Book excerpt: Jeffrey A. Kroessler's comprehensive and entertaining time line stretches from the pastoral entertainments of the Dutch to the corporate captivity of professional sports. He chronicles events ranging from the truly heroic to the heartbreaking, from moments of municipal greatness to inescapable social change. Through it all he plants the world of sport at the very center of New York's story. Fully illustrated, The Greater New York Sports Chronology covers the spectacle of blood sports like bullbaiting to the birth of baseball, the now-forgotten six-day pedestrian contests, and today's New York City Marathon. Alongside great moments like the Mets' "amazin'" World Series win in 1969, Joe Louis's historic bouts with Max Schmeling, Jackie Robinson's breaking of baseball's color line, and Secretariat's remarkable Triple Crown win at Belmont, we encounter the point-shaving scandals of college basketball and the corrupting influence of organized crime in professional boxing. Beyond immortals like Lou Gehrig and Joe Namath, we also find such once well known figures as Joe Lapchick, Marty Glickman, Gertrude Ederle, and Toots Shor. Year by year, this chronology recounts chess matches, America's Cup races, dog shows, golf tournaments, polo matches, tennis games, and more. Kroessler describes the historic venues, boxing arenas, gyms, stadiums, ballparks, and racetracks that have come and gone, yet made New York the undisputed capital of American sport. Witnessing it all, of course, are the greatest fans in the world.