New Releases by Mike Shropshire

A rollicking and ribald first-person account of the 1975 Major League Baseball season—the last year before free agency took over and changed the national pastime forever—for better or for worse! 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.

Bill Parcells was living in self-imposed exile from the National Football League sidelines. The Tuna had earned living-legend status after coaching the Giants, Patriots, and Jets from the skid-row district of the NFL and transforming those teams into champions. The final weeks of the 2002 season found Parcells working as an analyst at the ESPN studios. His heart aching, Parcells was like a televangelist with no cripples to heal. The Tuna urgently yearned for another lost cause. In Dallas, Cowboys'' owner Jerry Jones—described by author Mike Shropshire as "a man involved in a heroic struggle to overcome what had been diagnosed as a terminal face-lift"—was suffering through sleepless nights. Although his once-proud pro football powerhouse traveled beneath a banner that read "America''s Team," it had suffered three straight 5-11 seasons. This team was so sick, it had bedsores. After a clandestine meeting aboard Jones''s private jet, parked at a New Jersey airport, Parcells agreed to abandon his East Coast roots and travel south to restore life to the Cowboys. The Tuna and Jones needed each other in the worst kind of way, so a shotgun wedding was performed. The pundits of the national media joined hands and shouted, "Parcells and Jones can''t stand each other! They''re too set in their ways! It''ll never work!" As usual, the pundits were wrong. With Parcells the ultimate motivator and so-called Jock Whisperer applying his craft, Dallas rolled to a 10-6 regular-season record and shocked the NFL by making the playoffs. When the Tuna Went Down to Texas details the saga of how this unlikely partnership of men "too brittle for tango lessons, but not yet blind enough for assisted living" amazed the sports world and serves as absolute proof that while the truth is not always stranger than fiction, it''s usually a lot funnier.

Some athletes never stop playing. Some rivalries transcend the gridiron. Some games last forever. The Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys engaged in a fierce rivalry in the 1966 season, culminating in the Packers defeating the Cowboys to win the NFL championship. The next year, they clashed again, and the result is a game that only needs three words to evoke lasting images from every player, every coach, and every fan who witnessed it: “The Ice Bowl.” The final game of the 1967 season has become one of the most storied contests in NFL history, and sportswriter Mike Shropshire, author of SEASONS IN HELL, brings it all back to life in his panoramic look at the events leading up to the game and how the game influenced both franchises going forward. With photos and insight into the players who battled, as well as those who witnessed, THE ICE BOWL is a must-read for fans of every down.

Del Bonnet, a teaching pro at an obscure Florida golf resort, needs a change and needs it badly. Having crossed an ominous threshold--his fiftieth birthday--Bonnet receives frequent communiques from the AARP people. He gazes into the future and sees the prospect of assisted living growing larger by the day. Serendipity intervenes. A sales rep working out of his station wagon leaves a handmade driver in Bonnet''s modest golf shop. The pro privately auditions the driver with astounding results. Bonnet--celebrated for thirty years as the only touring pro to be arrested on the course during a PGA event--is quickly convinced that he has secured possession of no mere golf club, but a sword of salvation. So armed, he decides to embark on the PGA Seniors Tour. Thus the formation of a strange triumvirate known as Team Del, consisting of the pro, the golf club that soon becomes dubbed "Big Luther," and a caddie, Doublewide McBride. Bonnet soon learns that the caddie is long on off-the-wall intuitions, short on behavioral graces recommended by Emily Post. While the misadventures of Team Del might not serve as a tribute to the memories Hagen and Hogan, the events detailed in Michael Shropshire''s The Pro stand out as perhaps the most hilarious odyssey in the modern annals of sports fiction.

An inside look at one of today’s most compelling athletes and his influence on college football—in Texas and across the nation. It’s no secret that Texas is the capital of legendary football players. From Sammy Baugh to Earl Campbell to Robert Griffin III and scores of others in between, the Lone Star State has produced a heavily decorated list of athletic phenoms—but none has put on a display as explosive and as sudden as that of the kid they call “Johnny Football.” In Johnny Football, Texas sportswriter Mike Shropshire recounts Johnny Manziel’s extraordinary freshman season with Texas A&M in 2012—during which his unparalleled breakout performance made him the first freshman to ever win the illustrious Heisman Trophy—and follows Manziel and the rest of the Aggie squad through the much-hyped 2013 gridiron campaign. In Shropshire’s signature witty, entertaining writing style, the book tells the complete story of an unlikely star who came out of rural obscurity to lead the Aggies to a top-ten ranking in the national polls in 2012 and a victory in the postseason Cotton Bowl. But make no mistake: the tale of “Johnny Football” is larger and deeper than that of one star player. It is the narrative of how a kid from nowhere, with his country-boy values, restored vigor and pride to the Spirit of Aggieland (Gig ’Em!), and this celebration of the A&M faithful and Texas’ gridiron fanaticism is sure to make Johnny Football a treasured tale for years to come.

“A funny, revealing, Ball Four–like romp through mid-seventies baseball” from the longtime sports columnist and author of The Last Real Season (Booklist). You think your team is bad? In this “disastrously hilarious” work on one of the most tortured franchises in baseball, one reporter discovers that nine innings can feel like an eternity (USA Today). In early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire agreed to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, not realizing that the Rangers were arguably the worst team in baseball history. Seasons in Hell is a riotous, candid, irreverent behind-the-scenes account in the tradition of The Bronx Zoo and Ball Four, following the Texas Rangers from Whitey Herzog’s reign in 1973 through Billy Martin’s tumultuous tenure. Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique (and likely never-to-be-seen-again) baseball personalities, Seasons in Hell recounts some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game and brings to life the no-holds-barred culture of major league baseball in the mid-seventies. “The single funniest sports book I have ever read.”—Don Imus “The locker-room shenanigans of a lousy team of the 1970s.”—Publishers Weekly

With Sarah Palin and the Wasilla Warriors, acclaimed sportswriter Mike Shropshire goes beyond Sarah Palin''s media profile to tell the incredible untold story of how she and a team of young women came together to overcome daunting odds as they battled their way to the Alaska state championship. Long before the whole world knew Sarah Palin as "Momma Grizzly," the handful of girls on her high school basketball team called their starting point guard Sarah "Barracuda" for the tenacious defense she played. Hers was the kind of determination that fit in well on a scrappy team from a small town where people were proud to call themselves Valley Trash and happy to take on the big-city schools to prove which team was really the best. As beautiful as Alaska is, it''s also unforgiving. It''s a place where your first mistake may be your last. When the winter comes and the nights are long and the temperatures plunge, everyone starts looking for an escape. All across Alaska, those gyms—bright and warm—become a sanctuary not only for the players but for their isolated hometowns as well.

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.

Presents the life and career of Ann Richards who was governor of the state of Texas from 1991-1995.