Marsh, Irving & Ehre, Edward – Best Sports Stories of 1944

Description

Marsh, Irving & Ehre, Edward – Best Sports Stories of 1944. E.P. Dutton & Co., New York. 1st edition. VG in a good complete non-price clipped mylar protected dust jacket.

Best Sports Stories of 1944: With Sixteen of the Year’s Best Sports Pictures is a 335-page hardcover anthology edited by Irving T. Marsh and Edward Ehre. Published in 1945 by E.P. Dutton & Co., this landmark volume holds a distinct historical status as the very first edition of Marsh and Ehre’s legendary, long-running annual sports anthology series.
The book serves as a vital time capsule, gathering the finest sports journalism, magazine features, and newspaper columns written during a year when sports were heavily impacted and reshaped by World War II. Alongside the written journalism, the book features a curated visual section displaying 16 of the year’s best action sports photographs. Because of its historical value to wartime morale, a special softcover “Armed Services Edition” was also printed and distributed to troops overseas.

Anthology Story Highlights:
Despite wartime restrictions, the 1944 sports calendar yielded incredibly dramatic narratives, which are captured vividly in the collection’s stories:
• The Sam Langford Interview: Hailed by contemporary reviews as one of the finest, most deeply human pieces in the entire collection, this moving feature interview captures the life, philosophy, and reflections of the legendary, then-blind heavyweight boxing great.
• The “War Bonds Fight”: Stories covering the historic August 4, 1944, lightweight boxing match at Madison Square Garden where arch-rivals Beau Jack and Bob Montgomery fought to raise over $36 million for the war effort. In a dramatic twist of real-world fate, both fighters were drafted into the U.S. Army on the exact same day just a few weeks later.
• The St. Louis “Streetcar” World Series: The collection features premier baseball writing detailing the highly unusual 1944 World Series, where the St. Louis Cardinals defeated their hometown rivals, the St. Louis Browns. Because both teams shared Sportsman’s Park, it became affectionately known as the “Streetcar Series.”