C. F. Payne

Shoeless Joe Jackson, said by some to be the greatest baseball player ever, goes into a hitting slump just before he is to start his minor league career, so he asks his friend to make him a special bat to help him hit.

"President Theodore Roosevelt is known as "the man with a plan," the "rough rider." His figure stands tall in American history; his legacy stretching him to larger-than-life proportions. But before his rise to fame, he was just "Teedie," a boy with ambitious dreams to change the world, and the conviction to see his stupendous imaginings brought to fruition. As an American president, he left an impressive mark upon his country. He promised a "square...

Even though he is away serving in an English hospital during World War II, Molly's father finds a way to make the family Christmas very special.

Robert and his friend Charlie are proud of their fathers, who are working on the construction of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

Examines the career of Mary Garber, who "was a sportswriter for fifty-six years and was the first woman to receive the Associated Press Sports Editors Red Smith Award, presented for major contributions in sports journalism. And now, every year the Association of Women in Sports Media presents the Mary Garber Pioneer Award in her honor to a role model for women in sports media"--Amazon.com.

Ethan looks forward to the Thanksgiving Day when he and his friends are finally old enough to play in the annual family football game, but that day arrives full of snow and icy roads.

A look at life in Brooklyn in the summer of 1951 and the exciting baseball race for the World Series by the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Micawber, a squirrel fascinated by art, leaves a museum with an art student and secretly uses her supplies to make his own paintings.

"The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day; the score stood four to two with but one inning more to play." Thus begins one of the most famous poems in American history: Ernest L. Thayer's Casey at the Bat. When the powerful Mudville baseball team enters the ninth inning of their game behind by two runs, things seem pretty grim. And when the first two batters make outs, it looks like their best player, the mighty Casey, won't even...

The first American woman to have received a pilot's license describes her April 1912 solo flight across the English Channel, the first such flight by any woman.