True Crime Sports

This is the unbelievable, unforgettable, unparalleled story of an ordinary guy whose attempts to become famous doing the thing he wanted most—become a world class race car driver—devolved into a you-can’t-make-this-up tale of one of the biggest crime rings and drug scandals of the 1980s. Now, with the help of New York Times bestselling author A.J. Baime, Randy tells the whole truth for the first time ever, a gripping narrative unlike any other, a sports story for the ages, and shocking a true crime epic.

Thoroughbred racing was one of the first major sports in early America. Horse racing thrived because it was a high-status sport that attracted the interest of both old and new money. It grew because spectators enjoyed the pageantry, the exciting races, and, most of all, the gambling. In The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime, author Steven Riess fills a long-neglected gap in sports history, offering a richly detailed and fascinating chronicle of thoroughbred racing's heyday.

While the celebrity victims of Dr. Larry Nassar and the USA Gymnastics sexual abuse scandals rightly got a lot of attention, the number of affected kids is far more numerous in swimming. Underwater tells the almost unbelievable story, in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, Latin America, and the Middle East, of coaches who preyed on children while hopping from program to program, state to state, and even country to country, in a pattern similar to the pedophile priests of the Catholic Church.

The definitive, shocking account of the FIFA scandal - the biggest international corruption case of recent years, spearheaded by US investigators, involving dozens of countries, and implicating nearly every aspect of the world’s most popular sport, soccer, including its biggest event, the World Cup.

In 2009, Notts County FC were on the brink of bankruptcy when they were taken over by a mysterious company supposedly backed by the Bahraini royal family. The club was promised millions of pounds worth of investment and a list of marquee players, including Sol Campbell and Kasper Schmeichel were signed, in a recruitment drive led by former England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson, who was appointed to take the club all the way to the Premier League.

In 2015, FIFA - the multibillion dollar governing body of the world's most-loved sport - was brought down by allegations of industrial-scale bribes, kickbacks, money laundering, racketeering, and tax evasion. Beginning with early morning raids in Zurich and the indictment of 27 executives by the US Department of Justice, the rottenness at the core of FIFA seemed to extend throughout all of soccer, from the decision to send the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar to lesser known cases of embezzlement from Trinidad to South Africa.

In June 2007, the FBI informed the NBA that one of its referees, Tim Donaghy, was the subject of a probe into illegal gambling. Within months, the public knew the broad outlines of a scheme involving Donaghy betting on games he officiated with a coconspirator, longtime Donaghy acquaintance and professional gambler Jimmy "Baba" Battista. They were joined in the scandal by a mutual childhood friend, Tommy Martino. By November 2008, each man had pleaded guilty to charges relating to the conspiracy and was in federal prison.

Italy's ultras are the most organised and violent fans in European football. Many groups have evolved into criminal gangs, involved in ticket-touting, drug-dealing and murder. A cross between the Hells Angels and hooligans, they're often the foot-soldiers of the Mafia and have been instrumental in the rise of the far-right. But the purist ultras say that they are insurgents fighting against a police state and modern football. Only amongst the ultras, they say, can you find belonging, community and a sacred concept of sport.

Arturo "Thunder" Gatti hung up his gloves in 2007, closing the book on a boxing career that bordered on the mythical. At long last, he seemed ready to leave the business of blood behind for a long, happy life outside the ring. His retirement was celebrated—boxing's modern gladiator had earned his freedom. Two years later, he was gone—found dead in a hotel in Brazil under mysterious circumstances. He was only thirty-seven years old. Did he commit suicide? Or was he killed by his new wife?

While other profilers tend to conceal the clear facts behind complex technical language and psychobabble, investigator Pat Brown actually tells it like it is. With the same dark wit that gets people who work with the criminally insane through their workday, Brown speaks frankly about the monsters among us who kill for sport. In Killing for Sport, Brown provides an honest portrayal of the predator-next-door, how he hunts for him victims, why he likes to torture them, where he tends to stash their bodies, and more.

Dangerous Odds - a true crime thriller memoir - is the explosive, never-been-told, behind-the-scenes look into the world of illegal sports betting, revealed by an insider. Marisa Lankester, a young beauty with a privileged New York upbringing, stumbles into the back door of the largest illegal sports betting organization in the US, run by Ron (The Cigar) Sacco. Marisa, a thrill-seeker, maneuvers herself into this mob-run men-only bookmaking operation and becomes a trusted insider.

Spies on the Sidelines: The High-Stakes World of NFL Espionage details the collection techniques that NFL teams utilize to gather information on their opponents in order to gain a game-day advantage, as well as the countermeasures used to defend against them. The book spans the entire history of the league and contains anecdotes from every NFL team. Topics include spying on practices, stealing paperwork and signals, debriefing personnel that switch teams, listening devices, headset tampering, elicitation, Spygate, Deflategate, and so much more!

Ultras are football fans like no others. A hugely visible and controversial part of the global game, their credo and aesthetic replicated in almost every league everywhere on earth, a global movement of extreme fandom and politics is also one of the largest youth movements in the world. Yet they remain unknown: an anti-establishment force that is transforming both football and politics. In this book, James Montague goes underground to uncover the true face of this dissident force for the first time.

All Porter Fischer wanted was the $4,000 Tony Bosch owed him. But Bosch would not pay him back, so he swiped Bosch’s Biogenesis ledgers as collateral. Fischer eventually examined the lists of clients and treatment plans revealed in the ledgers and saw what he really had: proof that major and minor sports figures came to the Miami antiaging clinic for anabolic steroids, human growth hormones, and other illegal drugs. That included one of the greatest sluggers in modern baseball history: three-time MVP Alex Rodriguez.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Foxcatcher by Mark Schultz, read by Stephen Mendel. On 22 January 1996, Dave Schultz, Olympic gold medalist and wrestling's golden boy, was shot in the back by John E. du Pont at the famed Foxcatcher estate in Pennsylvania. That started a two-day siege at the ranch before the du Pont family heir was finally captured.

The story of FIFA's fall from grace has it all: power, betrayal, revenge, sports stars, hustlers, corruption, sex and phenomenal quantities of money, all set against exotic locales stretching from Caribbean beaches to the formal staterooms of the Kremlin and the sun-blasted streets of Doha, Qatar.

A portion of the proceeds from Front Row Seat will be donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Disease research and the Positive Coaching Alliance to help coaches lead and develop America’s future leaders. America's youth sports industry has changed dramatically over the past two decades. The days of playing for your town or local YMCA team, be it baseball, soccer, basketball or lacrosse were coming to an end.

Joe Simpson, with just his partner Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed west face of the remote 21,000 foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June of 1995. But before they reached the summit, disaster struck. A few days later, Simon staggered into base camp, exhausted and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead.

Known as the "beautiful game," soccer is the world's most popular sport, crossing borders and language barriers to entertain billions. But underneath it all - the raucous fans in the stadiums; the beloved players; and FIFA, the international governing body with a membership of 209 national associations - is a scandal that threatens to make soccer the ugliest sport in the world. Filled with headline-making revelations, The Big Fix is a must-hear for soccer fans and true crime aficionados.

Die erweiterte und aktualisierte Fassung des Spiegelbestsellers. Warum hat Katar die WM bekommen und welche kriminellen Praktiken gehen im brasilianischen Fußball vor sich? Diese und viele weitere Fragen beantwortet Thomas Kistner, Sportjournalist der Süddeutschen Zeitung, in seinen investigativen Beiträgen, die als Grundlage dieses Werks dienen. Dafür hat er die mafiösen Strukturen recherchiert und seinen Bestseller FIFA-Mafia überarbeitet.