Review: Doc (2010)

By Vincent Mallozzi

To sum this up in one word -- gush.

Vincent Mallozzi's biography of Julius Erving, "Doc," is a rather stunningly uninsightful look at someone who should have been a fascinating subject for a biography.

And it takes less than a chapter to find out the reason why. Mallozzi, a reporter for the New York Times, grew up idolizing the fabulous Dr. J, and jumped into this project with enthusiasm. But he didn't carry any objectivity with him, and after a while the hero worship just wears the reader down.

Erving probably has turned into something of an underrated superstar in some basketball history circles. He came out of Long Island to play for the Univesity of Massachusetts, where he blossomed into a college standout. But, UMass wasn't exactly a place to get noticed in those days, even though it became obvious pretty quickly that Erving could play on any court in the world and hold his own.

After his junior year, Erving jumped to the professional ranks, which was unusual at that time. He signed with the ABA's Virginia Squires, which wasn't exactly "America's Team" back then either. He then went on to the New York Nets where he led the team to a couple of championships.

Erving's time in the ABA is the key to his story. When he was at his best in that part of his career, when he did soar with the birds, few were watching. The league didn't have a national television contract, and highlights were shown anywhere in those pre-ESPN days. So he became something of a legend, one that many had discussed but few had seen on a national level. Was he the last superstar to meet that description? Maybe.

Erving's mere presence certainly helped drive the NBA-ABA merger in 1976, but Erving got into a contract dispute and was traded to Philadelphia. There he didn't quite sore as high as often, but was still mighty good -- good enough to lead the Sixers to one NBA title and two other appearances in the Finals. Mallozzi even rips into a Sports Illustrated writer (only called "Taylor" in a typo) for daring to suggest that Erving's game in the NBA didn't match his ABA play -- even though others in the book make essentially the same point.

You think this book would be filled with descriptions of memorable games and great plays in big situations, but it really isn't. Whole seasons go by in just a few paragraphs. The 1977 Final against Portland was practically an opera -- the overly talented Sixers, with plenty of stars but only one ball, vs. the Blazers, with Bill Walton and a brilliant supporting cast that was underrated by most. It gets less than four pages in the book. The author also makes a few factual obvious errors along the way in the text.

What, then, fills up the pages if basketball doesn't do it? Tributes to the Doctor. Long, glowing tributes from friends, coaches, opponents and teammates, dating back to his school days. By any standard, all of them seem to be deserved. Erving was a winner who wasn't selfish, carried himself with class on the court, and was great with fans. Dunking didn't begin with Michael Jordan, oh young fans.

Erving's basketball career ends on page 187, and the book goes on to page 278. What could fill it? A few more tributes, as you'd expect, and some details of Erving's life since retirement from basketball. To be fair, Mallozzi does cover the details of Erving's illegitimate children. Well, no one thought Tiger Woods invented bad behavior by athletes.

In the end, Mallozzi writes that "this entire book is basically a giant Valentine from one of his biggest fans." He later adds, "My only hope is that he enjoys this book as much as I enjoyed writing it."

Maybe the next book will be written for its readers, instead of the Good Doctor. "Doc" doesn't measure up.

Two stars.

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Review: The Art of a Beautiful Game (2009)

By Chris Ballard

Sometimes people forget just how good professional athletes are.

They all aren't interested in just money. They've had to work extremely hard to get where they are, and they are very thoughtful about their profession if given the chance. What was it Malcolm Gladwell said in "Outliers," that it takes about 10,000 hours of work to become truly proficient at something? It applies here.

Which brings us to Chris Ballard's book, "The Art of a Beautiful Game."

The NBA might have an image problem in certain parts of fandom, as credit is given to the players' athletic ability but dedication and thoughtfulness gets shortchanged. Ballard's book more of less in an in-your-face response to that.

The Sports Illustrated writer has taken a variety of pro basketball-related subjects and explored them at depth. Every wonder how Steve Kerr became a great shooter -- and still qualifies by most standards in his 40's? How Shane Battier became one of the best defensive players in the league? What sort of offseason workout players go through in order to improve? Those subjects, and nine more get their own chapters here.

The best part of the book is the way the athletes involved open up. We usually hear these people in postgame interview settings in which they don't have much time to elaborate. Here, they do. For example, Ballard talks free throw shooting with Nick Anderson, an interesting choice in that Anderson is best known for missing free throws. He missed four straight in the final minute of Game One of the 1995 NBA Finals for Orlando, allowing Houston to steal a win. The Rockets went on to a sweep, and Anderson's free-throw shooting was never the same.

The other subjects should be mentioned for reference: Killer Instinct (Koby Bryant), Rebounding, Dunks, Point Guard, Tutoring, Superbigs, Shot Blocking, and Prototype (LeBron James). There are nice little insights along the way, about how James' game went up a notch a few years ago when he had Lasik eye surgery, or about how Shaquille O'Neal expects big people to play like they are proud to be 7-feet tall.

A couple of readers have compared this to George Will's "Men at Work" about baseball, but the comparison doesn't really hold up that well. This is more scattered in subject matter and less indepth. Besides, Will never actually challenged someone like Kerr to an athletic contest or took part in an offseason training camp, as Ballard did.

The book also jumps around a bit in terms of time. Ballard apparently has been collecting information for this book for some time, but in his "spare time."

Still, "The Art of a Beautiful Game" works pretty well. You'll probably appreciate the great skills of these incredible athletes a bit more after reading it.

Four stars.

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Review: Sweet Thunder (2009)

By Wil Haygood

In January 1939, an up-and-coming amateur boxer named Ray Robinson fought in Watertown. After turning in the latest in a series of impressive performances, Watertown Daily Times sports editor said to Robinson's manager, George Gainford, "That's a sweet fighter you've got there, a real sweet fighter." A woman nearby added, "As sweet as sugar."

Thus was born one of the most famous nicknames in sports history: Sugar Ray Robinson. Ray really was a "sweet" fighter. He could run around you while knocking you up, or he could stand there and slug and knock you out. The combination was unusual and lethal.

Robinson has been called "the greater boxer, pound-for-pound, in history" so often that it's become a cliche. But there are always truths in cliches, and Robinson's career and life certainly are worthy of a first-class biography. He gets it in Wil Haygood's "Sweet Thunder."

The story arc of Robinson's life is a familiar one in the world of boxing. He moved from South to North and eventually to New York City, where he lived in relatively poverty and found an outlet for his personality in a Harlem boxing ring. From there it was onward and upward, through the amateur ranks into the complicated world of professional boxing. Eventually Robinson became champion, not once but several times in the middleweight and welterweight divisions.

However, that story does have some interesting twists. The biggest in the ring is the one concerning his biggest rival, Jake LaMotta. The two men fought six times, something that seems impossible today. Robinson won all but one of the fights, but they were all fascinating bouts that featured a conflict of styles -- LaMotta, always attacking, and Robinson, dancing and punching. They had more in common than they probably realized -- both came from tough upbringings and were frustrated by the sport's politics at the time -- but will be forever linked.

But Haygood is also worried about events outside of the ring, and he takes his time at looking at the post-World War II culture for African Americans. Robinson was essentially a successor to Joe Louis as a subject for hero worship in the late 1940's, with the heavyweight champion clearly on the downside of a fabled career. Haygood links Robinson with some of the entertainment icons of the black culture of the time, including singer Lena Horne, musician Miles Davis, or author Langston Hughes.

Robinson loved to travel in the company of entertainers, and his night spot in Harlem became a gathering place for the beautiful people of that time. Sugar Ray even took a couple of years out of his career in the Fifties to try his luck on the nightclub circuit, although he only proved that as a singer/dancer he was a very good boxer.

From there Robinson made the slow exit that is associated with boxers. They usually find that boxing is their only way to earn good money, so they stay too long and get pounded for their trouble. Robinson even won and lost the middleweight title a few times after his comeback, a remarkable achievement for a fighter in his 30's. But he was still fighting at age 44, still chasing the dream until repeated batterings convinced him that there would be no more comebacks.

Haygood isn't old enough to have been a fan of Robinson's during the fighter's career. While obviously impressed by Robinson's achievements, Haygood is a good enough reporter to stay objective and deal with the facts. He also writes well here, just as he did in biographies of Adam Clayton Powell and Sammy Davis.

Books like "Sweet Thunder" have a little trouble finding an audience. We're about 50 years from Robinson's last glory days, so that many adults of today might associate "Sugar Ray" with Leonard instead of Robinson. The difference, though, is that Robinson was the original, and an original. Those who go through the pages of this biography will find it quite rewarding.

Four stars

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Review: Game Six (2009)

By Mark Frost

It's tough to say why every Reds and Red Sox fan who is old enough to remember the 1975 World Series hasn't bought this book yet. Maybe they'll get to it soon. And when they do, they'll love it.

That's "Game Six" in a nutshell, an account -- 34 years later -- of one of the great games in baseball history.

It was a game filled with stars and personalities, filled with great plays under intense conditions, a game that helped millions remember what they loved about baseball. That's a lot to cram into a four-hour sporting event, but it works here.

Mark Frost goes over the game, pitch by pitch, but he does a lot more along the way as well. He went back and talked to several members of both teams as well as others who were on the scene. That adds perspective and insight. Fans of the teams might think they remember almost everything about the game, but Frost fills in the gaps nicely.

After setting the scene, the author essentially gives mini-biographies of everyone involved in the contest. The stars get the most attention, Hall of Famers such as Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Sparky Anderson, Carlton Fisk and Carl Yastrezemki. Others in the game either were close to that level (Dave Conception, Luis Tiant, Dwight Evans) or had, um, other issues (Pete Rose). But others aren't ignored either, so the reader gets a good picture of what went into the contest.

Eventually, the game action takes control at key moments. It's obviously fun to read the insight of a Bench, who thought his pitchers made two mistakes all night -- the two three-run homers hit by Fred Lynn and Bernie Carbo. Carlton Fisk's game-winning homer gets plenty of attention as well.

If there are centerpieces to the story, they are the two main characters: Anderson and Tiant. Both set the tone for their ballclubs, whether it be as a manager in Anderson's case or as a pitcher in Tiant's case. I assume they were major sources, but they were good choices.

Frost has shown a flair for the dramatic in a couple of his other books, "The Grestest Game Ever Played" and "The Match." He took some dramatic license in those books in creating conversations, but there's very little of that here. The game speaks for itself. Good move on the author's part.

There's only a couple of drawbacks here. The game ends about 100 pages before the book does. Game Seven certainly deserves a full recap under the circumstances, and it is important to note how the game changes so drastically in the following offseason due to the advent of free agency. But there is a bit of a letdown with the post-Game Six lives reviewed of so many of the principals. A little more editing might have been useful.

And a minor complaint: Frost writes that Peter Gammons of the Boston Glove sat down right after the game and composed "the most lyrical, inspired and impressionistic columns ever written about a baseball game." But he didn't include the beginning of it. One hopes he couldn't get the rights, rather than it being a simple omission. So here are Gammons' first three paragraphs; they can be removed if anyone objects:

And all of a sudden the ball was there, like the Mystic River Bridge, suspended out in the black of the morning.

When it finally crashed off the mesh attached to the left field foul pole, the reaction unfurled one step after another—from Carlton Fisk’s convulsive leap to John Kiley’s booming of the “Hallelujah Chorus” to the wearing off of the numbness to the outcry that echoed across the cold New England morning.

At 12:34 A.M., in the 12th inning, Fisk’s histrionic home run brought a 7-6 end to a game that will be the pride of historians in the year 2525, a game won and lost what seemed like a dozen times, and a game that brings back summertime one more day. For the seventh game of the World Series.

There. "Game Six" now feels pretty complete. It's a fine read.

Four stars

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Review: Fighting Words (2009)

By Jerry Beach

What a good idea for a book.

Jerry Beach wondered about the complex relationship among the Boston Red Sox players, front office staff and media that covers them both. The triangle has taken all sorts of twists and turns over the years, and it's probably the most fascinating relationship of its kind in the country.

So he started talking to people. And more people. And more people, over the course of five years. The result is "Fighting Words," which goes into all kinds of depth about a subject that is too infrequently explored.

A little history lesson probably needs to come out at the start. The Red Sox usually have been passionately followed by the fans of New England. The news media, following that lead, often has been combative. Ted Williams had some legendary fights with the so-called Knights of the Keyboard -- newspapers were definitely in charge back then.

While the Red Sox were always news, interest went up a few notches when they won an unexpected pennant in 1967. But the situation started to peak around 2000, when Boston started a run of success that it hadn't matched in more than 80 years.

The writers were still tough, and there were more of them. Plus, players were making more money than ever before and were more distant and combative when it came to the media. Throw in an ever-increasing army of electronic journalists, and eventually add those with some connection to the Internet. Then mix it all together in Fenway Park, the nation's oldest major-league park which can be claustrophobic due to the limited amount of space for all concerns.

Given all that, it's surprising more fistfights haven't broken out over the years. It's a tougher environment than even New York, where there are several other possible stories because the large number of teams in the major sports around. In Boston, the Red Sox monopolize coverage.

It's interesting to read the various perspectives of the situation. Beach wisely reprints comments without much commentary, essentially getting out of the way most of the time. It's fair to say, though, that the pressure on everyone has gone up exponentially over the past several years. Reporters live in fear of getting scooped, and have had to adjust to a 24-hour news cycle thanks to the Internet. Players have to be very careful about what they say, as a wrong phrase can turn into a major controversy. Ownership has to figure out how to release enough information to "feed the beast," but not get in the way of its main objective of winning games.

If there's a common thread through the book, it's that Red Sox careers often end badly for one reason or another. Most people thought that such players as Nomar Garciaparra, Roger Clemens, Mo Vaughn, Manny Ramirez and Wade Boggs would live happily ever after in Fenway Park, but the bitterness involving the departure of all of them touched all three parts of the triangle. I've heard it suggested that the intense media pressure can turn a star into a superstar from the public's and the player's point of view, and that makes everything more difficult.

Beach thought he was writing this book about the 2004 season, but that turned out to be a tough year to publish a book on something other than the end of the so-called curse. Therefore, the volume went through some editing along the way. Beach went to the trouble of publishing a blog about the book, complete with some unabridged interviews.

This obviously appeals to a rather limited audience, consisting of those in New England who give some thought to the media, as well as Red Sox fans and sports journalists outside that area. But speaking as someone long fascinating by the complicated interplay involved in covering Boston baseball, "Fighting Words" is a welcome addition to the reading list.

Four stars

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Review: Fasten Your Seatbelts (2009)

By Rob R. Thompson

It's tempting to be cute when writing a review of "Fasten Your Seatbelts -- The Van Miller Story." It would be easy to say, "Unfasten your seatbelts, and run if you have the urge to buy this book." But there's really too much sadness here to supply much levity.

Van Miller served as the play-by-play voice of the NFL's Buffalo Bills for most of the years between 1960 and 2003. He's in the Hall of Fame. Miller also did practically everything else when it comes to sportscasting over the years, including a regular shift on the news, NBA basketball, indoor soccer, college basketball, bowling shows. Heck, he hosted the high school quiz show, "It's Academic." Miller was recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame after retirement.

Miller reportedly had been asked about doing a book in the past but wasn't too interested. For someone with an apparent outgoing personality, he was actually a private person. As one local broadcaster once put it, "Out of Van, Ed Kilgore and Rick Azar, Van came off as the most outgoing but he actually was the most private." Still, you work that long, you collect plenty of stories, and Miller was usually willing to tell some of them.

It was a surprise, then, that Miller agreed to work with Rob Thompson on something of an authorized biography. Thompson self-published a book in 2008 that consisted of a series of interviews with ex-Bills called "The Bills Are Due." It's also a surprise that the book isn't of professional quality.

The beginning of the book consists mostly of Thompson writing about his somewhat unsuccessful efforts to get Miller to sit down and length and talk about his life. Staying in character, Miller was apparently happy to tell some stories but didn't give a complete chronological account of his work. That leaves plenty of holes in a life story, as you could imagine. There are some tales about the Bills' early days and about the Super Bowl run -- particularly the comeback game against Houston -- but that leaves a great deal out. There's not a word about volatile Bills coaches like Buster Ramsey and Lou Saban.

But that's not the least of the problems here. The list is a long one:

* The interviews are just littered with punctuation, spelling and other grammatical errors. I really wanted to grab a pen and start adding commas and apostrophes where needed. It reminded me of when I first transcribe an interview, typing as quickly as I can. I don't spell everything correctly and the sentences don't make much sense until I go back and clean them up a bit. Well, some of the cleaning process never got done here. "Fair" comes out as "fare," and run-on sentences are everywhere.

* In the bigger picture, more editing would have been appreciated. Information is told more than once on a number of occasions, leading to the old "Didn't I read this before?" feeling.

* Along those lines, I could see how Jayne Mansfield might turn into Jane Mansfield for a younger writer. But there's no excuse for getting Mickey Mantle wrong in a sports book.

* Material that comes from other voices -- Van, coworkers, etc. -- is put in italics. Since that's more than half the book, it's simply a difficult book to read. Italics really should be used sparingly; quotation marks would have been much easier. It also makes it tough to determine who is doing the talking at times that way.

* A little more fact-checking would have been nice. Just because someone says it doesn't make it true. For example, Todd Christensen says the first AFL team to win the Super Bowl was Kansas City. Does Joe Namath and the New York Jets of 1968-69 know that?

* The interviews with others wander off for no apparent reason. Readers will be surprised to read in a book about Miller on how Christensen wore uniform number 46, how Bills trainer Eddie Abramowski raised pigeons, or what Jack Ramsey did in World War II. It's not a long book to begin with, and the tangents really get in the way.

* If I went over one more interview with the word "Rob" in the middle of it, I was going to scream.

Some funny stories are floating around the pages here, but it's not worth the effort to get to them. There was a good book to be written about Miller's life in broadcasting, but it would have taken some skill and experience to do it. "Fasten Your Seatbelts" is not that book.

One star

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Review: Playing With Fire (2009)

By Theo Fleury with Kirstie McLellan Day

Holy mackeral.

Care to know what Theo Fleury's life was like over the years? He certainly pulls no punches in his autobiography, "Playing With Fire," and it's not a pretty picture. In fact, it's a mess.

The newsmaking portions of the book concern Fleury's admission that he was one of the victims of Graham James, a hockey coach in Western Canada who used to sexually seduce his underage players. James' activity first came to light when NHL player Sheldon Kennedy went public with his similar story some time ago. That caused a huge stir in Canada, where hockey can be close to a religion. The story still can strike a nerve, because "Playing With Fire" has become a best-seller in the Great White North.

Pedophiles often pick their victims carefully, and Fleury certainly came into the relationship in a position of weakness. His father was an alcoholic, and his mother was a drug addict. Theo's one way out of a bad family situation, or so he thought, was hockey. He was determined to climb the ladder, even if he was always small for his age. When James became his coach, Fleury figured he'd be blackballed from the game unless he followed along. The description is a little graphic, but not unreadably difficult.

It's a little difficult to top that sort of dramatic start to the book, although Fleury certainly continues his brutal honesty throughout the pages. He does indeed make it to the NHL, becoming a star with the Calgary Flames and eventually bouncing his way through the New York Rangers and Chicago Blackhawks as well as a couple of other stops after his NHL days were over.

After reading this, it's almost difficult to believe that Fleury had any time to play hockey, let alone play it well. There's a parade of every vice imaginable, including drugs (including cocaine), alcohol, gambling and women. Millions of dollars went down the drain. He writes that he failed all sorts of drug tests over the years, but the NHL never bothered to do much about it until he was well down the road of his career -- because he was a star. The league has not yet responded to my knowledge.

There are a few drawbacks here. That starts with the language. OK, hockey players often speak English, French and Profanity, but it seems like some of it could have been cleaned up here. There are also some slang words and phrases that left me with no clue about what he was talking about, which is a little unusual.

More importantly, though, Fleury doesn't come off as particularly insightful, to his own situation or his surroundings. For example, he's got harsh words about many of the coaches who "never played the game." It's an old argument, but not particularly valid. Yes, he never got much of an education, but didn't seem to learn many lessons along life's road either.

That lack of "smarts" is part of the tragedy of his life, naturally, but after a while it does get tiring to read about Fleury jumping from one party and woman to the next. (In fairness, a lot of people love to read about the stumbles of celebrities, and there's a lot of stumbling here.)

Fleury says he's been clean for a while now, and it's easy to hope that he stays that way. It's also easy to hope that he finds peace, even if it may take a recently filed lawsuit against James to help do that. "Playing With Fire" certainly is part of that cleansing process, and it will be fascinating to see if there are more dramatic developments in his less-than-classic Canadian story.

Four stars

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(This book was provided by the publisher for review purposes.)