Total Sports Publishing


Total Sports Publishing refers to a book publishing company based in Kingston, New York, that operated from 1998 to 2002. Prominent author John Thorn served as the division's publisher throughout its existence.

Total Sports

Thorn and Michael Gershman had been packaging books for other publishers since the late 1980s, most notably their baseball encyclopedia, Total Baseball. Thorn and Gershman called their company "Baseball Ink."
The pair joined forces with internet news company KOZ, Inc. to form Total Sports in 1998. The new company was headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, and led by George Schlukbier. Thorn's publishing division took root in his hometown of Kingston, New York, while Gershman headed the company's Manhattan office on Park Avenue.
This merger proved to be an ill-fated arrangement. The burst of the dot-com bubble led the two companies to split after less than two years. Thorn led a management buyout of the publishing division during the summer of 2000. The Raleigh-based web business was purchased by the San Francisco-based internet company Quokka Sports.
Both Thorn's new venture and Quokka Sports would declare bankruptcy by 2002.

Staff

TSP's editorial staff included most of the prominent sports reference editors of the era, including Thorn, David Pietrusza, Pete Palmer, Bob Carroll, Gary Gillette, Sean Lahman, Dan Diamond, Mike Meserole, Beau Riffenburgh, Kenneth Shouler and Matthew Silverman.

Encyclopedias

TSP was best known for its massive sports encyclopedias, each generally more than 2000 pages, such as Total Baseball, Total Football, and Total Hockey. These volumes were updated at regular intervals, and bore the official endorsements of the leagues whose history they covered: Major League Baseball, the National Football League, or the National Hockey League. These books were universally hailed as a quantum leap in the sports reference genre.

Total Sports Illustrated

An alliance with Sports Illustrated created the "Total/Sports Illustrated" imprint, which published best sellers such as Don Zimmer's autobiography as well as books by magazine staff writers such as Rick Reilly and Peter King.
The TSI line was also renowned for its "Classics" series, which reprinted great books by well-known authors, including Frank Deford, Leonard Koppett, Lawrence Ritter, Robert Creamer, W. C. Heinz, Peter Gent and Lee Allen.

A Life in Pictures series

Another hallmark of the company was pictorial autobiographies of legendary athletes, including Henry Aaron, Ted Williams and Wayne Gretzky. Each book contained pictures documenting the life of the subject, many of which came from their own personal collection. Books in this series bore the subtitle "A Life in Pictures."

Books published

  • Arenafootball 2 Official Record and Fact Book 2001
  • The Babe: The Game That Ruth Built
  • Coach K's Little Blue Book: Fire, Fact and Insight from College Basketball's Best Coach
  • The Commissioners: : Baseball's Midlife Crisis
  • Coolest Game on the Road: A Travel Guide to NHL
  • East Side, West Side: Tales of New York Sporting Life, 1910-1960
  • Gladiators: 40 Years of Football
  • Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century
  • Greatest Quarterbacks
  • Havana Heat: A Novel
  • The Hidden Game of Football: The Next Edition
  • Home Run: My Life in Pictures
  • The Hot Stove League
  • The Insider 2000
  • Life of Reilly
  • McGoorty: A Pool Room Hustler
  • The National Hockey League Official Guide and Record Book 2002
  • 99: My Life in Pictures
  • No More Bad Shots: Shot by Shot, Round by Round - A Foolproof Guide to Better Golf
  • North Dallas Forty
  • Now Pitching for the Yankees: Spinning the News for Mickey, Billy and George
  • Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball
  • The Spy: Baseball '98
  • Ted Williams: My Life in Pictures
  • They Said It: 200 Of the Funniest Sports Quips & Quotes Collected from the Pages of Sports Illustrated
  • The Thinking Fan's Guide to Baseball 3rd Ed.
  • Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball
  • The Total Baseball Catalog
  • Total Browns
  • Total Browns: The Official Encyclopedia of the Cleveland Browns
  • Total Football
  • Total 49ers
  • Total Hockey: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Hockey League
  • Total Packers
  • Total Quarterbacks
  • The Total Sports Illustrated Book of Boxing
  • Total Stanley Cup: Official Publication of the National Hockey League
  • Total Steelers
  • Total Super Bowl
  • Total Teams Series 2000
  • Trading Paint: Dale Earnhardt Vs. Jeff Gordon Classic Photos from a Classic Rivalry
  • The 12 Leadership Principles of Dean Smith
  • The World According to Dean: Four Decades of Basketball
  • Years of Glory: The Six Team Era
  • ''Zim: A Baseball Life''