Kevin Cowherd

The date is April 29, 2015. Baltimore is reeling from the devastating riots sparked by the death in police custody of twenty-five-year-old African American Freddie Gray. Set against this grim backdrop, less than thirty-six hours after the worst rioting Baltimore has seen since the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox take the field at Camden Yards. It is a surreal event they will never forget: the only Major League game ever played without fans. The eerily quiet stadium is on lockdown for public safety and because police are needed elsewhere to keep the tense city from exploding anew. When the Crowd Didn’t Roar chronicles this unsettling contest—as well as the tragic events that led up to it and the therapeutic effect the game had on a troubled city. The story comes vividly to life through the eyes of city leaders, activists, police officials, and the media that covered the tumultuous unrest on the streets of Baltimore, as well as the ballplayers, umpires, managers, and front-office personnel of the teams that played in this singular game, and the fans who watched it from behind locked gates. In its own way, amid the uprising and great turmoil, baseball stopped to reflect on the fact that something different was happening in Baltimore and responded to it in an unprecedented way, making this the unlikeliest and strangest game ever played.

How Baseball’s Strangest Game Ever Gave a Broken City Hope

When the Crowd Didn't Roar

The date is April 29, 2015. Baltimore is reeling from the devastating riots sparked by the death in police custody of twenty-five-year-old African American Freddie Gray. Set against this grim backdrop, less than thirty-six hours after the worst rioting Baltimore has seen since the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox take the field at Camden Yards. It is a surreal event they will never forget: the only Major League game until COVID ever played without fans. The eerily quiet stadium is on lockdown for public safety and because police are needed elsewhere to keep the tense city from exploding anew. When the Crowd Didn't Roar chronicles this unsettling contest--as well as the tragic events that led up to it and the therapeutic effect the game had on a troubled city. The story comes vividly to life through the eyes of city leaders, activists, police officials, and the media that covered the tumultuous unrest on the streets of Baltimore, as well as the ballplayers, umpires, managers, and front-office personnel of the teams that played in this singular game, and the fans who watched it from behind locked gates. In its own way, amid the uprising and great turmoil, baseball stopped to reflect on the fact that something different was happening in Baltimore and responded to it in an unprecedented way, making this the unlikeliest and strangest game ever played.

How Baseball's Strangest Game Ever Gave a Broken City Hope

The most interesting man in the world? At times, Ed Hale made the Dos Equis guy look like a shut-in. Now for the first time, Hale's inspiring story is told in the pages of Hale Storm. It's a rollicking, inspirational tale like no other: a kid from gritty Sparrow's Point, Md., has his fill of back-breaking work in the steel mill, thumbs his nose at college and sets off to seek his fortune. With an equal measure of brains and guts, he conquers the worlds of business and industry, buys an indoor soccer team, hobnobs with princes, politicians and heads of state, works covertly for the Central Intelligence Agency, dates a succession of astonishingly beautiful women and builds an iconic tower in the midst of the grimy Baltimore waterfront that helps transform acres of forlorn industrial ruin into a thriving neighborhood. The tough times are chronicled here, too: Hale's swings and misses on two turbulent marriages, his history-making divorce from his first wife, union problems and death threats, the plane crashes he survived, the business deals that went sour, the distinctive tower he was forced to sell and the heart-wrenching decision to walk away from the beloved bank that he founded and nurtured for so many years. It's a singular story of an American original that readers won't want to miss.

The Incredible Saga of Baltimore's Ed Hale, Including a Secret Life with the CIA

Hale Storm

Many call it the biggest upset in sports history. Bigger than the Jets over the Colts in Super Bowl III. Bigger than the U.S. hockey team's "Miracle on Ice" win over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics. Bigger than Buster Douglas's stunning KO of Mike Tyson 10 years later. When little-known UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) takes the floor against mighty Virginia in the first round of the 2018 NCAA men's basketball tournament, the whole world knows the Retrievers will lose. They're 20 1/2-point underdogs. ESPN's Power Basketball Index gives them a 1.5 per cent chance of winning. They're a lowly 16-seed going against the overall no. 1-seed. And a 16 has never beaten a 1. Never, ever. Yet on a magical weekend in Charlotte, N.C., the odds go up in flames. March Madness hits a whole new level. This is the dramatic story of the singular team that made bracket-busting history and thrilled a nation, and the school that headline writers and social media pundits were now calling - devoid of irony - "U MUST BE CINDERELLA!"

Inside College Basketball's Greatest Upset Ever and the Audacious School That Pulled It Off

U Must Be Cinderella!

Cal Ripken Jr.

Cody Parker is the new kid in school. He’s overweight, scared and hates his new life in Dullsville, Maryland, aka Baltimore, where he’s a target–okay, a big target–for brutal teasing. But he loves baseball. And despite his size, he plays third base like a dream. Too bad he’s competing for the starting job on the Orioles of the Dulaney Babe Ruth League against budding hoodlum Dante Rizzo, who vows to squeeze Cody’s head like a grape if he beats him out. Life gets even more complicated when Cody’s school, York Middle, is beset by a rash of mysterious thefts, a crime wave that threatens to sideline Cody–and ruin a golden season for the Orioles. Will Cody ever succeed in getting people to see him for who he really is?

Cal Ripken, Jr.'s All-Stars: Super-sized Slugger

The country might be going to hell in a hand-basket, but don't close the garage doors and sit there with the engine running until you read this collection of sardonic, off-the-wall pieces on modern life by one of America's best humorists. Described as another Dave Barry, only with a lot less going for him, Baltimore Sun columnist Kevin Cowherd sizzles as he tackles such loopy subjects as: - Larry King's interview with God (El Paso, Texas, you're on the air with the Almighty ... - Fine dining at a 7-Eleven at 2 a.m. (Moving briskly past the Test-Your-Blood-Pressure machine and the Hormel chili section, we arrive at the rack of Slim Jims.) - $20 million lottery winners who insist on keeping their jobs (Oh yeah, I'll be back at Mr. Tire first thing in the morning.) - The joys of backyard wiffleball (Wiffleball is for anyone willing to shrug off a full speed collision with a tool shed and six months of subsequent blackouts just to snare a grounder up the middle.) - Thanksgiving dinner with Howard Stern (Yo, sweetie, pass the cranberry sauce. What are you, stupid? Only a friggin' moron would pass the mashed potatoes when I asked for the cranberry sauce.)- Modest people looking for love in the personals (5-foot-9 guy with spare tire, bags under his eyes, not much of a chin, looks like your grocer, seeks woman.).

Kevin Cowherd

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