HOUSTON, July 21, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Throughout his six decades in the game, Gene Elston has been privy to magnificent triumphs, disgraceful defeats and glorious displays of talent and prowess. To him, however, sports are just fun and games, and he injects plenty of humor into them with his new book, The Wild World of Sports: Over a Century of Amusing Stories and Quotes (now available through AuthorHouse).
"Sports personalities are too often pictured as completely serious competitors giving their all for the game. While sports naturally involve a very serious attitude, there is also a lighter side which fans are seldom aware," Elston says.
The Wild World of Sports exposes the funny side of the game for all to see. For more than 60 years, Elston has compiled and collected the hilarious anecdotes and quotes he has heard or heard of around all the leagues and conferences of professional and collegiate sports. His book is a collection of the best of the best from that compilation and provides a hilarious insight into sports and life that Elston felt was lacking in the literary world.
"During the past few years there seems to be a lack of humor in most books, and my aim is to bring to the public this humorous sporting exercise with the hope it will make available an outlet for smiles and more happy faces on coffee tables, in bathrooms and wherever it may be read," Elston says.
From baseball to basketball to football, both foreign and domestic, the book rifles through some of the funniest moments and comments ever uttered by jocks. Elston divides the book into 11 categorical chapters that highlights personalities from each realm of sports, from players to owners to umpires and referees. In addition, he offers an index that contains listings for more than 700 prominent names through the history of sports, such as Ty Cobb, Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, Howard Cosell, Bobby Knight and Joe Namath.
Filled with plenty of wit and hilarious quotes sure to deflate the perceived inflated, overpaid egos of sports stars, The Wild World of Sports is a the perfect for sport nuts looking for another side of the guts and glory.
Elston began his long career as an announcer for minor league baseball teams in Iowa. He rose through the ranks to eventually work for baseball's "Game of the Week" on CBS radio. He also worked in other sports, such as Big Ten football and Southwest Conference basketball. Elston also developed a baseball scorebook that is now used internationally by fans and announcers in America, Canada, Japan and Europe. He is the author of two other books, That's the Way the Ball Bounces and A Stitch in Time: A Baseball Chronology, 1845-2002.
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