Review: Heartland (2026)

By Keith O'Brien

My own personal story about Larry Bird - about the only little piece of information that didn't pop up in Keith O'Brien's superb new book, "Heartland" - centers on a baseball player. 

I was talking to someone around 1981 who was playing baseball in Glens Falls, N.Y., in the White Sox organization. (Naturally, I've forgotten the name of the person in question.) It turns out he was part of the Indiana State University's Class of 1978 - meaning that he exited the school a year before Bird did. My new friend said he had the chance to play basketball with Bird there. It probably came in a pickup game. 

"You know how you hear about playing your best basketball when you are with good players?" the player said. "I've never played better basketball than I did when Larry was on my team. If I got open, Larry would pass me the ball. What's more, he'd get the ball to me where it was in perfect shooting position. I'd didn't have to move at all to put it up."

The story about the relationship between Larry Bird and Indiana State was quite unlikely back then. One of basketball's all-time greats turned up on the roster of a school that had never been accused of being a basketball powerhouse. Before Bird, Indiana State might have been remembered as where John Wooden coached before he left for UCLA in 1948. Once the 6-foot-9 forward arrived, the Sycamores went on a very eventful ride that led them to the national championship game in 1979. Bird didn't even leave for the pros a year early in 1978, although he could have done so in that era when it was difficult and/or rare to make that jump. 

But consider what would have happened to someone like that today. Bird would have displayed his talents for Indiana State for a year, and then almost every school in the country would be after him - asking to transfer and promising major Name/Image/Likeness money. He would have wound up at one of those powerhouses, leaving Indiana State with a brief nice moment. 

Looking back, that makes Indiana State's brief rise to the top of the basketball world something of a fairy tale from the perspective of today. It's something that won't be repeated in the foreseeable future, and that's what makes it so much fun to read. "Heartland" is the full account of a wonderful ride. 

The outlines of the story are well known in basketball circles. Bird was a very good high school basketball player, and picked Indiana University (and coach Bobby Knight) for his college career. But the size of the school and the campus overwhelmed him, and he wasted little time in dropping out. Bird was playing pickup ball around his home when Indiana State scooped him up. 

The Sycamores became immediately better, reaching the National Invitation Tournament in 1978. As a transfer, Bird was drafted by the Boston Celtics in the first round ... but decided to stay put. Indiana State went on a dream regular season, going undefeated and earning a No. 1 national ranking at the end of the season. There were some close games along the way, but Bird and Indiana State always figured something out. Off the court, Larry didn't really trust reporters and went out of his way to avoid them - which wasn't easy as the legend grew. Occasionally he'd give a clue that there was an interesting person underneath all that ... but only a clue. Just to add a little drama, head coach Bill King became sick before that season and was replaced by journeyman coach Bob Hodges. 

Students of college basketball history know how the story ended. Indiana State made it to the NCAA Finals, only to run to Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Michigan State. The Spartans won rather easily before the biggest basketball television audience in history. And the Golden Era in Indiana State basketball was over instantly. It took 21 years before the Sycamores returned to the NCAA tournament, and 22 years before it won a game in it. (That's been it to date.) Bird, of course, showed us what the fuss was about in a Hall of Fame pro career.  

O'Brien made some good decisions here. The first one was to ask everyone connected with the program to talk about that era. Happily, almost everyone was willing to do so. The biggest exception was, of course, Bird. But it's not as if Larry has been under-publicized over the years. From there, the level of detail really makes this work. The stories about that brief era really put the narrative into vivid colors. The whole team has the chance to reflect on what happened to it, which at this point must seem like a dream.

O'Brien is on something of a winning streak. He wrote a biography of Pete Rose in 2024 called "Charlie Hustle," which was terrific. Now this. I'm obviously going to have to go back and find "Paradise Falls," which is about the environmental crisis at Love Canal that happened just up the street from me.  

When it comes to books, sometimes you know immediately you're in for a good time. O'Brien reaches that distinction within a couple of chapters. "Heartland" seems destined to reach the 2026 list of best sports books.

Five stars

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Review: It Happened! (2025)

By Jim Lampley

I still remember about when the first time Jim Lampley's name came up in a conversation for me.  

It was the fall of 1974, and I was a sophomore at Syracuse University. I had gotten to know a few people in the radio-TV program, particularly those who were interested in a career in sports broadcasting. ABC had announced that it was plucking one person out of the college ranks to become a sideline reporter for college football games. The idea was that the winner was do a year, and then move on - and be replaced someone else. 

Therefore, everyone in that broadcasting track was jealous of Lampley. They probably didn't know he was 25 and already had some experience in the business. They also didn't know that the "one-year internship" idea lasted only one year. That's because Lampley was good enough to stay on, and ABC didn't really want to make the effort to look for a replacement. 

With that, Lampley was off on quite a ride personally and professionally. He recounts his life in his autobiography called "It Happened!" We'll get to the title in a bit. 

Lampley walked into a job that was part of a golden age in network television sports. ABC had used sports as a way to gain a good reputation for quality programming, under the supervision of Roone Arledge - one of the few geniuses of the sports television broadcasting business. By coincidence, Langley used to caddy for Arledge's father at a golf course in North Carolina. He suddenly found himself working with such names as Howard Cosell, Jim McKay, Keith Jackson and Frank Gifford. 

Slowly but surely, Lampley climbed the ladder. He did events on Wide World of Sports and eventually became the host of the program. Lampley replaced Cosell as the narrator of highlights on Monday Night Football. He worked on many Olympics for a variety of networks. The announcer used some of his spare time to do work for HBO. Lampley covered Wimbledon for several years, but might be best known for a 30-year association with that network for boxing. 

It was the latter that led to Lampley's most well-known moment on the air. When 45-year-old George Foreman had shocked the boxing world with a knockout of Michael Moorer to win the heavyweight title, Lanpley blurted out, "It happened."  It was a great way to describe an epic moment. What we all didn't know was that Foreman had told Lampley that he was confident that at some point late in the fight, Moorer would make a mistake and leave himself open for a knockout punch. What Lampley was saying, then, was "It happened ... the way Foreman thought it would happen." Great moment.

You expect a little name-dropping in a book, and there certainly is some of that. The chapter on Mike Tyson, who Lampley says can be smart and sensitive in private moments is particularly interesting. There are some odd collisions too. One comes when Lampley talked his way into the US-USSR hockey game in Lake Placid, and wordlessly watched the second half of the game with ... Harry Chapin. Then there was the fight between Larry Holmes and Muhammad Ali, in which the young champion gave the legendary Ali a fierce pounding. Lampley was watching the bout on television with, of all people, Mick Jagger, who came up with the appropriate words for the moment: "It's the end of our youth."  

The stories about events and people work quite well, as the veteran broadcaster is a good guide to them. Oddly enough, though, the book suffers a bit when the conversation turns to Lampley himself. 

There are plenty of egos in broadcasting; it sort of comes with the territory. Based on his own descriptions, Lampley could match up with almost any of them. I would guess he paid a price for that professionally He admits along the way here that he made some big mistakes in his career. Lampley didn't quite make it to the top of the mountain, and maybe that was a reason why. 

It also may be a reason why his personal life wasn't exactly smooth sailing. Admittedly, an announcer in that field is going to be spending time on the road constantly. That's going to lead to reduced time with a family back home. Add the ego to the mix, and it's not stunning that Lampley went through several wives - making life even more difficult for his children. Not mentioned here is a 2007 arrest for a suspicious of domestic violence, which led to a restraining order and three years of probation.  

It might be worth mentioning that most of this book was written about events of the 20th century, with only a handful of boxing stories filling out the last 25 years that are covered in the last two chapters. Maybe he needed some time to put some of the events of his life into perspective. 

The usual question about biographies eventually comes down to "Do I like the person that is the subject of the book enough to enjoy the time spent reading it?" In "It Happened," he tells enough good stories to keep the pages moving. Lampley also popped up on a podcast by Jeff Pearlman, and he was a good guest for that format. The book doesn't work quite as well. The book left me feeling a little ambivalent about the author. If you are prepared for that, it might be worth a look.

Three stars

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Review: Hammered (2025)

By Dave Schultz with Dan Robson

It was February 6, 1979, and the Buffalo Sabres had made a trade that flew in the face of the hockey team's tradition. 

They had acquired noted enforcer Dave Schultz from the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for Gary McAdam. The deal was greeted a bit quizzically for a couple of reasons. First off, the Sabres generally were associated with players known for skill rather than their physical size and toughness. Schultz was definitely the latter. Second, Schultz was part of the Flyers' team that defeated Buffalo in the 1975 Stanley Cup Finals. It was simply odd to see a player like that in a Sabre uniform. 

I was covering the Sabres for a radio station in those days, and I remember that I was surprised by Schultz's personality. Tough guys in hockey could be loud, but Schultz was rather soft-spoken. More to the point, he came off as shy. The forward also was so notorious for rough-housing at that point in his career that he couldn't even breathe on an opponent without picking up a penalty. Schultz played in 28 games for the Sabres that season, picking up five points with 86 penalty minutes. He hung around for one more year in the Buffalo organization, splitting his time with the Sabres and Rochester Americans of the AHL. And that was it. 

Schultz was done at the age of 30, and he soon wrote an autobiography called "Hammer." It wasn't particularly memorable, although he was a little bitter about the way he was tossed aside when his usefulness as a fighter had run out. Now, more than 40 years later, he takes another stab at the book business with "Hammered." To his credit, Schultz is much more forthcoming about the details of his life here. That makes it a more interesting read that its predecessor. 

Schultz had two strikes against him in life before he even became serious about hockey. He reveals that he was a victim of sexual assault by an older man when Schultz was 11 years old. Dave planned to be bury with that secret still lurking and unexplored, but went public with it here. He also had a father who was an alcoholic, and that trait was passed on to him. 

Still, Schultz was a good hockey player, someone as a teen who could throw his weight around but had more of a scoring touch that you'd think. Eventually, he reached the point in which he had to make a decision. The only way he was going to reach the National Hockey League was to be a tough guy, and he took it. 

There was a lot of that in hockey in the old days, especially back in the 1970s. Schultz's team, the Philadelphia Flyers, specialized in a brand of it. Yes, they had skill players like Bobby Clarke, Reggie Leach, Rick MacLeish, and Bernie Parent, but they had several bruising players who made it tough to play the Flyers on a given night. They didn't call them the "Broad Street Bullies" for nothing. Visiting players sometimes would come up with an injury out of nowhere in other to avoid playing in Philadelphia. It was called "The Philly Flu." 

Philadelphia won two straight Cups, and Schultz was a very visible part of that team even though he seemed to spent more time in the penalty box than on the ice. Dave's personality seemed to change while playing, as he acted as if he had to live up to his reputation. Such players are always appreciated by teammates, since they were willing to get punched in the face while sticking up for others. 

Schultz spent one more year with the Flyers through 1976, and then he was shocked that he was traded to the Los Angeles Kings for draft choices. Say what you want about enforcers, but most of them end up being on the disposable side after a while. Schultz comes across as still bitter about the deal, still not realizing that such moves are usually part of the bargain. From there it was on Pittsburgh and Buffalo before retirement from playing hockey. 

If there's a recipe for problems in life concerning alcohol, Schultz seemed to follow it without realizing it. He married at a relatively young age, and then got caught up with the lifestyle that came with pro hockey at the time. You had to be one of the boys to fit in with the team in most cases, and then meant drinking after practice and games. Mix that in withe a great deal of travel, and the life is not exactly a formula for successful marriage and fatherhood. 

Schultz here seems to have been lost for quite a while after retirement. He had some business opportunities, but probably was too inexperienced to separate the good financial opportunities from the bad ones. (Salaries were under six figures back then for most, which means Schultz didn't have much of a nest egg.) Coaching in the minors didn't work out either. 

It didn't help along the way that he had a granddaughter and a brother die along the way. Eventually and almost inevitably, Schultz became divorced and tried to escape loneliness by drinking. That never works, and finally he was talked into joining a rehab program by another ex-hockey player. So far, at least, he seems to be well down the road to recovery, although there are always dangerous detours around the next turn. 

Certainly fans of the way hockey was played back then - and the way Schultz in particular played it - will find elements of this book to like. There are plenty of details about bouts during those Flyers' years, even if it's been about 50 years since some of them took place. Schultz also writes about how there's still a place for teammates who are willing to hand out justice to opponents in a physical sense when necessary. There's some poignancy in that, in part because the role of fighting in hockey has faded dramatically in the 21st century. Teams need as much skill as possible these days, because the stakes and money have grown exponentially, and franchises can't afford to have anyone around with a limited skill set. 

"Hammered" isn't a great deal of fun to read - stories involving additions and psychological issues usually are difficult. But Schultz deserves plenty of credit for writing it, and he's tougher on himself than he is about anyone else who comes up in the book. We don't know what the future might hold for him; he probably had some concussions along the way and CTE is lurking in the background for anyone with that sort of history. But there's always a hope that Schultz will find peace in the final years of a difficult life. 

Four stars

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Review: The Return of the King (2025)

By Thomas Aiello

Everyone who follows boxing slightly knows all about the famous first bout between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight championship in 1971. It might have been the biggest fight ever. Both boxers were undefeated, but Ali had to step out of the ring for more than three years beforehand. He had been stripped of his title almost immediately after he refused to be inducted into the United States military through the draft in 1967. 

However, what led up to the Ali-Frazier fight might have been even more significant than the fight itself - which is saying something. As the legal and personal drama slowly played itself out, an opportunity for Ali to return to the ring in some fashion slowly developed. The drama eventually ended when Ali fought Jerry Quarry in a 6,000-seat auditorium in Atlanta, Georgia. Without Ali-Quarry coming first, we might not have ever gotten to Ali-Frazier ... although - considering how much money figured to be generated by the latter - someone eventually would have figured out how to put on the bout. 

"Return of the King" is a look at the entire situation of that particular time and place, and author Thomas Aiello has done a good, informative job of recreating what happened before, during and after that night. Aiello, a professor at Valdosta State University, already has books to his credit about hockey in Atlanta and basketball in the Deep South. He seems well equipped for the job, and he is. 

The 1960s were a period of change in Atlanta and the South, particularly in sports. While the populations of big cities were growing to 'major league" proportions, the region's legacy of racism was seen as baggage. Eventually baseball's Braves and basketball's Hawks moved there, and the NFL granted an expansion team to Atlanta in that same era. Change was in the area in the team sports. 

But boxing was a different story. A black man hadn't fought a white man in the Deep South for the first 65+ years of the 20th century. It took an odd series of events to change that. For starters, Atlanta was trying hard to change its image as a racial backwater. It adopted the phrase "The City Too Busy to Hate" in attempt to woo industry there. Atlanta's voting mix was changing too. It was getting much easier for African-Americans to vote in the South, and they were working hard to change the composition of government's elected officials. (It's fair to say that white were noticing those changes, and were in some cases heading for the suburbs.)

Leroy Johnson is the key figure in Aiello's story, with the possible exception of Ali. Johnson was a state senator who also was a reasonably wealthy businessman. He saw an Ali fight as a way to grab attention for Black Atlanta. Even better, there was a path there. While many states had their own athletic commissions to set up rules for such sports as boxing, Georgia didn't have one. Basically, if someone wanted to put on a boxing match in the state, it was a simply a matter of convincing a few local civic leaders to get on board. The other states knew that Ali's situation made him somewhat radioactive, and their commissions' attitudes reflected that. Johnson and Co. quickly figured out that it really could work.

The book's initial discussion of all of this is a little complicated, but it's probably necessary to the story. The narrative picks up quite a bit once the details are worked out and Ali officially starts off on his collision course with his return to boxing. The champ/ex-champ/future champ eventually signs to fight Jerry Quarry, a good but not great heavyweight who didn't figure too much of a threat to a future Ali-Frazier bout. 

Somehow, it all got done - even with bomb threats, death threats, and a Governor (Lester Maddox) who ordered flags to be flown at half staff to mark an official day of mourning. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Ali needed only three rounds to cut Quarry so badly that the fight had to be stopped. Ali said goodbye to Atlanta professionally for the most part, and had one more tune-up before losing to Frazier. He did show up to light the Olympic flame in 1996. 

Aiello has a great postscript to the fight-night story. It seems that African-Americans in the crowd were invited en masse to a postfight party offsite. The guests showed up and were greeted by people with guns.The guests were ordered to strip to their underware, and had their valuables taken. Elements of that story were used in the movie "Uptown Saturday Night." 

The research here is quite impressive, and most readers probably will learn something about the drama surrounding the fight.  Along the way, Aiello drops a note about Jimmy Carter's campaign for Governor in 1970. The author suggests that Carter "moved temporarily to the racial right," in an effort to gain votes in that period. It was also a surprise to see Howard Cosell's name spelled incorrectly in a couple of case; something tells me Howard wouldn't have liked this. 

Fans who their boxing books to concentrate on boxing itself probably will find "Return of the King" a little too historical for their tastes, so be forewarned if you qualifiy. For the rest of us, the book shines a bright light on some very unusual circumstances that collided in Atlanta in 1970, and is worth your time.

Four stars

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Review: American Kings (2025)

By Seth Wickersham

As we all know, an excellent quarterback knows how to pull out a victory at the end. 

Now we know that an excellent book about quarterbacks can also pull out a complete victory at the end as well.

The book in question is "American Kings," by ESPN reporter Seth Wickersham, who turns something of a question mark into an exclamation point with his second book on an aspect of the National Football League. The first book was also excellent, as it reviewed the dynasty of the New England Patriots in impressive detail. 

The subtitle of this effort gives us a clue about the direction of the book, but only a clue. "A Biography of a Quarterback" can mean different things to different people, since it's a little vague. But essentially it deals with the concept of supply and demand when it comes to that particular position in sports. 

The NFL has 32 teams, and it seems like at least half of them seem to be unsatisfied with their quarterbacks at a given moment. A few draft new candidates each spring, while others go searching for a free agent who can turn into "the guy." Sometimes the search works, and sometimes it doesn't. For example, the Buffalo Bills went more than a decade without having that franchise quarterback, and for most of that time they were on the outside looking in at the playoffs. Then they drafted Josh Allen, who surprised almost everyone by turning into a Most Valuable Player. Another example - the Tampa Bay Buccaneers turned to Baker Mayfield after he had been let go by Cleveland and Carolina, and it's been a relatively happy relationship so far. 

As William Goldman once famously said about Hollywood, "Nobody knows nothing." Such is the case with identifying quarterbacks. (Footnote: It's also true about head coaches in pro sports, as no one is sure where the next great one is coming from. Maybe that's Wickersham's next book.) It's surprisingly difficult to find someone, anyone, among all those players on college and pro rosters, who can do a good job running an offense in the NFL.

The book, then, takes off on how the quarterback became the most important position in American sports. Wickersham starts the book on something of a personal note, as he put a great deal of effort into becoming a high school quarterback - only to be moved to another position, breaking his heart for eternity in the process. It's hard to say that this information is necessary, but it does explain the author's zest for the subject. And from there we're off on a journey, joining with names who are familiar to many - John Elway, Warren Moon, Johnny Unitas, Steve Young, and so on. Others come up in passing (sorry) as well. 

Some others who have a chance at such status are covered too. Caleb Williams was a first overall draft pick of the Chicago Bears in 2024. Arch Manning, a third-generation talent in America's top quarterback family, landed at the University of Texas. Then there's Colin Hurley, a high school phenom whose career has taken some surprising detours even after the book's publication. 

It's a little scattershot in its approach in the early going, so patience is needed. But in Chapter Two, we get an idea where we are headed. Somewhat oddly, the conversation starts with a name out of the distant past: Bob Waterfield. After starring for UCLA during the World War II years, he arrived with the Cleveland Rams in 1945 and led them to a title as a rookie. The team soon moved to Los Angeles, and Waterfield continued his Hall of Fame career there. Along the way, he eventually added a wife to the equation - but not just any wife. Jane Russell was Hollywood's biggest sex symbol at the time. That did wonders for the amount of glamour attached to the quarterback position. From there we learn about Y.A. Tittle, a great passer who didn't quite win the biggest game of the year, and Unitas, who did, and Joe Namath, whose personality and charisma were even more influential than his arm. Namath only won one biggest game of the year, but it was more than enough. 

With that base set, the book moves smoothly back to the main subjects, and we more or less stay there for the rest of the book - and gets better by the page. Wickersham obviously put in lots of research and interview time for this, and he explores some areas that usually go untouched. Are there common bonds between the best of them? Do they all have fathers with an excess amount of drive, or just most of them? What could Elway do with his life as an encore after the slow road to a pair of Super Bowl victories? How did Moon process the concept of being the first African-American quarterback in the Pro Football Hall of Fame? What's it like for young quarterbacks today as college and pros search for The Next One?

All good questions, and the answers sometimes can vary by the person. But they certainly are worth asking. "American Kings" offers an excellent look at an occupation that has little equal in glamour - even among movie stars or millionaires. Almost everyone, it seems, wants to be that person to throw a winning touchdown pass in the final seconds. 

Five stars

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