Titles by Phil Rogers

<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Respected by his baseball peers and beloved by Chicago fans and teammates, Ernie Banks did everything there was to do in the game he loved. Everything, that is, except play in a World Series. How and why that experience eluded him during one season of particular promise—1969—is a key storyline of this fresh look at one of baseball's legendary players. The life of Banks, who had picked cotton outside Dallas as a youth, ascended from a barnstorming semipro team to the major leagues after Kansas City Monarchs manager Buck O'Neil placed him with the Cubs, is detailed in this biography of Mr. Cub. During his time in Chicago, Banks won two MVPs and received an education far better than the one he received in the segregated schools he'd attended, gaining important life skills while playing the game he was born to play.

The Chicago White Sox's march to the 2005 World Series title was as surprising as it was dramatic, and in Say It's So: The Chicago White Sox's Magical Season, Phil Rogers delivers the inside story of how it came about. Rogers, senior baseball writer for the Chicago Tribune, describes the gamble general manager Ken Williams took in breaking up a powerful but plodding team in favor of one built around pitching, speed and defense. A team, in other words, that could play the game the way manager Ozzie Guillen wanted it played. In Guillen, the Sox found themselves a charismatic, live-wire leader whose every move seemed golden. Rogers provides a front-row view of the eccentric genius the second-year manager displayed in delivering Chicago its first World Series since 1959 and its first Series title since 1917. There's the rock-steady Paul Konerko, whose big bat and steely clubhouse presence carried the team through the postseason. There's the unsung third basemen Joe Crede, whose spectacular fielding and timely hitting on baseball's biggest stage stamped him as a rising star. There's the irascible catcher A.J. Pierzynski, the "Eddie Haskell" of the clubhouse, who found himself smack in the middle of every controversy. There's the fire of Bobby Jenks and the guile of Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez. And finally there's a deep and talented pitching staff that saw the team through its only rough spot of the regular season and then was simply dominant through all three founds of the postseason. The 2005 White Sox were a uniquely multi-cultural group that reflected their city's ethnic melting pot. They truly were Chicago's team--and they gave their fans a truly magical season.