Review: Out of Left Field (2024)

By Stan Isaacs; edited by Aram Goudsouzian

This is one sports book that starts off with a mystery - and it's one that's difficult to solve.

Stan Isaacs had a nice run during most of the second half of the 20th century as a sportswriter. Most of that time was spent with Newsday, a daily newspaper that served Long Island. Eventually, he retired, and died in 2013.

Now, 11 years later, we have his autobiography, "Out of Left Field." That was the name of his column at Newsday for much of his time there. So ... where has it been? Sitting in a file cabinet or on a computer disk somewhere? There's no apparent explanation either in the book or elsewhere.

What is known is that Aram Goudsouzian did some editing to the manuscript, and convinced the University of Illinois Press to publish it. Now everyone can read "Out of Left Field."

And that's a good thing. Isaacs always wrote with a distinctive voice, and it's good to have a book full of his thoughts on an eventful career. He influenced such people as Tony Kornheiser and Keith Olbermann.

The title gives an indication of the way that Isaacs thought. When an idea comes from "out of left field," it's considered away from the mainstream and unconventional. That's Stan. This is a man who was always on the lookout for different ways of telling a story. 

For example, the Kansas City Athletics one time put sheep on a grassy section of their ballpark just beyond the outfield fence. He went out and watched a game with them one time. For example, Isaacs happened to be near the spot where George Washington allegedly threw a dollar over a river. So he investigated, and found with it probably could have been done with a metal coin and someone with a good arm (which Stan didn't quite have, although he missed by only a few feet). It's a narrow river. 

Isaacs had some company in that part of the sports world. He was part of the relatively famous "Chipmunks" of the early 1960s. This was a group of baseball writers who followed the Yankees at a time when sportswriters were expected to be so thrilled about following such a mighty institution that they didn't write anything critical and were content to consume free food and drink. Leonard Shechter and Larry Merchant were also a main part of that unconventional approach, and they picked up the nickname because of the protruding teeth of one of their fellow writers. Shechter, by the way, became famous as the coauthor of Jim Bouton's "Ball Four." 

In his job, Isaacs covered a variety of big events around the world, from league championships to the Olympics. He also encountered a variety of big-name personalities. Did you hear about the time the Beatles met Muhammad Ali? Stan was in the room. And he wasn't above having a little fun along the way. Like the time he made up a trade rumor involving Yogi Berra if only to see if it would come back to him. (It did.) Or the time he "liberated" the championship banner of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers after the team moved to Los Angeles. Isaacs helped return it to its original home, where it hangs in a museum. 

There are some fun stories along the way, too. I particularly liked how someone had the idea of writing a somewhat sexy novel, and enlisted a couple of dozen members of the Newsday staff to write a chapter each. After some editing to eliminate the rough edges, the book was published and sold some copies. Then word came out about the backstory ... and it popped up on the best-seller list. Isaacs and all of the other writers split the proceeds, which came out to be several thousand dollars each. A movie version wasn't quite as successful.  

There are a couple of points that a potential reader should know going in. First of all, Isaacs was an unabashed liberal throughout his life. That occasionally popped up in his work, but it certainly influenced his thinking from childhood (a big fan of both Roosevelts) until the end. For example, he felt a little guilty about posing for a photo in 1969 with President Richard Nixon for decades. If you have trouble with that, you've been warned.

Second, the target audience for a book like this skews old. Some of the fun is hearing about Isaac's impressions of the people he encountered along the way. But those names are going to be ancient history to most people reading now, and the delay in publication probably worsened that issue. Some of the issues have changed too. A chapter on hypocrisy and the Olympics feels dated now. All of the scandals that Isaacs mentions have taken a bit of a toll on the Olympic movement and its popularity, although it's still a very valuable piece of television programming property.

The key point, though, is that Isaacs and his unique approach to sports writing always has been worth reading, and it remains so today. "Out of Left Field" is a brisk look back at an original thinker. Most sports fans will enjoy it on some level, although the older crowd represents the sweet spot of the main demographic.

Four stars

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Review: Let's Play Two (2019)

By Ron Rapoport

We may have reached the point where Ernie Banks has become one of the most underrated players in baseball history. 

Note: This does not include certain locations around the Chicago area.

Banks was one of the last stars to come out of the Negro Leagues when it broke up as the majors became integrated. It took him about a year and a half to figure out the majors after signing with the Chicago Cubs, He arrived in 1953 and was pretty good (second in Rookie of the Year voting) in 1954. But by 1955, Ernie had figured things out. He batted .295 with 44 homers and 117 RBI. It was sort of like that throughout the rest of the 1950s, as Banks won back-to-back MVP trophies. 

But by the early 1960s, Banks' knees had started to deteriorate. He moved off shortstop, a spot where power wasn't expected, to first base, where it was. Ernie wasn't legging out many singles in those years, as he never hit .300 again. But he was still a threat to go deep, finishing with 512 homers in his career - a big number back in 1971, when he retired. So the number of people who remember him at the peak of his powers is decreasing rapidly.

Oddly, Banks became remembered about as much for his personality as for his skills on the diamond. He was the game's Mr. Sunshine, at least outwardly. Ernie is still remembered for his quote, "It's a beautiful day for baseball, let's play two." That reputations stayed with him for the rest of his life.

But what was he really like? That's the mission that Ron Rapoport sets out to accomplish in the book, "Let's Play Two."

The author covers all the bases quite nicely, pardon the pun. Banks grew up relatively poor in Dallas, and it comes out that Ernie's mother was a cousin of - wait for it - O.J. Simpson's mother. Small world. But he was good at athletics, and eventually was steered to baseball. From there it was on to the Kansas City Monarchs, who were at the end of a memorable run in the Negro Leagues. Banks took a detour into the Army for a while, but soon after his release he was off to start a career in the major leagues with the Cubs.

Banks was tough on stereotypes once he settled in for a job. Shortstops of that era were supposed to be good fielders who could steal a base every once in a while after hitting at the bottom of the order. Johnny Logan of the Braves was a good shortstop of that era, hitting .297 with 13 homers. He wasn't in the same area code as Banks.

Despite having a great building block in Banks, the Cubs never did much in the standings during the shortstop's best years. Rapoport does a really good job of bringing back the era of the early 1960s when the Cubs thought it would be a great idea to rotate head coaches instead of having a single manager. It was rather typical of a dysfunctional franchise that never could get out of its way. 

It took some years for Chicago to figure out how to win some games. The Cubs brought in names such as Billy Williams, Ron Santo and Ferguson Jenkins, who led the team to respectability. What's more, they brought in Leo Durocher as manager, who if nothing else was never boring. There's plenty here about the fabled 1969 season when the Cubs collapsed - allowing the Mets to win the division and eventually the World Series. That was a very sore subject in Northern Illinois until at least 2016 ... and maybe still qualifies in some households today. 

That's an interesting baseball life, but Banks didn't really inject much of his personality into it. At times he disappears into something of a supporting role in the stories about the team. If he was a team leader, he was a quiet one. The slugger wasn't one to criticize Durocher when the skipper tried to push him out of the lineup. Ernie discovered at an early age that keeping relatively quiet and staying upbeat in dealing with strangers worked well on most levels. That means he doesn't play a key role in some of the highlights of Cubs' play during the course of his career.

Meanwhile, the book opened with a long story about how difficult it was to get Ernie to talk about himself. And when he did so and repeated some of them to others, the stories didn't quite match up. Banks spent a lot of time during conversations asking strangers about their lives, an interesting defense mechanism. 

Ernie's home life comes under a bit of scrutiny here. He went through four wives in his life, and his children didn't get the chance to be as close to their dad as they would have liked. The relatives couldn't figure him out either.

Banks remained a somewhat elusive personality right through his death, so this is about as close as we're likely to get to a complete portrait. "Let's Play Two" is a very good review of the life of arguably the most popular baseball player in Chicago's history.  

Four stars

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Review: Baseball: The Movie (2024)

By Noah Gittell

If you are a good-sized baseball fan, you probably love baseball movies. 

You got a little weepy at the "Dad, wanna have a catch?" line in "Field of Dreams." You laughed at "There's no crying in baseball" during "A League of Their Own." You laughed harder at "Candlesticks always make a nice gift. OK? Let's get two!" in "Bull Durham."

You may have even enjoy the silly movie from about 74 years ago, "Kill the Umpire" ... although that may be stretching the point a bit.  

The point is that there is a relatively long tradition of baseball movies in this country, and the total collection has gone through a variety of forms over the years. That makes it an interesting starting point for a good-sized analysis. Film critic and writer Noah Gittell sets out to publish a something of a opinionated history of the subject in his book, "Baseball: The Movie." 

Gittell's goal certainly is worthwhile. He takes on most of the major releases in this class, starting with "The Pride of the Yankees" and running through "Sugar" (a 2008 movie about a fictional pitcher from the Dominican Republic). I suppose you could think of a clothesline, with a series of films hung up for inspection one after another in chronological order, more or less. 

The movies mentioned above come up. So do such films as "The Jackie Robinson Story," "Fear Strikes Out," "Damn Yankees," "Bang the Drum Slowly," "The Natural," "Major League," "Moneyball" and "42." They get a full analysis here, as do some others in passing. There are a few asides along the way, such as this sidebar: "Is 'The Naked Gun' a Baseball Movie? An Investigation."

Gittell obviously put in some time here in collecting information for the book. There are many signs of research that come up along the way. For example, I had never heard that "Moneyball" went through a big rewrite once director Steven Soderbergh fell away from the project. So it's fun to go through the movies and see how they are remembered now. While you might argue about where a particular movie ranks in order of best baseball films based on the words in the essay, most are in the right neighborhood. 

But does the book work? As the car companies say, your mileage may vary. The guess here is that reactions are going to be all over the place. 

Let's start with the obvious: The readers needs to have seen the movies involved. I was doing fine in the first two-thirds of the book, and then I hit a wall of movies I haven't seen. I would guess that plenty of people have viewed "The Sandlot," "Rookie of the Year," "Trouble withe the Curve" and "Fences." I missed them all. So those portions of the book were off little interest to me, and I had to skim through them very quickly. 

Then we get into the matter of approach, and here's where the arguments start. Gittell definitely is on the left side of the political spectrum as these things go. He quotes sports writer Dave Zirin - the most liberal voice in the sports business, or someone at least in the running - a few times during the course of the book. The movies in question are rated through the prism, with frequent questions about how minorities and women are portrayed. That might be a fair enough point in some cases, but sometimes it can feel like the point is pounded into the story with a hammer instead of a keyboard. I can't say I saw a comparison of "Moneyball" to Howard Dean's Presidential campaign coming, but there's one here.

That viewpoint comes out in complaints about what movies are made in the first place. Gittell argues that more movies about Latin players should be made. His list includes a story about a 19th century baseball player from Cuba named Esteban Enrique Bellan, who played in America from 1868 to 1873. That's a little idealistic, since movies are designed for a mass audience .... and such a film might have trouble getting financing. 

Then there's the matter of timing. Some of the movies are set in a particular era. "The Natural" is set in 1939, so it's rather unrealistic to think African Americans would play much of a role of the film. With "A League of Their Own," it would be quite natural to think that some of the women of the 1940s would be torn with the decision of playing ball or raising a family. With "Major League," a movie that has some laughs but is usually too silly to take too seriously, the only good-sized role for a woman is the evil owner who wants the team to stink so she can move it from Cleveland to Miami and make money.

The movies on Jackie Robinson do take some hits about the way that he is portrayed in relation to benevolent white businessmen (mostly Branch Rickey) who give him an opportunity to play in the majors out of the alleged goodness of their hearts. That doesn't give enough credit to Robinson by any standard, and it's more than fair. However, these movies aren't documentaries, and sometimes a movie version of a life story doesn't come out right. After seeing the movie "Ali," I wrote the late critic Roger Ebert and asked if knowing too much about the subject of a film can detract from the enjoyment of it. He wrote back - "I think it can. But remember, no life is a movie." And that's a good way of thinking about it. 

By the way, there's going to be someone out there who will point out that Gittell is charged with an errror in using an incorrect word that came up in the book "Ball Four" about the Yankees' "Peeping Tom" activities. He also makes a mistake in describing in "Bang the Drum Slowly" that the card game called TEGWAR is called "The Excellent Game Without Any Rules" in the text, while it's "The Exciting Game Without Any Rules" in the movie. Baseball fans aren't too forgiving about mistakes; ask someone about Joe Jackson hitting the wrong way in "Field of Dreams." (Speaking of the latter movie, it's interesting that the actual lyric from the song "The Streets or Laredo" contains "Beat the drum slowly" and not 'bang.' I wonder how that happened.)

Gittell does make a good point in saying that baseball movies are on the decline these days. Most of them now come out of faith-based operations, with inspirational stories to tell to a relatively small audience. No doubt the accountants in Hollywood are wondering how well baseball travels in our world these days, although you'd think there would be room for any well-told tale. 

As you may have guessed by now, there are a great many thoughts running around the mind after reading "Baseball: The Movie," many of them political in nature. That means some people will embrace the concepts, while others will reject them. That's the time we live in.

In other words, if Ebert were asked to rate this book, he'd probably stick his thumb sideways.

Three stars

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Review: Baseball Obscura 2024

By David J. Fleming

It's always good to see someone new try to break into the lineup.

That's the basic story behind David J. Fleming's book, "Baseball Obscura 2024." 

Fleming had been doing some writing on Bill James' website for several years, tackling a variety of baseball-related subjects. That outlet died, and Fleming thought he'd like to read a book containing some essays about the sport, mostly tied to an upcoming season. Since there really wasn't such a publication out there, he wrote the book himself. And he's not above poking a bit of fun at himself along the way for attempting it, which is nice to see.

The title is a reference to the camera obscura, which came into use in the 15th century - in other words, Columbus might have heard of it. It was a darkened room that had a small hole at one end. It was used to project an image inside that room. For example, scientists could study what a solar eclipse looked like without damaging their eyes along the way. I thought the title might have something to do with a search for obscure information. But this - a way of looking at information in a novel way - might be an even better rationale for the title.

Every major league team gets a few pages, starting with a recap of basic statistics. Some of them have one long essay about a particular area, while others are broken into pieces. The pages go by quite quickly, all things considered. Fleming writes that he's interested in how teams are constructed, and there are some good thoughts along those lines. For example, he's a little more upbeat on the future of the Detroit Tigers than I would have thought.

And, he's one of the lone voices who is wondering about the Yankees' acquisition of Juan Soto. He simply doesn't know if it was worth giving up four good pitching prospects for the chance to have Soto for a year. The outfielder obviously got off to a great start in New York, and he's been a great player for most of his career. Usually a four-for-one deal works out best for the team that acquires the best player, but there are no guarantees. And it's tough to know if that's the best way to approach the building of a team. 

The book ends with a few more general essays. The story of Bullet Joe Rogan, who was the Shohei Ohtani of the Negro Leagues in terms of the the pitcher/hitter combination, was particularly interesting. It's the type of essay that you really don't get anywhere else.  

This all comes with a bit of an asterisk, which we will borrow from the record book; Roger Maris' 1961 season doesn't really need it. "Baseball Obscura 2024" is self-published. That's going to mean that some compromises had to be made in terms of quality. It is to be expected.

There are some typographical errors along the way. One that made me feel a little uncomfortable - in the "been there, done that" sense - was the misspelling of the last name of Luis Robert Jr. of the White Sox. It came out Roberts in the team essay. There are some other mistakes, and they seem to pick up speed as the book goes along. Fleming does say that he ran out of time to have someone do a good cleaning of the text.

He also says he could complete some of his ideas when it came to writing essays, and that feels about right. There are a few sections that feel like fillers. 

Still, Fleming deserves all sorts of credit and admiration for giving this a try. It was obviously a good-sized amount of work, and he did get the book produced. "Baseball Obscura 2024" is a good start, and it's fairly priced at $16. The people who have reviewed it for Amazon seem to like it a lot. The author deserves some encouragement to see if he can take more steps forward in the future.

Three stars

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Review: Charlie Hustle (2024)

By Keith O'Brien

A Philadelphia sportscaster once offered an appropriate one-sentence summary of baseball's Pete Rose:

"He's a helluva guy, but he'd bet you on what time it was."

Yup, that's Pete. You can say a lot about his life, which now has gone past 80 years, but you can't say it's been boring.

No wonder we're still talking about this legendary player, who had a fall that Shakespeare would have appreciated. Rose was one of baseball's all-time greats, but betting on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds led the his forced departure from his association of the game/business. 

Rose has had plenty written about him over the years, naturally. He returns to the literary spotlight in a new biography called "Charlie Hustle" by Keith O'Brien, which ranks as the most comprehensive account yet of Rose's life. Not only did the author interview dozens of people and went through a ton of records and transcripts of report, but he even talked to Rose himself for a few days ... before Rose got angry for whatever reason and stopped returning phone calls. 

Rose's story started out as the Basic Local Boy Makes Good. tale. He grew up in modest surroundings in Cincinnati, with a father who was a good but not great athlete. Pete didn't seem to pay much attention to school work, but baseball was another story. Nobody outworked him, and he signed to play with the hometown Reds right out of high school. After a shockingly brief stay in the minors (only a couple of years), Rose wound up in the Cincinnati lineup in 1963. He was good enough to be the Rookie of the Year in the National League. Pete also picked up the nickname of "Charlie Hustle" from Yankee stars Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford because of the way he ran everywhere on the field - particularly while going to first after a walk.

Rose simply got better and better from there. In 1965, Rose led the league in hits for the first of seven times and hit .300 for the first of 15 times. He won a Most Valuable Player award, played in 17 All-Star Games, and claimed three championships. Most notably, he broke Ty Cobb's seemingly unbreakable major-league record for most hits in a career. Pete was a player-manager of the Reds at that point, and he probably was the only person that would have put his name on a major-league lineup card. But it did happen.

It's hard to underestimate how popular Rose was during that period. He clearly wasn't the most physically talented player on the field, but no one worked harder. An undiagnosed case of ADHD probably was part of the formula for success.

But O'Brien points out, there were some red flags that were flying along the way. Pete picked up a love of gambling on horse racing as a teen, and that issue only grew as the years went on. Add in a personality who didn't seem to take his wedding vows too seriously and the intake of amphetamines, and this clearly was someone who was flirting with danger. However, Rose was so popular that many were willing to look the other way. Perhaps a little discipline in those playing days might have changed his path. Or, maybe not. 

That brings us to the second half of the book, more or less, as a baseball story turns into a crime story. Rose was betting on a variety of activities by the time he was managing, including baseball. Rose hung out with enough shady characters so that word was bound to leak out to the authorities. He probably thought he could have slid by again, but gambling on baseball is the proverbial red line of the sport. But, as O'Brien outlines step by step, the case against him got bigger and bigger, and the sport's authority figures eventually had little choice but to ban him from the game. 

And as the author points out, everyone was probably willing to give Rose an edge even then. If Pete had come out and just said that he had made some mistakes and that he was sorry, his suspension would have been a relatively short one and he'd probably be in the Hall of Fame by now. But instead, Rose dug in and denied everything for several years ... and then he wrote a book about his true activities. 

Rose has become a sad figure these days in some ways. He spends some of his time signing autographs for fans who don't think he needs forgiveness for anything. He's an idol for life for them. There's the occasional story on the media on what he's thinking these days, especially in the light of the embrace by sports of gambling once the laws on that subject were changed. 

I'm not a particularly big fans of books on crime, and the dive into that particularly part of the underworld wasn't the highlight of the book for me. But I'm willing to admit that the story is quite clearly told, and that it's necessary under the circumstances. 

"Charlie Hustle" certainly will go down on the last word on the subject of Pete Rose. For those who are too young to remember Pete as a player and want to find out what the fuss was all about, this is a good place to start.

Five stars

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Review: It's Hard for Me to Live with Me (2024)

By Rex Chapman with Seth Davis

Read enough books, and you are bound to come across a story of someone relatively famous who has fallen victim to some sort of addiction. Everyone from Eric Clapton to Dwight Gooden has written down their stories, which can be a form of therapy for some. While accepting the courage that they show in getting down everything on paper, such books are usually less than what we'd call "entertaining."

That brings us to Rex Chapman's book, "It's Hard for Me to Live With Me." It's an extremely readable account of his life to date, which gets him off to a great start in winning over the reader. That's often crucial in autobiographies.

Chapman has carved out a few niches for himself over the years. His first addiction was to basketball, in a sense. It's easy to guess that he thought the sport was a way to gain approval from his father, himself a basketball coach who was distant and who really didn't have much of an idea who to raise a child. The rest of the family had some other problems, leaving basketball as something of a refuge to Rex. Nothing else seems to have mattered to him, and he won a big enough share of the genetic lottery to become very good at the sport. Chapman became a high school star in Kentucky, a state that follows basketball like few others. That drove a wedge between Rex and his sister, who always had to play a lesser role because of her big brother. It also allowed him to get away with behavior that in most cases would be severely punished, but instead drew a half-hearted remark from authority figures who essentially said, "Don't do that again," and then tried to forget about it. 

Chapman soon caught the attention of the University of Kentucky. He originally planned to attend Louisville, but a campus visit quickly showed him that the Wildcats lived like kings. That sounded good to Rex, who wasn't too thrilled about the studying aspect of college anyway. He became a standout at Kentucky, and stayed two seasons before the call of the NBA and its money became too much to avoid. Besides, the Wildcats were headed for trouble in the form of a recruiting scandal.

Along the way, Chapman did receive an education of the ways of the South, even in the 1980s. He had an African-American girlfriend in high school and college, and the two of them learned that the sight of such a couple didn't go over too well in some quarters - so they stayed in a lot. In fact, a couple of times people called Rex in to talk about the relationship and told him to be careful. "We don't care who you date, but there are others out there who won't like it," was the speech. There's still some bitterness there, and deservedly so.

Chapman was a first-round draft choice who was a good scorer; he was always in double-digits in scoring during his 12-year career. The problem was that he often was injured, only playing more than 70 games in a season once in his career (75 as a rookie). He finished with 666 games played in 12 years, which averages out to about 55. Even when he was playing, he often wasn't at 100 percent.

When Chapman was finally done in 2000, you've never seen anyone as ill-prepared to enter a world without basketball and its NBA-sized paychecks. He quickly engaged in activities that were sure to drain a bank account - addition to prescriptions, gambling, divorce, cars, etc. Millions went down those drains. It reached the point where Chapman really did live in his car at times.

Such stories sometimes end in tragedy. In this case, Chapman picks up some work here and there through basketball connections. He also became a very unexpected icon on social media, starting with the posting of fun videos. That led to a series of posts on collisions called "Block or Charge?" He's ridden that to more television work, almost landing a show of his own on CNN at one point. It's reached the point that Chapman's book needed no time at all to reach the best-seller lists upon its release. 

The key point in all of this is that Chapman is honest throughout the book. He writes about how he was always willing to accept "gifts" from Kentucky boosters in the form of $100 (or more) handshakes, or take a little "loan" from them later during tough times. He also labels his Kentucky coach, Eddie Sutton, an alcoholic during Rex's time in Lexington, which is a bit surprising. Chapman is tough on others, but maybe tougher on himself.

The story moves along nicely, and the guess is that the talented Seth Davis, Chapman's co-author, had something to do with that. This can be read in a couple of days rather easily. A couple of sentences get repeated along the way, which is rather amateurish. But you'll get over it.

Chapman comes across in "It's Hard for Me to Live With Me" as someone who played the system surrounding talented athletes for a while, taking advantage of its benefits. However, he was rather blind-sighted by the after-effects of the decisions he made along the way. While Chapman's crash to earth is quite a story, perhaps the lessons we should learn from the pampering of athletes at a young age need to teach us something. In other words, it's an interesting and unusual life story that could have been even longer. But basketball fans will find what he did write down to be worth their time. 

Four stars

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Review: Baseball Prospectus 2024

Edited by Patrick Dubuque, Bryan Grosnick and Ginny Searle

It feels as if the smart guys at Baseball Prospectus - and I use that phrase with a ton of respect - have reached a bit of a turning point in their annual books on the sport. That requires a bit of explanation. 

The book's 29th edition, "Baseball Prospectus 2024," is out, and it's the latest in a successful series that dates back to the mid-1990s. That's when we start to see the first blooms of the analytic revolution in baseball, in which teams were investing in people who knew something about the ever-growing tool box that could be used to study baseball. In fact, the teams themselves often raided Baseball Prospectus for talent, along the lines of the way it treats minor league affiliates. "Say, that guy can help us win."

The early editions became something of a follow-up to Bill James' Baseball Abstracts, which stopped in 1988. Not only did the authors of BP go down some new paths in a search for new evaluation tools, but they also learned from James that good writing was a good-sized part of the job. It was the writing that collected some of the attention, as in "Say, these guys can make me laugh and learn at the same time." There was just enough snark and attitude to make it work. 

That was important, because the publication didn't want to limit its audience to just the (another loving reference coming) statistical nerds. So reading it was entertaining and informative.

That toolbox has grown in size greatly in the past several years. Some of the measures of ballpark performance has become fairly common - OPS, WAR, WARP. Others less so. There's so much more that we know these days, about chances of catching a fly ball to the amount of break on a slider.

So it was a little fear that I noticed that the first 10 pages of this year's book was dedicated to explaining what was going within the paes. And stats like ZSw% and OCon$ popped up in the player capsules, among others. Some others, like average MPH by a pitcher's fastball, are sadly gone. (That one I understood.) It's starting to feel as if some more people just got left behind. 

I tend to read the capsules for an update on what's going on around MLB. That means I generally stick to the players on my favorite teams, although I do try to glance as most of the people who are on major league rosters. (At close to 600 pages, I'm not up to reading every word ... but it's nice that it's all written for others.) It seems that the stats have crowded out the clever writing at times, even I learn some things along the way.

There are still instances of good prose scattered throughout the book. The team essays have almost been interesting, and continue to be interesting. The coverage of prospects remains terrific. In other words, this is still worth buying. But, "Baseball Prospectus 2024" isn't as quite as much fun to read as its predecessors. So if you are a baseball fan, know that beforehand before you plunk down your money.

Four stars

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Review: Present at the Creation (2017)

By Upton Bell with Ron Borges

The name of Upton Bell probably doesn't ring much of a, ahem, bell with many of the sports fans of today. Yes, he was in the sports media for a few decades in the Boston area, which probably is how he is best remembered.

However, that was his second go-around in the sports business. It was his first that might be of more interest, at least from an historical perspective. Bell's time in football is nicely chronicled in his book, "Present at the Creation." You can break that portion of his career into four different sections, which are covered here.

* He was the son of the former NFL Commissioner Bert Bell. 

* He was part of the front office of the Baltimore Colts during much of the 1960s.

* He was the general manager of the New England Patriots for a couple of years in the early 1970s. 

* He was the operating manager of the Charlotte franchise in the World Football League, an operation that lasted a mere two years in the 1970s. 

That is a rather intriguing resume, at least in terms of football history. It should be enough to draw some people in.

Bell's father probably ranks with one of the unsung heroes in the history of the NFL. There's a tendency to believe that Pete Rozelle deserves much of the credit for the growth in the league starting in the 1950s. However, Bell established a foundation for that growth in the 1950s. Granted, Upton's version is a little biased - as well it should be. But Bert seems like a man of integrity, and he took several steps that placed the sport of football on a national stage. Sadly, Bert essentially dropped dead during a game in 1959, just after he was making plans to try to step out of the Commissioner's job. Upton at least had an inside look at how pro football administration worked even before he graduated from college.

Upton eventually moved over to a job with the Baltimore Colts, showing an ability to find talent in the nation's colleges and thus having several drafts that helped propel the Colts to a contender's status throughout the 1960s. Baltimore had an interesting team in that era, led by a couple of strong personalities in quarterback John Unitas and head coach Don Shula ... who didn't really get along too well. While the Green Bay Packers are considered the dominant team of that era, it wouldn't have taken much to flip that script. The Colts lost key games to the Browns in the 1964 NFL championship, to the Packers in a 1965 playoff game (featuring a missed call on a field-goal attempt in the final minutes), and famously to the Jets in the 1969 Super Bowl. 

Indeed, the best part of the book might be the one devoted to that Jets' game. Bell said the Colts had figured out that New York not only had a better quarterback (Joe Namath vs. Earl Morrall) for that matchup, but also had better running backs and better wide receivers. In addition, age had caught up with Baltimore on the right side of the defense, and Jets' coach Weeb Eubank - the former head coach in Baltimore - knew it. Even so, the Colts probably would have won the game more than half the time; they just picked the wrong day to have a stinker. 

Still, the Colts' good run of success made Bell an attractive candidate for a promotion elsewhere, and he received it when he was named the general manager of the Boston/New England Patriots in 1971. As Bell writes, it seemed like a good idea at the time. The Patriots had been a mess for the previous several years, but Bell didn't realize how much of a mess it was. I'm fond of saying that sports teams lose for a reason, even if that reason isn't apparent from a distance. In this case, the team's Board of Directors was hopelessly fractured, and authority was scattered throughout the company. That rarely works. Bell lasted almost two years before the end mercifully came. The problems continued for a couple of more decades.

Bell received one more shot at pro football glory, taking an opportunity that became available in the World Football League. Stories of new leagues are always entertaining in a somewhat tragic sort of way. Bell helped move a franchise from New York to Charlotte, the opposite direction of what you might think was a path to success. However, the overall problems of the league overwhelmed Bell and the Hornets didn't need much of a push to be caught up in it. The WFL was dead before its second and final season ended in 1975, and so was Bell's football career.

"Football men" are notorious for having a limited focus on life, concentrating completely on the game rather than the world around it. One of the joys of this book is that Bell doesn't seem to suffer from that. He offers some good stories about what it was like to scout players in the South of the 1960s, where he had a first-hand look at the changes that were starting to take place. 

Bell probably could have fit a few more stories about his media days into the book, but what he offers is quite interesting. It already is closing in on 400 pages as is. Anyone who picks it up in the first place probably is looking for stories about football history, so this doesn't really date for what might be a somewhat limited audience. The pages go by quite quickly. 

In hindsight, it's easy to see why Bell had some success in the sports world. He's a smart, articulate man, and "Present at the Creation" reflects that. Those who fit into the proper demographic will find the book worth their time.

Four stars

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Review: Draft Day (2023)

By Doug MacLean with Scott Morrison

It's an age-old question. How do you build a winning team in professional sports?

Ever since the free-for-all days of signing players on your own ended at various stages (it depends on the sport, but mostly it was in the 1950s or 1960s), the draft has been the key component. That's where the biggest talent influx arrives each year. If those selections work out, one way or another, a team can add to its base of good players and start moving up the ladder in wins. In hockey, for example, teams that win Stanley Cups often have about 10 of their own draft choices on their rosters. 

Some of the other picks contribute in different ways, as they are sometimes traded elsewhere to strengthen a particular spot in the lineup. If a team has some depth at defense but not much talent at center, a swap concept begins to form with a team with the opposite problem.

When watching the draft, there's always a scent that much more is going on than we know about it. Happily, veteran hockey executive Doug MacLean takes us through his career in the behind-the-scenes book, "Draft Day." 

MacLean has had a variety of hockey jobs over the years. He's best known for his work as coach of the Florida Panthers and as the president and general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets. MacLean always has come across as a smart, interesting person. Here he pulls back the curtain on what goes into the draft, which is the subject of a year's worth of work that comes down to only a couple of days of selections in the summer. No pressure, eh? There's a little wandering in the story that makes this read like an autobiography for a while, but it's not a big problem.

It's striking from the start just how close-knit the hockey family is. MacLean came out of Prince Edward Island in Canada. He played hockey there, but wasn't good enough to get a whiff of the NHL. However, he decided to work his way up the coaching ladder rather than taking what could be called "a real job." You get to meet a lot of people in the game that way, and the circles often intersect along the way. It's something of a fraternity, and friends are made for life. Those friends often turn out to be crucial in advancement. 

A book like this needs to have good stories to make it work, and MacLean comes through nicely in that department during the nearly 300 pages. One of the highlights is how MacLean as the general manager at Columbus managed to trade up to acquire the first overall pick. There he scooped up Rick Nash, who proved to be a top goal-scorer in the NHL. 

There's a skill to that, of course, but luck plays a hand in a team's fate as well. MacLean points out several cases where the lottery was particularly unkind to the Blue Jackets when he was there. A different ping-pong ball, or whatever is used in the lottery, would have made a big difference in the fortunes of the Columbus team. But when there are four particularly great prospects in a draft and you have the fifth pick, things aren't going to go well. 

MacLean devotes a chapter to what he calls "the curious case of Nikolai Zherdev." He was a top prospect in terms of talent from Russia, but there were a few character issues floating around that were tough to decipher. MacLean and Co. put plenty of effort into due diligence when it came to finding out what the full story was. Eventually the choice came down to Zherdev or Thomas Vanek. It turned out that personal issues never allowed Zherdev to realize his talent. By the way, the Buffalo Sabres "settled" for Vanek, who turned out to be a solid pro. GM Darcy Regier told MacLean at the time that the Sabres would have taken Zherdev had they had the chance.      

Speaking of the Sabres, there are a couple of little items in this book that are of interest. In 2015, MacLean tried to console Buffalo general manager Tim Murray for losing the lottery by saying that even if he couldn't get Connor McDavid, he'd at least get someone good. The reply was, "Doug, it's not even close." And back in 1991, the New York Islanders were shopping talented center Pat LaFontaine in a contract dispute. They talked to the Detroit Red Wings, and MacLean worked for the Wings at that point. He writes that the Red Wings were ready to deal Steve Yzerman to the Islanders in a package for LaFontaine. The deal eventually fell through, and LaFontaine ended up in Buffalo. If that original deal goes through with Detroit, hockey history goes in all sorts of different directions in the three cities involved.

This is all told in a down-to-earth style. Not only does MacLean comes across well, but he's in good hands in terms of assistance with Scott Morrison. The latter has been one of the most respected names in journalism for several years. 

The pages on "Draft Day" may not fly by for those who aren't good-sized hockey fans or for those looking for a more indepth look at the draft process, but those that qualify (in other words, the majority of potential readers) will find this more than satisfying. They should pick it up sooner rather than later. 

Four stars

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Review: The Early Days of ESPN (2024)

By Peter Fox

The lives of sports fans changed drastically on September 7, 1979. That's when a new television network called ESPN signed on the air, with sportscaster Lee Leonard doing the honors. 

It hasn't signed off since that moment - with the exception of a few technical problems, no doubt - and since then it has lived up to its promise that it would show nothing but sports programming for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 (or 366) days a year.

While plenty has been written about those early days of the network's programming, ESPN didn't simply appear out of the ether one day. Several months of planning went into the debut. In fact, the first broadcast by the network took place 10 months earlier in November of 1978. The opening game was an exhibition basketball matchup between the University of Connecticut and Athletes in Action, a tourimg squad. 

Peter Fox was there at the beginning, as ESPN's founding executive producer. He's finally gotten around to putting some of his (and others') memories on those start-up days on paper, and the result is "The Early Days of ESPN."

The idea for the network came almost accidentally. Bill Rasmussen was interested in transmitting Connecticut basketball games around the state by satellite, and discovered that he couldn't just rent the time for a few hours a week. No, he had to agree to use it 24/7. A family member half-jokingly suggested to fill the time with other sports, and they plunged into it. 

After setting the scene a bit, Fox mostly relies on the memories of those who worked there in those early days. Some came from Hartford television, while others were from the immediate area of the Northeast. As you'd expect, the start-up was rather chaotic, with rented offices and potential clients (cable companies and advertisers) wondering how ESPN would fill all that time. Come to think of it, the employees wondered that too.

But eventually, it all came together. The big steps in personnel came when Chet Simmons and Scotty Connal - two big names in television production - were hired. Then the Getty Oil Company, which was sitting on piles of cash at the time, decided a television network would be more fun to own than drilling a dry hole in the ground.  

As you'd expect, the new employees mostly were young people who really didn't have much to lose professionally and loved sports. So there are stories of long hours, equipment breaking down, visits to local watering holes, office romances, more visits to local watering holes (hey, work hard, play hard), etc.

That all sounds like it has the elements of a reasonable book. However, the finished product has a couple of good-sized flaws attached.

For starters, this is part oral history and part personal narrative. The problem is that the material is not presented particularly well. It's rather disorganized, and sometimes it's tough to figure out where on the timeline of ESPN's story we might be at a given page. That's a good-sized drawback in a book like this. There are a few sections along the way that are simply tough to read for that reason. It's also a short book, checking in at under 200 pages with some filler along the way. Readers may not feel they will get their $29.95's worth of information from this.   

Fox comes off as a good and interesting guy, and he probably would be good company for lunch and diet colas. But "The Early Days of ESPN" comes across as something that might appeal to a very small piece of the audience. There are other books out there that might be more satisfying to someone looking for a quick overview of the start of the popular broadcasting outlet.

Two stars

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Review: The Bill James Handbook: Walk-Off Edition (2023)

By Sports Info Solutions

All good things must come to an end ... particularly in publishing, where the landscape seems to change by the hour. 

Such is the case for "The Bill James Handbook," which has concluded a nice run that has lasted for more than three decades. The story of the book's history needs a little explanation first.

Back around 1990, baseball statistics had started to blossom as a subject for study. Bill James, the patron saint of baseball analysis, had started the idea (more or less) with his Abstracts in the late 1970s. That led to an advancement of the subject, through the work of a small but devoted group of individuals who have pushed the research along. 

By 1990, there was a demand for information that just wasn't out there for most of the public. So James and his friends started a book that contained all of those numbers - and not just the ones that were in the Baseball Register by The Sporting News every year. Even better, the book was available by Christmas, which was a good holiday gift for those who couldn't wait until the spring or so when the Register came out. The book not only had those numbers, but also some essays on the game. 

Fast forward to today, and all of those numbers are available almost instantly through other sources on the Internet. So it was easy to guess that the days of the Handbook had to be numbered, and here we are. But the people behind the publication decided to go out with a bang of sorts. So they came out with one last book filled mostly with essays, and called it the "Walk-Off Edition." 

I hadn't bought the book before, as I didn't have a great deal of need for the extra numbers in my life. But as a reader of James' abstracts, I found the concept of an anthology with contributions by and about James to be tough to resist. Sold. 

Sure enough, there are a bunch of articles here, and James has five bylines and is the subject of a question-and-answer story. My favorite story of the bunch was one by James, in which he talks about how the changes in the way baseball is played these days (more relief pitchers, emphasis on home runs by hitters and strikeouts for pitchers, etc.). One of the unexpected aspects of those changes is that statistical standards have been more or less broken. That means the 300-game winner has become extinct, and that a certain type of player who doesn't hit for power has been left behind. There aren't many guys like Wade Boggs out there any more, and perhaps that hasn't helped the game's popularity with the public. Food for thought, at the very least. 

The people behind this book have done a lot of work on fielding statistics over the years, and have picked the year's best again. Fielding probably gets more coverage here than anything else. It's obviously well-researched material, written by smart people.

There's a catch here, though, and it's worth noting. This is a rather short book, and technical in spots. So it's not going to take long to read this, particular if you find yourself skimming over some stories because they are a little hard to follow. 

Is "The Bill James Handbook: Walk-Off Edition" worth $24.95 to you? Each reader will have to make that determination. If baseball is one of the biggest parts of your life, then you might enjoy this. Less rabid readers who prefer information on current teams and seasons might be willing to waiting for the Baseball Prospectus annual, which is always a favorite in this space.

Three stars

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Review: The Formula (2024)

By Joshua Robinson & Jonathan Clegg

For years, Formula 1 auto racing held a very small niche in the American sports scene. Yes, enthusiasts knew that the sport was popular around the world, particularly in Europe. Admittedly, watching the annual race on Monaco was something of a curiosity, thanks to the unique nature of the course. But the Grand Prix circuit took a back seat (sorry) to Indy cars and NASCAR events for the most part on this side of the Atlantic. Champion drivers weren't well known unless they made a stop in Indianapolis for the month of May. 

All of that has changed in the past few years. Formula 1 racing has boomed in the United States in the past few years. The races are on television (ESPN) constantly now, and a documentary series on Netflix has proven to be a great way to collect publicity and fans. 

The transformation probably left some people here interested in the history of this particular divisions of the sport of auto racing. Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg are here to fill in that gap with the book, "The Formula." And they have a great story to tell.

The authors offer something of a course on the business side of the Grand Prix circuit. If this sounds like it could be a little dry, well, don't worry. Robinson and Clegg really made the characters come alive. It's an international cast with great stories involved. 

Heck, Bernie Eccelstone could be a book all by himself. This former driver took over financial control of a team on the circuit, which led to him buying the television rights to the series, which led to him taking over control of the entire Formula 1 operation ... which made him very rich. Some of that money was lost in 2023, when a tax fraud conviction cost him more than 800 million dollars. 

The book offers one key insight into the sport that is a valuable tip for the uninitiated. Why does it seem that Formula 1 teams have stretches where they just dominate the competition, race after race? It turns out that it has a lot to do with the rules. While there are pages and pages of regulations about how the cars are designed and built, it seems that designers are constantly looking for ways to bend those regulations in a way that couldn't be called outright cheating. Perhaps the tires are made of a new material, or the car design leads to more downforce that keeps the vehicle on the road at higher speeds. 

That can lead to a bit of an advantage, and that's important in a sport when a second per lap can be a huge edge in the competition. A team runs off some wins, and the rest of the field than either copies that change or the rules are rewritten to level the playing field again. Then the process starts all over again. 

A couple of fabled moments in the history of the series receive plenty of attention too. One centered on the time a driver was ordered to crash his car into a wall so that his teammate could take advantage of the yellow flag and move up in the field. The other concerned the time when a ruling on where lapped cars would be placed on a restart would determine the outcome of a season-long championship. Those may be well-known to longtime fans, but they are amazing moments for the more casual reader. 

Robinson and Clegg do a fine job of telling this as a human story for the most part. In other words, you won't get lost in the text even if you don't know the difference between a carburetor and wheel axle. They also give plenty of details of how Liberty Media came in as the new owners of the circuit and essentially revolutionized how the sport was presented to the public, which is greatly responsible for the current boom in interest (and, naturally, revenues).

You don't have to be a gearhead to enjoy "The Formula," which is a first-class job. You'll want to give it the checkered flag when you're done.

Five stars

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Review: The Real Hoosiers (2024)

By Jack McCallum

The 1950s certainly were an interesting period for high school basketball in Indiana.

If you are a hoops fan, you've certainly heard of the team from Milan High School. It won the state title in 1954, despite coming from a very small town with the corresponding small population of students who could potentially play for the team. It was a story ready made for Hollywood - and Hollywood came up with a popular movie, "Hoosiers," in 1986 that was "inspired" on Milan's championship run. (If truth be told, Milan was considered a very good team entering the season, so it wasn't really that much of a Cinderella story.) 

Along the way, Milan defeated Crispus Attucks High School of Indianapolis. That turned out to be a mere speed bump for the Tigers, who blasted their way to winning the next two state championships. As Jack McCallum points out in his book, "The Real Hoosiers," Milan might have been the most dramatic story, but Attacks provided the more significant tale in the larger scheme of things.

That's because the Tigers were the first all-Black team in the entire United States to win a state high school title. In the process, the team opened up some possibilities for the sport. For much of the previous years, basketball had been an over-coached, don't-run, run-the-plays sport. Attacks did it differently. The Tigers were full of athletes who could run and jump, and they played that way. 

The result was one-sided. Attucks lost one game in two years, and ran its way to two state titles in 1955 and 1956. Of course, it helped to have a superstar on their side, and the Tigers certainly had one of those in Oscar Robertson. You might remember him as the man who once averaged a triple-double in the NBA before anyone noticed that it should have been a big deal, and was a perennial All-Star. Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan might have overshadowed "The Big O" in terms of publicity about basketball's best all-time guards these days, but Oscar could play. Check out the videos of him on You Tube if you don't believe it. It was his game and his basketball, and he seemed to be letting the others play once in a while. No wonder John Wooden - himself a superstar guard from Indiana back in the day - once said that Robertson could have made the jump from high school all the way to the pros. That's quite a statement for someone playing in 1956.

As you'd expect from the description of those two championship seasons, there wasn't a great deal of drama along the way. Attucks had a few close games, but not very many. They took care of business, and moved on to the next contest. In fact, the team members realized that the officiating in that era was not going to do African Americans any favors, so it was to their advantage to put the game away early and not allow a single call determine their fate.

Even so, McCallum finds plenty to write about here. Indiana in the 1950s was an interesting place in terms of race relations. The state had those Midwestern roots that left the people there somewhat reserved. But Indiana also was the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, and it was called America's most northern Southern state at one point. 

Crispus Attucks High School was itself something of a monument to those racial pains. It was built in the Black part of town, as integrating the schools was a little too much too soon for Indianapolis. There were all sorts of snubs along the way, even dealing with fears about how "that part" of the city might celebrate a simple high school championship. Remember, the 1955 championship was won only months after the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The research is first-rate, with plenty of voices supplied either directly or through quotes from other sources. Interestingly, Robertson turned down the chance to talk about those days. He did his business and moved on, which sort of describes his approach to life. But Oscar did write an autobiography and has given a few interviews, so he's certainly represented here. 

McCallum always was the proverbial good read when working as the main basketball writer at Sports Illustrated. He was always good at turning a phrase and making the reader smile. McCallum still has those skills, but this shows he can handle the more serious stuff as well.

"The Real Hoosiers" does justice to the team and the time. You can't ask for more than that in a book like this. Well done. 

Five stars

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Review: Making Waves (2016)

By Shirley Babashoff with Chris Epting

It's unusual to review a book that's more than five years old in this space. The reason is that one of suppliers of books, NetGalley, included it in its offerings recently, and the publication sounded interesting from a distance. 

It was interesting at close range too. In other words, "Making Waves" is worth your time even now.

Shirley Babashoff should be remembered as one of the greatest swimmers in American history. She won just about everything in sight at a variety of distances leading up to the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. With Mark Spitz's seven gold medals in swimming not too far back in the rear-view mirror, there was talk that Babashoff could be something of a successor to him as America's swimming superstar. 

But during the build-up to the '76 Games, a problem was lurking for Babashoff and the American team. It came in the form of the squad from East Germany. The women's team was improving its times at a rate beyond comprehension. It didn't take much effort to Babashoff to notice that something was wrong - one look at the East Germans showed their muscles were getting larger and their voices were getting deeper. It wouldn't have been a surprise if they needed to shave each morning. Today we'd instantly look at steroids and other drugs as the causes of the changes, but the 1970s were more of an innocent era in that sense.

Babashoff performed spectacularly well by her own high standards at the Games, but for the most part couldn't keep up with the East German machine. When she went public with her views that something wasn't quite right with all of this, she was criticized for being a bad sport and picked up the nickname of "Surly Shirley." Babashoff did have the satisfaction of serving as the anchor of a relay team that had a perfect race to win the gold medal.

Babashoff went off to live the rest of her life, admittedly without the hoopla that would have come had she won multiple gold medals. But once the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, news about an East German drug program for athletes started to leak out. Eventually, those women were revealed to be either guinea pigs or pharmacies - pick your metaphor - and suffered physical damage that lasts until this day. 

Babashoff gets to take a few well-deserved "I told you so" moments in telling the story in the book. She's still a little bitter than the media, etc. didn't make more of a fuss about the East Germans back in the day, although in fairness it wasn't exactly easy to investigate anything going on in the Communist bloc in that day. In addition, Olympic officials weren't exactly inquisitive in those days. 

It hasn't been an easy life for Babashoff. The problems began as a child, with parents who had a strict Russian heritage and never did fit in too well in America. Shirley's father was a sexual predator, and her descriptions of that era are very painful to read; it's difficult to imagine how hard it was to write. Her only refuge was in the pool, and her drive mixed with athletic ability made her a champion every step of the way. 

Obviously Babashoff's post-Olympic life would have been different if she had brought home a bunch of gold medals from Montreal. But she eventually started working for the Postal Service, and seemed content with her life as of 2016 when the book was written.

While there have been attempts to rewrite history by stripping the East Germans of their gold medals retroactively (and such actions have been taken before), the International Olympic Committee has chosen not to take that step in this case. That's too bad, because that wrong can still be righted. Babashoff did receive the Olympic Order, the IOC's highest honor, but that's not the same as having those gold medals in the safe.

"Making Waves" is something of a mixture, then. It's part victory lap and part a story about the search for ultimate justice. The book goes by quite quickly, and it doesn't get bogged down in swimming minutia, so a general audience will find it interesting. Don't let any more time go before you get to it.

Five stars

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Review: The Speed Game (2020)

By Paul Westhead

Paul Westhead had quite a long career in basketball. He held a number of jobs in the college and professional versions, reaching some admirable heights and hitting a few stunning lows. 

That makes him a good candidate to tell his life story when it comes it comes to roundball. He's done exactly that in his book, "The Speed Game," which suffers from its relatively small size. 

I followed Westhead for quite a bit of his ride. He was a college coach at LaSalle in the late 1970s, and his team used to come to Buffalo every so often when I was a radio reporter. Westhead had some decent players and teams, and seemed quite sharp in interviews, so he turned out to be memorable. I even saw him at a small Catholic high school one night, watching a potential recruit while chatting with then St. Bonaventure coach Jim Satalin. Neither landed Mark Rzemek, who went to Canisius. I kept an eye on him from a distance after that when I could.

Then Westhead received a couple of unexpected breaks. He left LaSalle to take a job as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Lakers. When the head coach, Jack McKinney, was in a bad bicycle accident in the fall of 1979, the Lakers needed a coach, and fast. Westhead was about the only logical choice, even if  he had very limited experience in matters of the NBA. 

That Laker team had plenty of star power - and plenty of egos, but somehow he guided Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, and Company to an NBA title. Life was pretty good for a while, but sooner rather than latter Westhead got caught up in some of the egos involved with that organization, and unexpectedly (to him) exited a bit more than a year after winning the title.

Part of the problem in Los Angeles was that Westhead had an idea for a brand-new approach to basketball. To put it in ancient terms, he wanted to speed the game up to something like 78 revolutions per minute on the record player, while the rest of the world literally was playing at 45 or 33 rpm. Innovators always have it difficult, but Westhead was crazy enough to think it could work. 

It did work, more or less, but it took a few more stops for him to make his point. It came about 10 years after the title when he was coach at Loyola Marymount. The idea was to have a fast break on every offensive play, taking the first available shot after a few seconds. If the other team didn't want to play that fast on offense - and it usually didn't - Westhead's team would put on a full-court press to increase the tempo. The scores were usually in the 100s, and frequently the other team would run out of gas along the way. The comparison that comes to mind is with "Mouse" Davis, a football coach who used the so-called "Run and Shoot" offense that was very wide open and high-scoring.

By the 1989-90 season, the Lions had accumulated such players as Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble, who were perfect for that system. LMU won a lot more than it lost, and accumulated some honors and records along the way. By the arrival of the postseason, no one wanted to play the Lions. But then Gathers collapsed during the conference tournament, and died that night. Loyola Marymount still almost made the Final Four, but fell short against UNLV. 

I count 12 jobs that Westhead had after leaving the Lakers. He even won a WNBA championship with the Phoenix Mercury in 2007. The veteran coach never lost faith in his system, even if it didn't always work out for him.

As you'd expect, Westhead is an interesting man who has had quite a career. He has some good stories to tell, particularly about the two-plus years with the Lakers. But the book has a couple of flaws to it. The first is that the hard cover version came out in 2020. That was 40 years after the Lakers' championship and six years after his last job (women's basketball coach at Oregon). It probably should have been written sooner so that more people could relate to the stories. 

Second, a lot of his coaching experiences go unreported. This checks in at under 200 pages, and several years and jobs are simply ignored. The uptempo system is the star of half of the book, not Westhead. So it feels incomplete. There was room for more. 

"The Speed Game" is a pleasant enough if brief read, and basketball scholars certainly will enjoy one man's attempt at a revolution. Just don't expect much more than that. 

Three stars

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Review: A Whole Other Game (2024)

By Neil Longley

The title of Neil Longley's book doesn't tell you much about what's inside. "A Whole New Game" could be about practically anything, and not just about sports.

However, the subtitle does a better of describing the context. "Economics, politics, and the transformation of the business of hockey in Canada" sounds like we're going to have some serious discussions about hockey on the pages, and indeed we do.

The author seems well qualified for such discussions. He's a retired professor at the management school of the University of Massachusetts, and has a PhD in economics from Washington State University. Longley also has done some writing about sports economics. Maybe the arrival of the Vegas Golden Knights inspired this Las Vegas resident to do some thinking about hockey in regard to Canada. 

So you'd expect something well done here, and the good Professor has come through with some unique and valuable information in his relatively short book.

There are five different essays of sorts here that cover some specific areas. Describing them briefly isn't too fair because of the scope of the writing, but it will have to do here. We have the story of how the Montreal Canadiens became just another team in the NHL. There's the matter of how French-Canadians are doing in hockey as a whole. The story of pro hockey in Alberta is examined, as its two NHL teams' success seem to mirror what the economy and politics of the province have done. There's a chapter on how the composition of National Hockey League rosters changed starting with the expansion of the NHL in 1967 and the existence of the World Hockey Association in the 1970s. Finally, there's the matter of junior hockey and how it used cheap labor and monopoly status to become a much bigger financial enterprise. 

This is all mixed together with the culture and politics of Canada at the time. The first two chapters obviously share some information because they are intertwined. The Canadiens have been a symbol of French Canada since the 1940s or so; Ken Dryden once pointed out that Maurice "Rocket" Richard was the first player of that group to become a super star and thus created a lot of pride in the community. The French speakers always have been in the minority in Canada, and the efforts by those people to have their voices heard have been a subplot in Canadian politics from time to time for a few decades. The Canadiens went on to put together one of the greatest dynasty in sports in the years after World War II. They were helped by a system that allowed them to mine the best players Quebec had to offer. But when the universal draft was phased in during the 1960s, that pipeline eventually dried up. It was somewhat inevitable at that point that the Canadiens would become just another team at some point, and they essentially have been exactly that since 1980 or so. Longley also reveals how French-Canadian players have found more or a home in the United States than they do in other parts of Canada. 

The chapter on junior hockey in Canada might be the most infuriating. Way back when, NHL teams used to sponsor junior teams as a way to tie up future talent. But those sponsorships died off once the league went past six teams. But junior leagues now have a draft of talented 15-year-olds, forcing players to move hundreds of miles in some cases to play hockey at that level. What's more, they aren't really paid anything at all, even though Longley's research indicates that if they received half of the team's revenues (as NHL teams must give to players as part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement), they'd earn something like $100,000 each. As a group, it sure sounds as if the junior players need the equivalent of Marvin Miller to level the playing field. If college athletes can start getting paid indirectly, there must be room for changing the system in junior hockey.

And every so often, the book drops a very surprising bit of information. For example, Longley reveals that there were more Canadian-born players in the NHL in 1970 than there are today ... even though there were either 12 or 14 teams (depending on what time of the year you count) in the NHL then, and 32 now. 

Admittedly, this is not for every taste - even among sports readers. The writing leans to the academic rather than the popular style as you'd expect. There's a little duplication of facts along the way. The descriptions of regional politics in a particular era in Canada, while no doubt necessary, may leave some a little cold.

Still, "A Whole Other Game" makes some conclusions that are worthwhile and yet don't pop up in the morning newspaper. Longley is after bigger points, and he makes them quite well. Those looking for some wider perspective on hockey and Canada will find plenty of ponder here.

Four stars

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Review: Boston Ball (2023)

By Clayton Trutor

Here's a bit of a history lesson about college basketball in the Northeast, a necessary ingredient before diving into Clayton Trutor's book, "Boston Ball."

It starts with the fact that college sports there were relatively decentralized in that part of the country until relatively recently. 

In much of the country, the big state schools dominated the landscape. There are other colleges besides those universities in Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Colorado, for example, but the big ones attract all of the attention - particularly in sports. Who played in the championship game in college football in January, 2024? Michigan and Washington, two institutions that fit the description nicely. 

But that's not true in the Northeast. The states are smaller up there, and there is a tradition of private schools. Penn State and Connecticut are the exceptions to that, although Rutgers is trying hard to move into that territory in New Jersey. The big state school in New York probably is the University at Buffalo, at least in football and basketball. 

Just as an example, here are some teams that played Syracuse in men's basketball in 1976-77: Colgate, Boston College, Canisius, Penn State, Cornell, Fordham, American, Buffalo, St. John's, Temple, Pittsburgh, Northeastern, West Virginia, St. Bonaventure and Niagara. Some of those teams have been quite good in the past decade or two, but some haven't.

That all changed in 1979. The Big East Conference was formed in an attempt to link the region's top basketball programs. The idea was to play good games in big arenas before big crowds .... that, oh by the way, was ready-made for television. It worked. 

But while the Big East proved its point relatively quickly, it took some time for everything else to settle down. There were still some good teams floating around in the East in late 1970s and most of the 1980s. While the Big East was starting to grab the best players, there was enough flux in the rest of the sport to make winning more than possible - if you had the right coach to collect the talent overlooked by the Big Shots.

As it turned out, the city of Boston collected three of those coaches in the same era. Jim Calhoun landed at Northeastern, Rick Pitino went from a Syracuse assistant's job to head coach at Boston University, and Gary Williams landed at Boston College - one of the Big East schools, but not a powerhouse at the time. The three were considered up and coming coaches, but few could have predicted that all of them would land in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

But that's what they did. Trutor tells their story in great detail in this book.

The author gets good marks for researching the subject. He interviewed two of the three coaches that play the major roles of the story, and spoke with many others from that era. Take it from someone who covered Canisius and Niagara basketball during the early 1980s - that was pretty good basketball back then, and coaches like Calhoun and Boston's Mike Jarvis were always interesting in interviews. And since the level of play was more or less the Big East and Everyone Else, it was relatively easy to find some good players who had been overlooked. It was good fun to read some of the names mentioned here, even if they weren't future NBA players. 

But this comes with some drawbacks. Trutor gives a great deal of detail to games and names from about 40 years or so ago. That's going to have trouble finding an audience, particularly since a relatively small audience followed the teams and their players in that era. Meanwhile, the author organizes the book in a slightly odd way. We ping-pong from Calhoun to Pitino to Williams through the first 15 chapters. They don't cover the same time period, and their stories only occasionally overlap. Sometimes it's easy to get confused with the time line of a particular story.

For those who do remember those days in the late 1970s and in the 1980s in college basketball fondly, this will strike a nice chord. But it's easy to wonder if a book concentrating more on the three coaches might have worked a little better at this point.

Three stars

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