Remember Times Square before it was a theme park? Remember when there was no such thing as a luxury box? In the first half of the century New York City was sports heaven, full of lives lived in the ring, on the field, in the bar. Lawrence Ritter has spent decades listening to old-timers recall stories of the men who made New York City the center of the sporting world. With Ritter's richly evocative text and nearly 200 images in both color and black & white, East Side, West Side brings back to life sites from Babe Ruth's haunts and the forgotten ballparks of the Negro Leagues to Gil Hodges's bowling lanes, middleweight Mickey Walker's Toy Bulldog Tavern, and Professor Heckler's hugely popular Flea Circus.