Review: Madden & Summerall (2025)

By Rich Podolsky

We probably could have seen this coming.

Back in 2021, Rich Podolsky wrote a book called "You Are Looking Live." Football fans who were around in the 1980s know that phrase from Brent Musburger's introduction to "The NFL Today" - the pregame show for CBS' coverage of pro football games in the era. It was an easy decision to write it, since Podolsky had some work experience at CBS and thus knew some of the people in the story - even it had been almost 30 years since the program peaked.

Now comes a book called "Madden & Summerall." It's striking how similar the two books are in many ways, and it's easy to use the same phrases to describe them. 

Any discussion of the book starts with the fact that Podolsky has a premise. He believes quite strongly that John Madden and Pat Summerall are the best football tandem to ever broadcast a game on television, and he doesn't waste much time making that point. That could be a problem  - would you expect anything else from a CBS employee from that era? - but for the fact that Podolsky is probably right. They weren't great friends off the air, but they worked perfectly together when the red light went on. There have been several very good broadcast teams for football since the Madden/Summerall heyday, but it's fair to say that one is still the gold standard. 

Madden was one of the great characters in football and broadcasting history, and his personality made the games more informative and enjoyable. Summerall's part was more subtle, but no less important than Madden. The play-by-play man supplied the basics about the game (down, distance, names) while giving Madden the room to operate in his own unique manner. It all worked extremely well. 

The book supplies short biographies of both men along the way. Madden was an unlikely star, working his way out of nowhere in rising through the coaching ranks. He eventually caught the eye of Oakland Raiders' owner Al Davis, who made him the head coach for 10 great years there. Burned out at that point, Madden retired but needed something else to do. It took longer than you might think for Madden to become something special on the air, but eventually he found his niche. 

Summerall was a much better athlete than most people remember. It's amazing to think that someone who was born with a leg deformity would grow up to be a kicker. Summerall tried a large number of sports, and essentially was a one-man tennis team in high school. He was invited to a tournament in those years (hitchhiking 320 miles to get to Fort Lauderdale for it)  and ended up surprising everyone by reaching the finals - playing someone who ended up in the finals of the U.S. Open. (Accounts differ about who won.)

Summerall ended up with the New York Giants of the NFL, and injuries eventually limited his role to place-kicking. However, the Giants of the late 1950s and early 1960s were immensely popular in New York, and broadcast stations were on the lookout for talent. Summerall followed Frank Gifford and Kyle Rote from the team's roster into the business. Eventually Summerall worked his way into the football broadcasters' rotation at CBS, and made the move from commentator to play-by-play man in the early 1970s. Eventually, Summerall became ever-present working for CBS, popping up at golf tournaments like the Masters. And Madden was ever-present in other ways, whether it was a commercial for Miller Lite and Ace Hardware or the endorsement of an annual football game. 

One of the most interesting parts of the book deals with Summerall's spiral into alcoholism. He had learned how to party on road trips with former partner Tom Brookshier, and kept it up even though he and Madden didn't have similar tastes in how to spend free time. (Madden, famously, gave up flying and took the train or bus to assignments, limiting his free time for such pursuits.) Summerall wound up in the Betty Ford Clinic and sobered up, although his former lifestyle did too much damaged to ever be completely reversed.

"Madden & Summerall" has some fresh stories inside of it, as some new interviews with co-workers and family members supply some good information. The writing style is easy and breezy, as befits a book that just crawls past the 200-page line.  But some of the material about the two men feels a bit like filler, such as the coverage of negotiations involving the move of the NFL broadcasts from CBS to Fox. Since both Madden and Summerall wrote autobiographies (Madden wrote three of them, naturally), it's a little difficult to judge whether the new book contributes much to the conversation about the work of the two men.

It's been about 15 years since Summerall and Madden were big parts of the national broadcast picture, but they are still remembered fondly - especially by Podolsky. "Madden & Summerall" will bring back memories for some and fill in some details for others, and therefore should work for those who want a quick fix on the subject.

Three stars

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Review: Skipper (2025)

By Scott Miller

In a world where so many books are published in the course of the year, a reader never knows when he's going to be pointed in a certain direction ... or why.

Such is the case with Scott Miller's book, 'Skipper," which received some attention shortly after its publication ... for all of the worse possible reasons. 

Miller had been more than around the baseball block a few times when he put together this book. He covered the sport for some daily newspapers and some national websites over the course of 30-plus years.  Miller even did some work for MLB Network Radio.   

In the next to last page of text in "Skipper," Miller writes this: "One thing I do not recommend while in the middle of writing a book is being diagnosed with a life-altering medical condition. You always hear that life can change in an instant and, hoo, boy." In this case, the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer, and you probably know that there's no video review that can change the doctors' call of that particular illness. Sure enough, Miller died five weeks after the book came out. 

Upon Miller's death, Tyler Kepner of the National had these words to way about Miller: "I think he really understood the people within the game. He valued building relationships and just really trying to understand the folks not just as ball players, but as people and as the sort of struggles they go through on a human side."

With all that information floating around, the only thing that seemed like a worthwhile action under the circumstances was to spend $30 on a copy of "Skipper." It became more than just a gesture while reading it.

Miller digs into the revolution that has affected baseball and its managers over the past quarter-century or so. If you've followed the sport at all in that time, you realize how much analytics has changed the way the game has been played. In the "old days," managers used to make decisions about such areas as lineup order and bullpen usage by themselves - mostly on instinct. Now, there's a team of people up in the organization's offices who have looked over the numbers in every way possible, and come up with thoughts on how to utilize the data. 

The book is subtitled "Why Baseball Managers Matter (and Always Will)," and there's plenty of truth to that. Managers still are the major communication point between players and organization, and they are in charge of putting them in the best position for short-term and long-term success. They also speak to the public through the media twice a day, a very important way of communicating with the fans. Managers also have a ton of other duties, including supervising coaches that now number in double digits (four used to be the usual number about 50 years ago.  

It's not like the old days, where the good managers stayed in the job as near-dictators almost forever, even if they switched teams every so often. Tom Lasorda, Sparky Anderson, Dusty Baker and Tony LaRussa piled up the wins over the years, but their kind is disappearing. Terry Francona may be the last of the breed. 

The book, then, focuses on how the managers' job has evolved. To do that, Miller talks to several excellent practitioners of the job about some key moments in their professional careers. Remember Grady Little? He is not-so-fondly remembered in Boston as the manager who left Pedro Martinez on the mound in Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS. Remember Kevin Cash? He's remembered in Tampa Bay (and is still there) as the manager who pulled Blake Snell from the mound in the 2020 World Series. Neither decision worked out well .Maybe you can't win. Both skippers were quite candid in describing their thoughts about those moments in hindsight. Miller gets high marks for getting them to open up. Miller became close with Dave Roberts, who has had almost nothing but success with the Dodgers over the years - but still feels the pressure of being expected to win the World Series almost every year.

Others receive a moment - or a chapter - in the sun. The Boones are practically a family of managers, after serving as a family of players over the years. Tom Kelly overachieved for years with the Twins. Several others, including players and executives, chip in with comments along the way. It's all presented  with plenty of intelligence and logic.

There's a little bit of repetition along the way here, and some of the material strays away a bit from the basic premise of the book. But Miller does offer as good an upclose look to the subject of the changing life of a baseball manager as I've seen. That makes "Skipper" worth the time of a good-sized baseball fan.

Thanks for the book, Scott, and we'll miss you.

Four stars

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Review: Turf Wars (2025)

By DeMaurice Smith

It doesn't take long for DeMaurice Smith to set the tone in his book, "Turf Wars," reviewing his time as the head of the National Football League Players Association. 

Less than a chapter, actually.

You get the idea in the first paragraph of the prologue, when Smith describes the owners as "greedy billionaires who control the league, which makes them some of the lever pullers of our largest society." 

A few paragraphs later, the descriptions continue. "These men do not see the general public as human. They are voters and customers and fans. NFL owners view their own teams' players not as people with families, aspirations, or pride. They are laborers and commodities, nothing more, an army of soldier ants who can and will be replaced by one of the thousands of cheaper options in college football or lower-tier leagues. Owners only pretend to care about a player's remarkable journey to college and the pros."

Those statements bring up a couple of obvious reactions right from the start. Smith covers the 31 owners (the Packers, with their millions of owners, get a pass) with one broad brush stroke there. It's a little difficult to believe that such feelings are so universal through every single owner - even if they are part of the same league. 

Meanwhile, it's a little tough to read, with the anger level quite high. Personally, I think there's plenty of anger out there in our lives as it is. You can turn on a talk show or read a political news release and see that fact demonstrated repeatedly. But plenty of books have been written about the labor relations in sports, and there aren't many moments of good fellowship between sides. 

I was hoping for a little different approach from Smith, who worked in the government's Justice Department as well as for several top law firms. He's a smart guy and a very worthy spokesman for his side of an argument.  

Once Smith gets that venom out of the way, the book changes its tone slightly. The highlights of such publications is usually a description of the collective bargaining agreement between labor and management. Smith led the players through a 132-day lockout in 2011 by the owners, but seems to have outflanked the other side by buying strike insurance for the players. In other words, the labor side could afford to wait for the right deal. Once that little fact came out, an agreement was rather quickly reached.

For the next several chapters, Smith reviews some of the major collisions that took place during his time as a director. In hindsight, some of them seem as if they might have been a little easier to solve. An investigation into Tom Brady and his deflated footballs seems straight-forward enough, but handing out the proper punishment seemed to be a stubbornly elusive goal. You'd think it could have been kept out of the courts.

The Ray Rice case comes up in the detail as well. This one was tough for Smith, who clearly had no stomach for defending someone who hit his fiance in an elevator - and was caught on video tape doing it. But Rice still had rights, and Smith felt bound to defend him. It comes with the territory. 

Then there's the case of Colin Kaepernick, who caused something of a national stir simply by sitting on the bench during the National Anthem. The quarterback is shown to be something of an odd personality, and the story went down some odd hallways. But the biggest of them was when the White House picked up on it, turning Kaepernick into a lightning rod. Later, the pandemic also caused some problems when players disagreed with procedures under difficult circumstances. Aaron Rodgers and Cole Beasley weren't too popular in the NFLPA's offices either. 

Along the road that Smith followed for more than a decade, he made something of a discovery: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was showing signs of mellowing. Goodell always had been a loud advocate for his side of the story during his time on that job, but it sounds as if he realized that he and Smith had more in common than he thought. Smith eventually stepped down from his job before his nervous system and liver collapsed from abuse. 

For those on my side of the tracks in Buffalo, there are only a few references to the Bills in here. Smith criticizes the late Ralph Wilson for not spending close to the cap in the late 2000s (78 percent, less than any team but Kansas City). Terry Pegula is barely touched, as he is portrayed as such a minor player in NFL circles than even Goodell doesn't  talk to him often. Pegula does take a couple of shots for what is called a sweetheart stadium deal. To be fair, the Bills are responsible on the project for cost overruns, which are at hundreds of millions at this point and counting. 

Happily, the book isn't all anger. Smith does take a chapter to talk about his family history, which actually is quite interesting and revealing. It's a nice timeout in the discussion.

"Turf Wars" might have a place in your football library if you have a strong interest in the subject of labor relations in pro sports. If that fits your reading interest, great. Just don't expect to see it read by many others on the beach this summer.

Three stars

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Review: Blood & Hate (2025)

By Dave Wedge 

When I told someone that my parents grew up in Brockton, Massachusetts (and that I spent most of my first five years there), the response was simple and direct: "You have to be tough to live there."

That probably wasn't so true in the 1930s, when my parents were coming of age. But it probably was true soon after that, as some industries like shoe manufacturing started to leave Brockton for destinations overseas. That left some good-sized poverty in its wake, and the area is still fighting that battle. 

Put it this way: Brockton is one of the few cities in the country who might be best-known for boxers. It's two favorite sons, Rocky Marciano and Marvelous Marvin Hagler, rank around the top of their all-time respective weight classes (heavyweight and middleweight). Marciano never lost a fight, and Hagler probably only lost because of some questionable scorekeeping. 

Their stories are connected. While Dave Wedge's book, "Blood & Hate," centers on Hagler's days as an up-and-coming boxer, the Marciano connection is a strong one - even though the two boxers never had a chance to meet. Two brothers, Goody and Pat Petronelli, were part of Rocky's support staff  during his days as a boxer. They were there when Marciano retired as the first undefeated heavyweight champion in 1955, and they stayed in the boxing business after that. As for Marciano, he died in an airplane crash in January, 1969. 

Soon after that, Hagler's family moved from the mean streets of Newark - and they were really mean in the 1960s - to the less-mean streets of Brockton. Young Marvin (the Marvelous part came much later) had some fights on the street along the way, and dropped into the Petronellis' gym at the age of 15. Hagler quickly became wrapped up in boxing and its local stories about the legendary Marciano. Soon Marvin dropped out of school and split his time between real work and boxing training. 

Eventually, Hagler began to climb up the ladder - first through the amateur ranks, where he learned his craft. Then it was on to the pros, where the success stories in the 1970s started to pile up. Most of his fights took place in either Brockton or Boston, and he quickly proved too good for local competition. The only blemishes to his record were a draw in Seattle against Ray Seales, a former Olympian, and losses to two Philadelphia fighters in Philadelphia. Ahem.   

Soon Hagler was considered by most as the uncrowned middleweight champion. As Joe Frazier told him after Hagler complained about his difficulty in getting fights, "You have three strikes against you - you're Black, you're a southpaw, and you're good." A 1979 title fight against Vito Antuofermo resulted in a controversial draw, and it was back to the drawing board for almost a year. 

Hagler received another title shot in 1980, this time against new champion Alan Minter in London. The Marvelous One finally gained a championship there, but the fight is mostly remember for a riot that broke out after its conclusion. The white nationalists in the crowd that supported Minter weren't too happy about the outcome. That's where Wedge's story ends, more or less. An epilogue covers the rest of Hagler's life quite quickly.

The story of this portion of Hagler's life is covered nicely enough. Throughout the 1970s, the boxer was something of a curiosity, in that he never could get the right break in order to claim his rightful spot on the top of the boxing world. He certainly deserves plenty of credit for climbing out of poverty and not getting too discouraged to point of giving up on his dream. 

There are a few issues with the book worth noting. It would have been nice if this biography had covered all of Hagler's life instead of ending with the title win. Hagler lost a controversial decision in 1987 to Sugar Ray Leonard, and then more or less disappeared. It would be interesting to know what happened in the later stages of his life. At 222 pages of aired-out text, Wedge certainly had room to go a longer distance.

It's a little odd that the author's note contains a line that "dialogue has been recreated for dramatic effect based on interviews, research and historical fact." After all, it is a nonfiction book. Wedge also is a Brockton native, and his affection for his hometown sometimes comes through in a partisan way. Then again, seeing how I have good memories of the place (visits to grandparents, etc.), I like it too.

"Blood & Hate" is a close-up look at the formative years at a great boxing champion. It should work nicely for his biggest supporters, and boxing fans in general should find this worth at least a look.

Four stars

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Review: Make Me Commissioner (2025)

By Jane Leavy

If you haven't noticed lately, the sport of baseball is in a bit of trouble. 

Yes, people are still coming out to the ballpark in most cases, franchises continue to grow in value (this is important mostly to owners, I guess), and some breathtaking athletic talent is still on display on a regular basis.  

Yet television ratings have dropped, even in the playoffs. There's a perception that the games have turned dull in many cases, due to the fact that there are too many walks, strikeouts and home runs during the game (more doubles and triples, please). The hospitals are full of pitchers having Tommy John surgery, as the push toward velocity has carried a price tag. The analytics used in determining how best to win games may be an effective tool, but it's hard to call them welcoming to the overall audience. 

Major league baseball has tried to respond to some of the issues surrounding the game with action, and some of the steps have worked nicely. The pitch clock has done wonders for picking up the pace of the game, giving everyone involved an extra half-hour of their lives back for every game they watch. MLB also has installed the use of a "ghost" runner at second base at the start of extra innings, which follows the example of other leagues. Some purists don't like it, but they should know that hardly anyone (and that includes players, coaches, umpires, and fans) wants to watch a regular-season game that goes into the 14th inning. Or even the 12th. And maybe the 10th. 

Jane Leavy wants to help. If the name is familiar, at least to regular readers of this space, it's because she's written three acclaimed biographies of all-time greats of the game: Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth. But she supposedly wasn't anxious to dive back into the sport and its troubles at this particular time.  

Suitably inspired, Leavy has written a much different book than she's written before when it comes to baseball. The title is "Make Me Commissioner," which shows we're in entertaining territory here. After all, the job of sports commissioner is about one-quarter fun and three-quarter drudgery. Leavy concentrates on the part that does not include labor negotiations and television revenues (although the latter might be boosted if they'd make some changes to the sport's incomprehensible blackout policies). She's loosened from the restrictions of serious historical work, throwing in a variety of personal material along the way that works rather well. Leavy was one of the pioneering women to break the glass ceiling when it came to covering baseball. That's not surprising, since her grandmother brought her to Saks Fifth Avenue when Jane was a child and bought her ... a baseball glove. Who knew it had them for sale, even then?

Opening the book sends us off on a journey of variety of places. We look at everything from performance analysis centers for youngsters to the play of the Savannah Bananas. We hear from Bill Lee, Rich Hill, Joe Torre, Alex Bregman and Dusty Baker. Eventually, we get to the last chapter that contains something of an informal list of what might improve baseball's future. It's fair to say there are a few spots along the way that aren't engrossing, but that's probably going to happen in any book that takes a task like this fairly seriously.

Overall, the ideas are interesting. There are those who follow baseball who are so tied to tradition that they would like to see the starting batteries announced by megaphone before the game once again. But that's no way for the business to keep up to date. Is there a way to cut down on all of the walks, strikeouts and home runs? Perhaps the fences should be higher, and the ball should be bigger and heavier. That might lead to more balls in play and more action (plus fewer arm injuries). If robotic umpiring on balls and strikes is coming (and it is, in some form), will that help the product? Would a firm salary cap make the sport more competitive? I liked the idea of dedicated some of the money earned by MLB from gambling interests to be immediately turned around and invested in youth development of the game - particularly in inner cities. And how about free admission for kids under 10 in MLB games, at least in designated sections? 

It's also fun to see Leavy draw on some of her own experiences, which means conversations with some of the friends made along the way. It's good to hear some stories about a woman who was a big baseball fan before that was accepted. She obviously learned a few things about the use of profanity in baseball along the way, a reflection of a more loose writing approach than usual to the subject.  

Maybe all of Leavy's concepts for improvement aren't workable, but "Make Me Commissioner" at least starts a discussion of how to improve things by exchanging ideas. We need to do more of this, not less.      

Four stars

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