Frank Foster

★★★ He changed the sport...and then he was largely forgotten ★★★The history of sports and race is messy. In baseball Jackie Robinson is universally touted as the first black major league player, which conveniently forgets Moses Fleetwood Walker and other players of color who appeared on 19th century diamonds. Football deals with the messiness a different way. The sport employs the term "modern era" instead. So Kenny Washington is the first black player of the "modern era." James Harris was the first black quarterback to start an NFL game in the "modern era." Art Shell was the first black head coach of the "modern era." The reason football has to append the qualifier to its historical racial milestones is because there was a man who was doing all those things back when the National Football League began. His name was Fritz Pollard, and this is his story.

When Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey decided to break the "color line" and integrate major league baseball in the 1940s, he spent years doing exhaustive background research and interviewing players. This role could not just go to an extraordinary athlete, but one of immense character as wellThings went down with integration in the National Basketball Association a bit differently. The NBA had only formed in 1946, and was still sorting out franchises and struggling for recognition on April 25, 1950 when the basketball owners sat down for the annual player draft. When the second round began, Boston Celtics owner Walter Brown selected an African-American All-American guard out of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh named Chuck Cooper. A few weeks after the draft, the New York Knickerbockers made a deal to purchase the contract of Nathaniel "Sweetwater" Clifton from the Harlem Globetrotters; he became the second African-American to sign an NBA contract on May 24. So, the 1950-51 National Basketball Association season tipped off with three African-Americans on active rosters. While Robinson became one of America's greatest heroes, the stories of the black pioneers who broke down the NBA color barrier went untold. Jackie Robinson was recognized by his sport by being elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame the first year he was eligible to appear on the ballot in 1962. Not so for Clifton. He was not inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame until the Class of 2014, more than 50 years after he converted his last NBA hook shot and a quarter century after his death. Clifton's incredible journey and story is told in this biography.

Pel Pel Pel It was a familiar chant, a chant which had been screamed from the terraces for nearly thirty years. It was October 1977 and the final game of Pel 's hugely successful career had just finished. As Pel looked around the stadium, tears were streaming down his face, his emotions running wild. But what an amazing journey it had been. It was all a far cry from the scene that Pel was born into, some thirty-seven years earlier. This book looks into that incredible career, and also Pel 's post-playing career.

There are not many boxing stories that have happy endings. Roberto Duran's seems to be one. Now in his sixties he has his both his faculties and an intact body. He still has money and his wife of more than four decades and his family are his greatest joys. He lives in a country that worships him. For a fighter who personified the face of evil in the ring he seems to have made no lasting enemies. He invited Ken Buchanan, from whom he won his first title, to his 50th birthday party and offered to pick up the travel expenses. He still makes appearances with Sugar Ray Leonard when he comes to the United States. This book looks briefly into the life and times of one of boxings greatest legends.