Chumps to Champs
Monthly Membership
Cancel anytime!
Memberships will renew every month
One credit every month on renewal
You can spend 1 credit every month to get an audiobook
“[Pennington’s] attention to the critical details of the lives of both the players and the front-office personnel is unusually penetrating. The title is snarky, but the book is intelligent and memorable.”
Booklist (starred review)
A Booklist Pick of the Week's Best Books
The untold story of the time when the New York Yankees were a laughingstock—and how out of that abyss emerged the modern Yankees dynasty, one of the greatest in all of sports
The New York Yankees have won twenty-seven world championships and forty American League pennants, both world records. They have twenty-six members in the Hall of Fame. Their pinstripe swag is a symbol of “making it” worn across the globe. Yet some twenty-five years ago, from 1989 to 1992, the Yankees were a pitiful team at the bottom of the standings, sitting on a fourteen-year World Series drought and a 35 percent drop in attendance. To make the statistics worse, their mercurial, bombastic owner was banned from baseball.
But out of these ashes emerged the modern Yankees dynasty, a juggernaut built on the sly, a brilliant mix of personalities, talent, and ambition. In Chumps to Champs, Pennington reveals a grand tale of revival. Listeners encounter larger-than-life characters like George Steinbrenner and unexplored figures like award-winning manager Buck Showalter, Don Mattingly, and the crafty architect of it all—general manager Gene Michael, who assembled the team’s future stars—Rivera, Jeter, Williams, O’Neill, and Pettitte.
Drawing on unique access, Pennington tells a wild and raucous tale.
Praise