In 1908 baseball was the only game that mattered in the South. With no major league team in the region, rivalries between Southern Association cities such as Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, and New Orleans were heated. This season, however, no city was as baseball-crazed as Nashville, whose Vols had been league doormat in 1907. After an unpromising start, the Nashville club clawed its way into contention during the month of July, rising into the upper division, then into a battle for first. Local interest intensified, as the competitive fire of Nashville fans was stoked by sharp-tongued columnist Grantland Rice and the city's three daily newspapers. By the time the Vols met the New Orleans Pelicans for a season-ending series, and the championship, the city was gripped by a pennant fever that shut down the commercial district. Nearly 13,000 people thronged the Nashville ballpark, Sulphur Dell, for the third and deciding contest. What they saw was described by Rice as "the greatest game ever played in Dixie."

A strong-armed devastating spitball pitcher from rural Tennessee who once won 16 games with the Boston Braves, Hub Perdue is better remembered today as one of the clown princes of the Deadball Era. Often compared with fellow player-comedians Germany Schaefer, Nick Altrock, and Rabbit Maranville, Perdue had a quick wit and a rebellious streak that amused teammates but sometimes led to conflicts with management and umpires. ("Mix 'em up!" manager George Stallings had told him, encouraging the weak-hitting pitcher to take his at-bats more seriously; Perdue, a right-hander, dutifully took his strikeouts from alternating sides of the plate.) His penchant for the subversive--he was also a players' union representative who freely dispensed advice on contracts and negotiation--might in fact have curtailed what had been a promising big league career. But his antics in the majors and minors became the stuff of legend, known as "Hublore."

The Best Game Ever is a revealing look at the University of North Carolina Tar Heels’ 1956–57 season, one of the most storied in college basketball history. From the first day of practice, when forward Lennie Rosenbluth predicted a winning season, to the final game, a triple-overtime victory over Wilt Chamberlain’s legendary Kansas team, the season developed into what many sports historians believe was the start of college basketball hysteria not only on Tobacco Road, but nationwide. The 1956–57 Tar Heels finished a perfect 32-0. The only previous team in Carolina history to achieve perfection was the 1924 team, years before the NCAA Tournament was created.

On December 6, 1969, the Texas Longhorns and Arkansas Razorbacks met in what many consider the Game of the Century. In the centennial season of college football, both teams were undefeated; both featured devastating and innovative offenses; both boasted cerebral, stingy defenses; and both were coached by superior tacticians and stirring motivators, Texas's Darrell Royal and Arkansas's Frank Broyles. On that day in Fayetteville, the poll-leading Horns and second-ranked Hogs battled for the Southwest Conference title -- and President Nixon was coming to present his own national championship plaque to the winners. Even if it had been just a game, it would still have been memorable today. The bitter rivals played a game for the ages before a frenzied, hog-callin' crowd that included not only an enthralled President Nixon -- a noted football fan -- but also Texas congressman George Bush. And the game turned, improbably, on an outrageously daring fourth-down pass. But it wasn't just a game, because nothing was so simple in December 1969. In Horns, Hogs, & Nixon Coming, Terry Frei deftly weaves the social, political, and athletic trends together for an unforgettable look at one of the landmark college sporting events of all time. The week leading up to the showdown saw black student groups at Arkansas, still marginalized and targets of virulent abuse, protesting and seeking to end the use of the song "Dixie" to celebrate Razorback touchdowns; students were determined to rush the field during the game if the band struck up the tune. As the United States remained mired in the Vietnam War, sign-wielding demonstrators (including war veterans) took up their positions outside the stadium -- in full view of the president. That same week, Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton penned a letter to the head of the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, thanking the colonel for shielding him from induction into the military earlier in the year. Finally, this game was the last major sporting event that featured two exclusively white teams. Slowly, inevitably, integration would come to the end zones and hash marks of the South, and though no one knew it at the time, the Texas vs. Arkansas clash truly was Dixie's Last Stand. Drawing from comprehensive research and interviews with coaches, players, protesters, professors, and politicians, Frei stitches together an intimate, electric narrative about two great teams -- including one player who, it would become clear only later, was displaying monumental courage just to make it onto the field -- facing off in the waning days of the era they defined. Gripping, nimble, and clear-eyed, Horns, Hogs, & Nixon Coming is the final word on the last of how it was.