and instead of theatrical promoters and impresarios, professionally trained businessmen and lawyers dominate the business. But whereas rules and penalties govern the playing field, there are far fewer restrictions on agents. Incidents of agents' manipulating athletes, ranging from investment scams to outright theft of a player's money, are far too frequent, and there is growing consensus for reform

In The Business of Sports Agents, Kenneth L. Shropshire and Timothy Davis, experts in the fields of sports business and law, examine the history of the sports agent business and the rules and laws developed to regulate the profession. They also consider recommendations for reform, including uniform laws that would apply to all agents, redefining amateurism in college sports, and stiffening requirements for licensing agents. This revised and expanded second edition brings the volume up-to-date on recent changes in the industry, including:

- the closing of one of the largest agencies
- high-profile personnel moves
- passage of the federal Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act
- the National Football League's aggressive and high-profile efforts to regulate agents

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There are baseball books and there are baseball books.

But for the baseball cognoscenti, there are just a few "must-have" classics: BALL FOUR by Jim Bouton. THE LONG SEASON by Jim Brosnan WILLIE'S TIME by Charles Einstein. And SEASONS IN HELL by Mike Shropshire, which was a hilarous first-person account of Mike's travails serving as a daily beat writer covering the hapless 1972 Texas Rangers.

Now, in The Last Real Season, Shropshire captures the essence of a different time and different place in baseball, when the average salary for major leaguers was only $27,600...when the ballplayers' drug of choice was alcohol, not steroids...when major leaguers sported tight doubleknit uniforms over their long-hair and Afros...and on July 28th, 1975, the day that famed Detroit resident Jimmy Hoffa went missing, the Detroit Tigers started a losing streak of 19 games in a row. On the day that the Tigers blew a 4-run lead in the bottom of the ninth, Shropshire recalls: "I drank three bottles of Stroh's beer in less than a minute and wrote that 'Jimmy Hoffa will show up in the left field stands with Amelia Earhart as his date before the Tigers will win another game.'"

And so it goes. Filled with just the kind of wonderful baseball stories that real fans crave, this is the funniest baseball book of the year..
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In her 1883 book, Shropshire Folklore, Charlotte S. Burne wrote: 'A very weird story of an encounter with an animal ghost arose of late years within my knowledge On the 21st of January 1879, a labouring man was employed to take a cart of luggage from Ranton in Staffordshire to Woodcock, beyond Newport in Shropshire, for the ease of a party of visitors who were going from one house to another. He was late in coming back; his horse was tired, and could only crawl along at a foot's pace, so that it was ten o'clock at night when he arrived at the place where the highroad crosses the Birmingham and Liverpool canal. 'Just before he reached the canal bridge, a strange black creature with great white eyes sprang out of the plantation by the roadside and alighted on his horse's back. He tried to push it off with his whip, but to his horror the whip went through the thing, and he dropped it on the ground in fright.' The creature duly became known to superstitious and frightened locals as the Man-Monkey. Between 1986 and early 2001, Nick Redfern delved deeply into the mystery of the strange creature of that dark stretch of canal. Now,published for the very first time, are Nick's original interview notes, his files and discoveries; as well as his theories pertaining to what lies at the heart of this diabolical legend. Is Britain really home to a Bigfoot-style entity? Does the creature have supernatural origins? Or is it something else entirely? Nick Redfern addresses all of these questions in Man-Monkey and reveals a story that is as bizarre as it is macabre..
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What the sports world can teach you about becoming a major league negotiator

A fun, fascinating, and instructional read, Negotiate Like the Pros retells the strategies behind some of the most noteworthy, complex, and lucrative sports deals of all time. A successful sports negotiator, Kenneth L. Shropshire uses these stories to teach you how to become better a deal maker, as well as how to develop negotiating methods and styles suited to your individual strengths. Each chapter synthesizes major sports negotiation stories, which are then analyzed for the lessons they hold that can be applied to any field..
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Instill a love of books and reading in children even before they have entirely mastered reading skills. Everything you need to start a fun-packed weekly book club at your school or library is included; detailed instructions for planning and conducting the meetings, book summaries, lists of discussion questions, reproducible activity sheets, even snack suggestions. Sixteen ready-to-use book club sessions are right at your fingertips. It's never too early to get kids hooked on reading. This guide makes it easy-for you and the children. An invaluable resource for children's librarians, media specialists, teachers, day care providers, and parents..
Price: $29.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An atmospheric crime novel from a prize-winning author - DI Frank Kavanagh, along with his lover and colleague DC Jane Salt, is undertaking a routine inquiry into the murder of Sarah Clement, a once successful novelist. But the case is complicated when the owner of a bed-and-breakfast close to the canal where Sarahs body was discovered is also found dead, in mysterious and gruesome circumstances . . ..
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Raucous, raw, and reliably remarkable, the century–old football riavlry between the state universities of Texas and Oklahoma stands as testimony that hate–based relationships are the most enduring. Texas and Oklahoma have been top–level programs for a long time, but in the last few years the rivalry has garnered ever more national attention. Mike Shropshire, an observer of this football war for more than 40 years, chronicles the long and colorful history of this fierce rivalry that has endured for more than a century.

The teams have been playing at the Texas State fair since 1929–just a three–hour drive from each campus. This is the only football game in the country that is louder than a NASCAR race, because there's no place in the country that's more football–mad than Texas. Animosity runs deep in this relationship–but beyond the emotional urgency that the Texas–OU followers expend on this event, this is a union of like–minded spirits. They were brought up amid the simple mantra of the Red State road to success: "Get up early. Work hard. Find oil." Football would naturally become the spectator sports of preference in these parts.

RUNNIN' WITH THE BIG DOGS is an account of that game and of the game and the events that lead up to the three–and–one–half hours when, deep in the heart of the heartland, it's the day the earth stands still. It will also chronicle the long and colorful history of this fiercest of football rivalries, and inundate the reader in the craziness of the week preceding the game. Year in, year out, the Texas–OU celebration equals or trumps any other rivalry in sheer excitement and entertainment value–and presently, these two teams more than any other pairing are consistently in the hunt for a national championship. The excitement is due in large part to the raw and dynamic history of the two states involved, from the Indian wars to the oil boom. Before statehood Oklahoma was known as Indian Territory, so this Red River Shootout is Cowboys and Indians all over again.

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