Legends: The Best Players, Games, and Teams in Baseball: World Series Heroics! Greatest Homerun Hitters! Classic Rivalries! And Much, Much More!

by Howard Bryant

“With the LEGENDS series, Howard Bryant brings to life the best that sports has to offer—the heroes, the bitter rivalries, the moments that every sports-loving kid should know.”—Mike Lupica, #1 bestselling author of Travel Team, Heat, and Fantasy League

Experience baseball's most exciting moments, World Series heroics, greatest players, and more!

Baseball, America's pastime, is a sport of moments that stand the test of time. It is equally a sport of a new generation of heroes, whose exploits inspire today's young fans. This combination makes for a winning debut in Legends: The Best Players, Games, and Teams in Baseball.

This is no traditional almanac of mundane statistics, but rather a storyteller's journey through baseball's storied game. Told in fun, accessible chapters and accompanied by iconic photos, a slew of Top Ten lists for kids to chew on and debate, and a Timeline of the 40 Most Important Moments in Baseball History, this collection covers some of the greatest players from Babe Ruth to Hank Aaron; the greatest teams to take the field and swing the bats; the greatest social triggers, such as Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier; the greatest playoff rivalries, including the 2004 showdown between the Red Sox and Yankees that turned into an instant classic; and, of course, the edge-of-your-seat World Series moments that left some cheering while others wept. This is the perfect book for young fans eager to learn more about the sport that will stay with them for a lifetime.

Praise for LEGENDS:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month!

* "A terrific gathering of heroic hacks and legendary near misses."—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW

"[T]his is clearly a book for sports lovers. A strong choice for rounding out sports collections, this work knocks it out of the park."—School Library Journal

"Any fan of baseball will enjoy this compilation . . . Fans of all ages will find this a useful guide; teachers might find this an interesting mentor text for a student reporting on a particular topic since the approach is unique."—VOYA

"[T]his book will attract all manner of analysis and discussion among lovers of America’s favorite pastime. Fans of other sports will cheer: this is only the first in a series devoted to sports."—Booklist
 

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 3, 2015

Reviews

[Joshua Chadbourne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book Legends is about baseball in general; every chapter has something different about legendary players. The stories are all about how the legends became legends and how teams won the World Series. For example, Babe Ruth was traded from the Red Sox to the Yankees, their biggest rival. Babe Ruth was just starting out in the MLB when he was with the Red Sox, but they traded him to the Yankees. To this day he has the third most home runs ever in baseball with 715. This second story is about when the A's had solid green and yellow uniforms, and everybody criticized them for it because all of the other teams had just regular striped uniforms, and the A's still went on to win the World Series.The last story is about when Jackie Robinson got singled out during his first season when people called him names. pitched to him differently because of his skin color. He wouldn't say anything back because he didn't want to start fights and get thrown out of the game. I liked his book because it was about things that I really wanted to learn about in baseball history.

[Valerie McEnroe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read a lot of kid's sports fiction, so I know a good book when I see it. Lupica. Green. Deuker. They know how to write a book. But. I've also read some good sports nonfiction. Sheinkin. Hoose. This book is boring in comparison to the books any of these other authors have written. You CAN write nonfiction so it reads like fiction. Because so many good nonfiction books have been written in the last decade, my tolerance for mediocre nonfiction is low. It's even lower for kids.

This book, and I assume the others in the series, has nothing new to say about the people and games mentioned. It's more of the same statistics and facts you can find on a website. I'm looking. For. A story. Something new and interesting about these teams.

Will someone please write a good kid's nonfiction book about baseball? Please.

[Geoffrey bickley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book I have just finished reading is called LEGENDS The Best Players, Games, And Teams in Baseball written by Howard Bryant. The topic of this book is Baseball but it talks about the biggest players, events and games that the game of baseball has ever experienced. When I found this book I did not know what kind of book I was looking for but right when I saw this one I knew it was the book that I wanted to read. This book is a great book for people who love the game of baseball and enjoy learning about the sport.
In this book they go over many different topics in the professional baseball world. They go over home run records, world series winners, years when teams did their best, and specific players who were above all others for their abilities. This book goes over the big names like Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Sammy Sosa and many more hall of fame players. When reading you'll never get bored because they take the most interesting plays and games that we have seen in baseball.
When the book is nearing an end it stays just as interesting as the beginning. They are still going over the important parts of everything. My favorite part about the end of this book is at the very end when after the book is almost finished they include pictures of all the players, games, and world series that they went over so you get a picture of what it was like for them in those times.
In my opinion this book is a great book for all people. A directed audience I think people will like this book in is in the baseball community whether you're a player or just a big fan of the sport. This book tells you things about baseball you never knew before which is great. Over all this was a really good book and I would recommend it to people.

[Ken Heard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, how this was disappointing. I know it's a kid's book, but Howard Bryant wrote a great biography of Henry Aaron and I expected so much more in this.

Granted, Legends provides a quick look at the various legends of baseball history. Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, the Oakland As dynasty of the early 1970s, the assumed greatest World Series in 1975, the Red Sox' first Series win since 1918. There are lots of opportunities for an interesting collection.

However, Legends is boring, quickly written with cliches and vast generalizations. ("Everybody thought Oakland's green and yellow uniforms were ugly...") I guess this is a decent collection for a really young youngster just getting into baseball, but for fans who know the history of the sport, this is pretty bland. He even uses exclamation marks and CAPITAL letters for emphasizing really, super, fantastic stuff! I think a youngster of even 12 would be offended at times for the patronizing, childish way this was presented.

On a side note: I tried reading Bryant's Legends of football and bailed out after a few chapters because it was even more tedious. "The Dallas Cowboys were called America's Team because they were on national television all the time. So, everyone saw them on television." Yeah, I get that. Let's have some substance here, Howard!

Again, Bryant's book on Henry Aaron was amazing and one of the better sports bios I've read. I guess I should just stick with that and avoid his futile attempts at the juvenile reader market.

[Hansen Zhang · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is definitely not the best book for advanced baseball fans. Why do I say that? This book covers a tiny range of events in baseball history, some that are very very common (Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson), it is not detailed, and the way it was written makes me feel that Howard Bryant was writing to 8 year-old kids.

I also noticed that Howard Bryant was very enthusiastic while writing this book, adding a lot of exclamation points on sentences that did not need exclamation points. This book relies a lot on statistics, with every other sentence containing a statistic of some kind. I get it, statistics help emphasize how good or bad a team/individual did, but Bryant definitely overused these stats.

After each chapter, there would be a list of usually ten players or things, with a topic, such as "best nicknames". I am confused on how Bryant developed these lists, did he use his own judgement, or did he poll baseball fans, and if so, how many?

There is one positive thing about the book that I do like. I am pretty happy that he included full color pictures at the end, and some of these pictures I have not seen before. Good job on that. The cover design also just doesn't do it for me, though. A bland baseball in a cloudy, blue sky is boring. Maybe a collage of pictures of memorable MLB moments in the background would be better.

Overall, I had many complaints with this book, and only one that I commended, so I gave this book a two. I hope that Howard Bryant's other books are not as dull and boring as this one.

[Nolan Devejian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an enjoyable book about the history of baseball. While reading I found this book to have that "feel-good" nature to it that made me want to read more and more of it. I loved how the author incorporated many interesting and important stories in baseball history to give the reader great knowledge on the subject. An ardent baseball fan myself, I already had known quite a bit of baseball history prior to reading, but I was able to learn several things that I did not know from this book. I would recommend this book to anyone that loves baseball as I do, or to anyone that is interested in learning about the rich history of our national pastime.

[Chaceh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book from my mom actually, I revived it as a gift because I was “forced” to read it. Luckily though I actually liked it and stayed interested. I was interested and willing to read this book because I wanted to learn more about the history, and fun facts. I was thinking this could help me with my knowledge and for the love of the game. It would make me more interested and happy to play more. I recommend this book if you are interested in sports and wand to learn more about sports. Also the way this book is set up, it goes by decades and years based off the best teams during that time period.

[Ty Langlais · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book includes every statistic and date that is important to the sport of baseball. I would most definitely recommend this book if you want to learn about baseball and some of it's most historic events. However, this story is not action packed with intense events. It goes into detail about important dates and players throughout the history of baseball which can sometimes be slow. In the end, if you want to know baseball inside and out, then I would read this book.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read one of his books on baseball and finished this one not long ago. An excellent writer who has an eye for the game.

[Kevin]

to-read

[Lina · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a kid I enjoyed reading baseball history and still do as an adult, and I liked this book for kids that includes both "ancient history" and modern day teams and players. Young baseball fans should be pleased.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really sure who the audience for this book is. The design appears to be for a young reader. The text is for an older reader. To many words and not enough statistics.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked it a lot!

[Christian G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the book Legends the best players, games, and teams in baseball is literally all about baseball. In every chapter, it talks about how baseball players became legends and how teams made it to be so great and even win so many world series. It talks about statistics of players and teams, but it doesn’t just mention the statics, it also gives their stories. For example, my favorite story is the Jackie Robinson story, and how he was the first African American players to every play in the MLB and he was also the rookie of the year. Even though he had to put up with so much racism. It also mentions how Babe Ruth is the face of baseball and how Babe changed the name of the sport! This is a really cool book to show in class because it is kind of like a bunch of different bio’s about players and games, but it’s also cool to see the authors point of view as well.