In Players, Teams, and Stadium Ghosts, sportswriter Bob Hunter has assembled a Hall of Fame collection of his best writing from the Columbus Dispatch. Fans will encounter some of the biggest names in sports and relive great moments from games played by amateurs and pros. They’ll encounter forgotten players and teams that struggled. Hunter shows us LeBron James when he was a 15-year-old high school freshman, already capturing the world’s attention; 20-year-old Derek Jeter’s meteoric rise through the minors, including the Columbus Clippers; a strange encounter with Pete Rose hustling frozen pizzas; and the excitement of watching future WNBA star Katie Smith dominate a Columbus Quest championship game. The common thread is the personal touch that Hunter consistently uses to take readers beyond the final scores and the dazzle of lights. These are the people behind the athletes. They’re remembered for how they played, but Hunter reminds us who they were.

John Lancaster, a Knight of The Round Table, was a confidant of King Arthur who had gifted him The Sword Excalibur to recognize his loyalty and contribution to numerous campaigns. The creed of patriotism was passed on through the two thousand years to John’s descendants. The dream to make England great again was kept alive to the Modern Times. This family believed that The Crown was unfairly taken by force away from their ancestors and the seat of power was deceptively moved to London from The City of York. Lord Headingly, descendant of John Lancaster, felt that the conditions were ripe to restore the power back to The City of York. The two thousand year old under ground movement resurfaces financed by Headingly’s business empire. A new political party, The Celtic Party, is launched. Frustrated citizens looking for a change bring The Celtic Party to power. The popular momentum carries forth to the formation of a new union of nations, Celtica. The winds of change blow over to other countries resulting in a New World Order.

Baseball and ghost stories are as American as apple pie. Haunted Baseball combines both with this fun and freaky collection of otherworldly yarns. Collected from baseball players, stadium personnel, umpires, front-office folks, and fans, the tales told here explore the spooky connection between baseball and the paranormal, including Babe Ruth sightings at a former brothel, the Curse of the Billy Goat that still haunts the Chicago Cubs, of hidden passageways within the depths of Dodger Stadium, and of the spirits of legendary stars that inspire modern-day players at Yankee Stadium. We hear why Johnny Damon believes in ghosts, and how the memories of a 9/11 hero inspired Ken Griffey Jr. to hit a home run against the Phillies—a team against which he’d never even gotten a hit! There’s the story of how Sam Rice settled a decades-old baseball controversy with a message from beyond the grave, and how the late Roberto Clemente had premonitions of his own death in a plane crash. With a wealth of anecdotes that have never before been told before, the authors present an entertaining and eerie look at our national pastime.

An in-depth look at each of Major League Baseball’s thirty ballparks from the perspectives of the game’s longest-tenured storytellers—the broadcasters. With decades of broadcasting between them, 50 broadcasters share their fondest memories from the booth, encapsulating some of baseball’s greatest moments.

Paul Brown was a football genius and the father of two NFL franchises?the Cleveland Browns, who carry his name, and the Cincinnati Bengals. Arguably the most important figure in the history of the sport, he was a renowned coach and owner, and when he passed away on August 5, 1991, the game lost a giant. But for the Browns and Bengals, his death would herald a new era of bad luck, poor judgment, and comic folly that soon had fans whispering about a curse. Paul Brown’s Ghost explores the mystery surrounding the greatest ghost story in NFL history: why these two once-proud franchises have been perpetually denied good fortune in such dramatic, yet different ways—as if they’re being haunted by their mutual patriarch. Jonathan Knight takes readers through a haunted house filled with tales that explain the fraternal—almost biblical—connection between the teams. He examines the colorful characters and memorable moments that both defined and defiled the history of a rivalry that evolved from three decades of bad blood between Brown and Cleveland owner Art Modell. From coaches they shared to draft picks they both lusted after, the Browns and Bengals are connected in ways even their die-hard fans may not realize. Readers will discover the key role the Bengals played in the original Browns’ move to Baltimore, how the Browns were instrumental in the Bengals’ financially crippling new stadium deal, and how the Bengals actually almost became the new Browns. Through the lens of the enduring legacy of one of football’s pioneers, Paul Brown’s Ghost is a witty, whimsical look at decades of absurd incompetence set against the offbeat rivalry between football’s two most hard-luck teams.

A fighter pilot is trapped in an alternate universe—where an attack on Pearl Harbor is about to happen . . . In a parallel universe, the Nazi war machine has finally been defeated after fifty years of combat. But just a few weeks after Victory in Europe Day, war breaks out in a hitherto peaceful theater: the Pacific. A small American ship is on a routine patrol when its captain spies three aircraft-carrying submarines so large that they leave tidal waves in their wakes. Dozens of attack planes stream out from the colossal ships, destroying Pearl Harbor in a matter of minutes before disappearing back into the sea. Ace fighter pilot Hawk Hunter has heard this story before. A refugee from the dimension where World War II ended in 1945, he’s still getting used to this new universe when the Japanese strike. To defeat them, the United States will need the Wingman—the finest pilot of all time—to rise up in this reality just as he has in the other. Return of the Sky Ghost is the fifteenth book of the Wingman series, which also includes Wingman and The Circle War.

This first major biography of the gridiron great Red Grange reveals how a gifted athlete and a wily agent gave birth to professional football in America.