This first book-length biography of Jimmy Collins examines the life of an intensely private, business-oriented ballplayer who was the first third baseman to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Collins' life is covered in depth from his early years growing up in Buffalo, through his 14-year major league baseball career 1895-1908 primarily in Boston, to his post-baseball life as a real estate investor. This book sheds new light on Collins' motivations to leverage his baseball success--which included leading Boston to victory in the first modern-day World Series in 1903--into lucrative baseball contracts to fund his real estate investments. When he led the Boston Americans to successive American League championships in 1903 and 1904, Collins was instrumental in the foundation of today's highly successful Boston Red Sox franchise and its intense rivalry with the New York Yankees.

Writing about the economic collapse and social unrest of her 1970s childhood in Buffalo, New York, Laura Pedersen was struck by how things were finally improving in her beloved hometown. As 2008 began, Buffalo was poised to become the thriving metropolis it had been a hundred years earlier—only instead of grain and steel, the booming industries now included healthcare and banking, education and technology. Folks who'd moved away due to lack of opportunity in the 1980s talked excitedly about returning home. They mised the small-town friendliness and it wasn't nostalgia for a past that no longer existed—Buffalo has long held the well-deserved nickname the City of Good Neighbors. The diaspora has ended. Preservationists are winning out over demolition crews. The lights are back on in a city that's usually associated with blizzards and blight rather than its treasure trove of art, architecture, and culture.