Photo, above:  1958 Chevy Corvette   Debuting in 1953 as the first American two-seater sports car, the Corvette is known to have been one of the ultimate American sports cars. The 1958 Chevrolet Corvette C1 comes with a 16 valves, V8 engine, and is capable of 290 horsepower. It's a rear wheel car, equipped with the fuel injection system. The Corvette C1 comes with stiffer springs and accurately finned brake drums with metallic brake rings; is also outfitted with quad-headlights and a larger chassis. The bumpers of the Corvette were secured to the frame, which makes the car more secure for driving. The Corvette comes with refurbished interiors that combine comfort with style, and has been rendered a sleek look with acrylic polish. The 1958 Chevrolet Corvette also comes with a 160 mph speedometer and has manual transmission, with 3 gears, and has a seating capacity of two.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 1, Block A: Imperfect: An Improbable Life by Jim Abbott and Tim Brown (1 of 2)

     Like so many young men, Jim Abbott grew up wanting to fit in with everybody else while simultaneously wishing to be celebrated for being uncommonly adept at something/anything. In Abbott's case, he was adept at baseball, a game difficult enough with two hands. Abbott was born with just one. This is his story, of dreaming of being twice as good with half the tools.

If this whole notion seems a little pat, give Abbott a chance. For the former Angel's new book, "Imperfect," is an uncommonly compelling coming-of-age story and as American as brick dust. In an era of crooks and thugs, this very human memoir may do for baseball what "The Blind Side" did for football's big-lug linemen. Abbott's back story: He was born without a right hand to struggling young parents who had the good sense to love him but not coddle him. His father, who had an impressive high school sports career of his own, repeatedly spun the boy around and pushed him back to playgrounds full of taunting schoolmates.  It was on those playgrounds that Abbott would prove himself just as able — and often more capable — than the others. A screaming "cut" fastball and prodigious poise would make him a prep sensation and then an All-American at the University of Michigan. [more]

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 1, Block B: Imperfect: An Improbable Life by Jim Abbott and Tim Brown (2 of 2)

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 1, Block C: Soccer Men: Profiles of the Rogues, Geniuses, and Neurotics Who Dominate the World's Most Popular Sport by Simon Kuper (1 of 2)

     Simon Kuper’s New York Times bestseller Soccernomics pioneered a new way of looking at soccer through meticulous empirical analysis and incisive—and witty— commentary. Kuper now leaves the numbers and data behind to explore the heart and soul of the world’s most popular sport in the new, extraordinarily revealing Soccer Men. Soccer Men goes behind the scenes with soccer’s greatest players and coaches. Inquiring into the genius and hubris of the modern game, Kuper details the lives of giants such as Arsène Wenger, Jose Mourinho, Jorge Valdano, Lionel Messi, Kaká, and Didier Drogba, describing their upbringings, the soccer cultures they grew up in, the way they play, and the baggage they bring to their relationships at work.  From one of the great sportswriters of our time, Soccer Men is a penetrating and surprising anatomy of the figures that define modern soccer.

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 1, Block D:  Soccer Men: Profiles of the Rogues, Geniuses, and Neurotics Who Dominate the World's Most Popular Sport by Simon Kuper (2 of 2)

Hour Two

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 2, Block A:  Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars by Paul Ingrassia (1 of 2)

     A narrative like no other: a cultural history that explores how cars have both propelled and reflected the American experience— from the Model T to the Prius.  From the assembly lines of Henry Ford to the open roads of Route 66, from the lore of Jack Kerouac to the sex appeal of the Hot Rod, America’s history is a vehicular history—an idea brought brilliantly to life in this major work by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Paul Ingrassia.  Ingrassia offers a wondrous epic in fifteen automobiles, including the Corvette, the Beetle, and the Chevy Corvair, as well as the personalities and tales behind them: Robert McNamara’s unlikely role in Lee Iacocca’s Mustang, . . .   [more]

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 2, Block B:  Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars by Paul Ingrassia (2 of 2)

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 2, Block C:   Ajax, the Dutch, the War: The Strange Tale of Soccer During Europe's Darkest Hour by Simon Kuper (1 of 2)

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 2, Block D:  Ajax, the Dutch, the War: The Strange Tale of Soccer During Europe's Darkest Hour by Simon Kuper  (2 of 2)

     Earlier this month, anti-Semitic slogans were the subject of a court case brought by BAN, an organization fighting anti-Semitism, against ADO. In March, this top league club from The Hague won a game against Ajax from Amsterdam. During the match ADO supporters frequently chanted “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas” and “Horrible Cancer Jews.” At a party after ADO’s victory, fans and two players sang in the presence of the trainer, “We are going to chase Jews.” The judge decided that the ADO management would be held responsible to prevent repetition of similar outbursts at future games and if it could not, the management should stop the match.

Hour Three

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 3, Block A:  Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias by Don Van Natta Jr. (1 of 2)

     . . . Babe was also a colorful and complicated figure, and the fullness of her personality—the talent, the drive, the spark, and the conceit—is revealed in the new biography by Don Van Natta, Jr., Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias (Little, Brown, 2011), winner of the 2011 USGA Herbert Warren Wind Book Award. A long-time correspondent with the New York Times and three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his journalist work, Don brings his talents as a writer to a story that is, at turns, exciting and poignant, inspiring and funny. Don’s biography of Babe is a masterly portrait of an extraordinary woman: a book that our sports-playing daughters—and sons—should read.  [more]

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 3, Block B:  Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias by Don Van Natta Jr. (2 of 2)

      Mildred Ella Didrikson was the sixth of seven children born in the coastal oil city of Port Arthur in southeastern Texas. Her parents were immigrants from Norway. She later changed the spelling of her surname from Didriksen to Didrikson. She claimed to have acquired the nickname "Babe" (after Babe Ruth) upon hitting five home runs in a childhood baseball game, but in reality, her Norwegian mother had called her "Bebe" from the time she was a toddler. Though best known for her athletic gifts, Didrikson had many talents and was a competitor in even the most domestic of occupations: sewing. An excellent seamstress, she made many of the clothes she wore, including her golfing outfits. She claimed to have won the sewing championship at the 1931 State Fair of Texas in Dallas, but in reality won the South Texas State Fair in Beaumont, embellishing the story many years later in 1953. She attended Beaumont High School. Never a strong student, she eventually dropped out without graduating after she moved to Dallas to play basketball. She was a singer and a harmonica player; recorded several songs on the Mercury Records label. Her biggest seller was "I Felt a Little Teardrop" with "Detour" on the flip side. Already famous as Babe Didrikson, she married George Zaharias (1908–1984), a professional wrestler, in St. Louis, Missouri, on December 23, 1938. Thereafter, she was largely known as Babe Didrikson Zaharias or Babe Zaharias. The couple met while playing golf. George Zaharias, a Greek American, was a native of Pueblo, Colorado. Called the "Crying Greek from Cripple Creek," Zaharias also did some part-time acting. The Zahariases had no children and were rebuffed by authorities when they sought to adopt. Didrikson gained world fame in track and field and All-American status in basketball. She played organized baseball and softball and was an expert diver, roller-skater and bowler. She won two gold medals and one silver medal for track and field in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Bebe Zaharias was surpassingly good at golf, among other sports, and won tournaments and praise internationally. Zaharias won a tournament named after her, the Babe Zaharias Open of Beaumont, Texas. She won the 1947 Titleholders Championship and the 1948 U.S. Women's Open for her fourth and fifth major championships. She won 17 straight women's amateur victories, a feat never equaled by anyone. By 1950, she had won every golf title available. Totaling both her amateur and professional victories, Zaharias won a total of 82 golf tournaments.

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 3, Block C:  Stan Musial: An American Life by George Vecsey (1 of 2)

      The Donora, PA, native Stan Musial never married a starlet. He didn’t die young, live too hard, or squander his talent. There were no legendary displays of temper or moodiness. He was merely the most consistent superstar of his era, a scarily gifted batsman who compiled 3,630 career hits (1,815 at home and 1,815 on the road), won three World Series titles, and retired in 1963 in possession of seventeen major-league records.  Away from the diamond, he proved a savvy businessman and a model of humility and graciousness toward his many fans in St. Louis and around the world.  In Stan Musial: An American Life, the veteran sports journalist George Vecsey finally gives this twenty-time All-Star and St. Louis Cardinals icon the kind of prestigious biographical treatment previously afforded to his more celebrated contemporaries Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. More than just a chronological recounting of the events of Musial’s life, this is the definitive portrait of one of the game’s best-loved but most unappreciated legends, told through the remembrances of those who played beside, worked with, and covered “Stan the Man” over the course of his nearly seventy years in the national spotlight.

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 3, Block D:   Stan Musial: An American Life by George Vecsey (2 of 2)

Hour Four

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 4, Block A:  Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series by David Pietrusza   (1 of 4)

     History remembers Arnold Rothstein as the man who fixed the 1919 World Series, an underworld genius. The real-life model for The Great Gatsby's Meyer Wolfsheim and Nathan Detroit from Guys and Dolls, Rothstein was much more—and less—than a fixer of baseball games. He was everything that made 1920s Manhattan roar. Featuring Jazz Age Broadway with its thugs, speakeasies, showgirls, political movers and shakers, and stars of the Golden Age of Sports, this is a biography of the man who dominated an age. Arnold Rothstein was a loan shark, pool shark, bookmaker, thief, fence of stolen property, political fixer, Wall Street swindler, labor racketeer, rumrunner, and mastermind of the modern drug trade. Among his monikers were "The Big Bankroll," "The Brain," and "The Man Uptown." This vivid account of Rothstein's life is also the story of con artists, crooked cops, politicians, gang lords, newsmen, speakeasy owners, gamblers and the like. Finally unraveling the mystery of Rothstein's November 1928 murder in a Times Square hotel room, David Pietrusza has cemented The Big Bankroll's place among the most influential and fascinating legendary American criminals.  [more]

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 4, Block B:  Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series by David Pietrusza  (2 of 4)

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 4, Block C:  Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series by David Pietrusza  (3 of 4)

Monday  25 March 2013 / Hour 4, Block D:   Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series by David Pietrusza  (4 of 4)

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