Review: American Coach (2025)

By Ivan Maisel

By most standards, Frank Leahy might be the most underrated college football coach in history. 

This is someone who compiled a record 107-13-9 as a head coach at Boston College and Notre Dame. If you are wondering, that was the second-best career record when Leahy left coaching, and it's still the second-best career record today - more than 70 years later. He's only behind Knute Rockne, one of the legends of the game despite coaching what must have been an almost completely different sport in the 1920s. 

Leahy played on two national championship teams at Notre Dame under Rochne, and won four more mythical national titles as a head coach at South Bend. (Kids, there was no such thing as a playoff back then. They took a survey to determine the best team in the country, and everyone thought it was a little silly back then too.)

Yet the college football fans of today may know a little about Rockne, thanks in part to a movie with a co-star by the name of Ronald Reagan. ("Win one for the Gipper.") But Leahy's reputation never came close to Rockne's as the years went by. What happened?

Ivan Maisel wanted to know that too. He's one of the veterans of covering college football, and if he didn't know much about Leahy, well, few others did too. So he dove into the subject, and the result is the book "American Coach" - which will fill you smartly in on all of the details. 

For starters, Leahy came out of the Midwest to play football at Notre Dame. He wasn't the best athlete on the team, and he certainly wasn't the biggest. But Leavy worked the hardest and probably studied the game the most. It didn't take long for him to figure out that coaching was the next logical step in his career. Sure enough, he bounced around at three schools during the 1930s, finally landing at Boston College. After two years as an assistant, Leahy moved up to be the head coach of the Eagles. Three he did something remarkable: he won. How about a record of 20-2, in a place that's not exactly the cradle of coaches? 

It caught everyone's attention, including the administration at Notre Dame. There Elmer Layden was doing well as the football coach (47-13-3), but not Rockne-level well. He jumped to become the head of the National Football League, and Leahy was an obvious candidate as a replacement. After going 24-3-3 in the next three years - including a national title - World War II interrupted things and Leahy headed for the Armed Forces.  After the War, he came back and promptly won three national titles in the next four years. High standards were set.

But as Maisel nicely points out, the rules sort of changed in the Fifties. Notre Dame had a boatload of talent before that, as many returning veterans turned up on the South Bend campus after serving their country. The supply eventually ran out by ND standards, and administrators there didn't seem too comfortable with the image of the university being something of a football factory. Leahy did the best he could and still won plenty of games. But Notre Dame wasn't Notre Dame.  

There were other issues going on as well. Leahy was such a driven personality that he started having health problems - and not insignificant ones. . His family took a decided back seat to football in the fall. There's a great story about how some of his eight children and some neighborhood kids started to play a pickup game in the front yard one day. Frank went out to join the kids ... and soon ordered them to start drills. The other kids soon asked to play somewhere else. 

More importantly, Maisel reports that a faked injury scheme that was used when the Fighting Irish were out of timeouts didn't sit well with some of the school leaders. Leahy wasn't exactly fired, but he was given a little push out the door. 

And his coaching career stopped right there. There were flirtations with other colleges and the pro ranks, but nothing came together.  Leahy's health continued to be a problem, and his skills in leading football players didn't translate at all into the business world - where he was taken to the cleaners regularly. Leahy died of heart failure in 1973. He was only 64.

Leahy's legacy was complicated even before he died. Maisel points out that the coach didn't get along with that many of his peers. Perhaps that played a big role in the way Leahy was passed over for several years before his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. 

The sport of college football has gone through a variety of waves over the years, as changes seem to alter everything every so often. That has involved everything from rules changes to conference alignment to monetary matters. We're going through a big one now, as athletes now receive direct payments and conference lineups seem to change by the week.  

Leahy proved to be a perfect match for a particular place and time in college football, but never had the chance to adapt and thus failed to be one of those coaches who seem to last forever. That makes him a good person to study for those interested in the game's history. What went right, and what went wrong?

"American Coach" may have trouble drawing in readers who aren't too interested in someone who was coaching more than 75 years ago. But Maisel's rich portrait works nicely in explaining what went right and what went wrong. Fans of sports history should find this worth their time.

Four stars

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Review: The Uncommon Life of Danny O'Connell (2024)

By Steve Wiegand

Fate played a bit of a role in how "The Uncommon Life of Danny O'Connell" became a book to be reviewed here. 

I was at a wedding this summer when it came up in conversation that an acquaintance of mine, Maureen Hurley, had a father who spent more than a decade playing major league baseball.  Not only was that a surprise, but the news that a book had been written about his baseball life in 2024 also came up. How did I not hear about this before? 

It was a bit odd to hear about Hurley's family baseball connection. She had worked for many years for Rich Products, which is the owner of the Buffalo Bisons minor league baseball team. (Full disclosure: I work for the Bisons now at some home games.) But her tie to the majors isn't well known in Buffalo. 

I quickly ordered the book the next day, and buzzed through it relatively quickly. I'm happy to report that O'Connell's baseball life is an interesting one and worth a read.

The premise of the book is a little odd. Author Steve Wiegand was a baseball card collector as a child many years ago, and wanted to pay tribute to someone from that era who wasn't a star. Out of several hundred players portrayed in a given year on cardboard, most of them generally are forgotten rather quickly. In terms of the worth of a particular card, such players are lumped together under the title of "commons" for the same price per card - as if anyone who was/is good enough to play in the majors can be considered "common" in terms of athletic ability. You have to be mighty good to play one game at that level. (The baseball card business receives a slightly superficial review along the way here.)

O'Connell played in 1,143 games in the majors, which is impressive by almost any standard. The problem was that often he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Danny never played in an All-Star Game, and never reached the World Series - two of the best outlets for notoriety.

He became a pro baseball player with the Dodgers early in 1946 after high school. Not only did he have to compete with people his own age, but he quickly noticed how many young men were flooding back to the United States after World War II - all looking to get back on the baseball path to success. Still, Danny worked his way up the ladder and reached Brooklyn in 1949, even if he wasn't deemed ready to play in a big-league game that autumn. But soon O'Connell was dealt to Pittsburgh, the Colorado Rockies of that era. While the Pirates weren't contenders, the change of venue gave him a big opportunity - and he capitalized on it. 

O'Connell played enough with the Pirates in 1950 to be a third-place finisher in voting for the Rookie of the Year. Then it was off to the armed forces for a couple of years before returning to Pittsburgh in 1953, where he more or less picked up where he led off. O'Connell was useful, but not a star. Still, a guy like that could be handy, and the Milwaukee Braves gave up six (!) players to acquire him in the offseason. 

The Braves were making progress, but O'Connell often took one step forward and two steps back there. Part of the problem was that his best position was third base, and he wasn't going to beat Eddie Mathews out of that job. Danny headed to second base with mixed results over the course of the next three-plus seasons. Meanwhile, the Braves had developed into a very good team, and they could afford to try to win immediately. Milwaukee traded for future Hall of Famer Red Schoendienst to become the regular second baseman, and O'Connell was off to New York to play for the Giants. 

At least Danny was near his boyhood home for a few months ... before the team moved all the way to San Francisco in 1958. Opportunities for O'Connell were few and far between there, as his playing time slowly disappeared over the course of two years. He spent 1960 in the minors, and in most years he probably would have been done with big league ball at that point. But expansion came to the sport in 1961, and Washington and Los Angeles were looking for warm bodies in their inaugural seasons. O'Connell scratched out two more seasons in the big leagues before retiring. He eventually went into private business, and died in an auto accident in 1969.

What's immediately striking is that a player such as O'Connell leaves footprints behind, which is one of the fun parts about baseball. The most shocking fact in the book is that when the Pirates were shopping O'Connell to the Braves, they almost received a prospect named Henry Aaron straight up for Danny. Supposedly, the cash-poor Pittsburgh team wanted some money to go with Aaron, and the Braves drew the line there. There's no attribution listed for that story, but it certainly would qualify as a great "what if?" in baseball history. O'Connell also scored the first run in the history of the San Francisco Giants, and his infield partner in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1948 was Rocky Bridges - who was the Buffalo Bisons' manager in 1988.

What Wiegand doesn't come out and say explicitly is that O'Connell could have been the poster boy for the type of undervalued player that was described in the book and movie, "Moneyball." Danny was a decent hitter but drew plenty of walks and even reached base via a hit by pitch quite a bit. He seemed to be a solid enough fielder, particularly at third base when he was allowed to play there. 

However, it probably was unreasonable to expect the baseball experts of the 1950s to be able to recognize the "invisible" skills of someone like O'Connell. One of this book's charms is how often a player's intangibles were used at the time in evaluating players, such as making heads-up plays and having a good attitude. O'Connell clearly would have done better today than in the 1950s. 

Wiegand also tells the story of O'Connell's personal life, and supplies plenty of details and context. Baseball players made a decent living in the 1950s, but it wasn't an easy life. Their families either had to move to a new town when a trade came up, or they set up a base camp in one place and saw Daddy in person infrequently in the summer. The author has some fun with the changes in the game along the way, which is nice. 

There are plenty of books out there about baseball in the 1950s, but many of them are about the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers. "The Uncommon Life of Danny O'Connell" puts some perspective on how the other half lived in those days.  

Four stars

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Review: Madden & Summerall (2025)

By Rich Podolsky

We probably could have seen this coming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars

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Review: Skipper (2025)

By Scott Miller

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four stars

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Review: Turf Wars (2025)

By DeMaurice Smith

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

Less than a chapter, actually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars

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Review: Blood & Hate (2025)

By Dave Wedge 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four stars

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Review: Make Me Commissioner (2025)

By Jane Leavy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four stars

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Review: The Playing Lesson (2025)

By Michael Bamberger

Michael Bamberger has the bug. The golfing bug, that is. 

He's always enjoyed all of the various parts of the sometimes addictive game, which doesn't put him in a particularly small club. But Bamberger had something else going for him. He could write - and that eventually landed him a job at Sports Illustrated magazine. That led to several good golf books, including one called "Men in Green" - profiles of golf's greatest generation. If you couldn't be one of the best players in the world, playing the best golf courses in the world, well, hanging around people who are wasn't a bad substitute. 

What's more, there would be the odd fringe benefit - like personally playing some interesting courses. How many people take "business trips" in which carrying golf clubs along is part of the deal?

Bamberger now is in his mid-60s, and is a writer for Golf.com. Last year, he decided to take a look at golf in a variety of different ways. From there, Bamberger was off on a journey through the golfing world - almost literally. He takes the reader along for the pleasant ride in "The Playing Lesson."

The supposed goal - "excuse" might be a better word - for the author was to experience golf in a variety of new ways. Therefore, Bamberger volunteered to work at a tournament. He was a caddie at another. Michael took part in several pro-ams on the men's and women's tours at various levels. He talked to a variety of people along the way, including instructors and equipment pros.

On one level, this gives Bamberger a chance to offer opinions on the golf scene, past and present. It's a complicated situation at the moment, with the LIV and PGA Tours fighting for attention, power and money (those three items go together). The viewpoints are offered in no particular order, along the lines of a typical long conversation with someone. 

On the other hand, this is a chance to feed a golfer's universal quest: play better. So Bamberger is always on the lookout for tips on improving his game from anyone who will stop to think about it. Who couldn't use a little advice on putting from Brad Faxon, one of the best n the golf business among pros in that particular aspect of golf? 

It's all goes down quite smoothly, like a fast round of golf on a perfect summer day. Bamberger is good company, with a lifetime of memories to draw from. There are only a couple of occasions when the story bogs down a little bit. One is a good-sized discussion on equipment specifications, which is a little dry for most. The ending is something of a tribute to his love of golf and to those who helped develop it in his life, which some might find a little syrupy.

The people who published "The Playing Lesson" obviously aren't fools. They put it in the stores shortly before Father's Day - and no doubt it was turned into a gift many times around the country. The recipients no doubt offered a big smile in return for the present, and promised to start reading it soon ... right after finishing 18 holes. (Take it from a guy whose father fit that description well.) 

If you fit into the world in which golf plays a big part of your life, then it will be as good as a birdie on a tough par-4. 

Four stars

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Review: Beyond Fast (2025)

By Sean Brosnan with Chris Lear and Andrew Grief

Welcome to the world of cross-country running. It's familiar, yet different. 

Most of us are familiar with running in competition, mostly in the form of events on a track (hence, track and field). A group of runners line up together, go a particular distance, and find out which one is the fastest. Conditions usually are ideal for running in terms of elevation, with flat surfaces and no elevation.

Cross country is a different animal. It comes from a childhood game in England in the middle of the 19th century, as kids would run through the countryside chasing their friends. Conditions in the current incarnation of the sport are often not ideal, since hills are expected and surfaces can vary. I once saw a 5-kilometer race held in a park that had a layer of snow on the grass in a sub-freezing temperature, which meant it didn't take much for the course to become a sea of mud. Guys turned up at the finish line crying. You wouldn't believe how many shoes got left behind on turns.

Cross-country events usually are staged in the fall while their track counterparts go in the spring. There are no formal NCAA championships in XC, the usual abbreviation. It's not in the Olympics, either. Cross country isn't associated with big crowds;  usually it's family, friends, and runners past and present watching.

Sean Brosnan takes us into the world of high school cross country in his book, "Beyond Fast." It's the story of how, in automotive terms, he took a team from 0 to 100 almost overnight. 

Brosnan had more or less wandered through life until he arrived at Newbury Park High School in 2016. He had been a very good runner, but not quite good enough to challenge for national fame and glory. Brosnan loved running through, and he bounced around the country looking for information and the chance to interact with the best in the business. Eventually, he landed at a high school that had been decidedly mediocre. It hadn't reached the state finals in California cross country in about a quarter of a century. 

He promised he'd change all that right from Day One, and then went about the business of doing it. There was plenty of work involved, as there always is with running. But the athletes bought in, and - sure enough - some success followed. Suddenly it was cool to be a runner, and Newbury Park got better and better. Good runners became relatively great runners, and the rest of the group was inspired to try to keep up as best as it could. One of those runners was an Olympian in 2024, and the team won three straight unofficial high school national championships - breaking records for scholastic athletes along the way. Brosnan does something of a play-by-play about how it all happened. 

The book generates one key thought along the way. Go to any area in the country, and you'll find a school and a program that is something of a dynasty in something. There's a good coach behind it in most cases, but it's tough to know how much credit to give him or her. After all, the athletes are the ones doing the work. Almost certainly, success breeds success in high school sports. It's cool to be on a state champion, and the younger kids who are top athletes might pick that sport over a less successful one.

From there, Brosnan obviously needed a little help for his methods to succeed. The proper attitude and support from parents and athletes are necessary. When Brosnan decided to take his team to a higher elevation for training during four weeks of summer vacation, the runners had to be willing to do it and their parents had to be on board financially (as well willing to do some driving to see their kids every so often). It sounds like Newbury Park is in a reasonably wealthy area, and that must have helped. But some family vacations and summer jobs might have been sacrificed. This might have been a perfect spot for Brosnan to try out his methods. The coach pounded the message that his runners could be great if they did the work, and many wound up that way by any standard.

Along the way in those championship years, Brosnan had to deal with Covid-19 for a couple of them. Even in a sport involving somewhat solitary runners, the coach's drive for excellence may have bent (but not broken) the rules just a little bit. He certainly fought for his athletes with administrators and sanctioning groups along the way.

Brosnan teamed up with Chris Lear and Andrew Grief for the writing of this book. It's a straight-forward account of the rise of the Newbury Park program and of his life, which is far from conventional. Some of the runners themselves even have the chance to express their stories along the way, which is a nice touch. 

The story that's printed ends in 2022, when Brosnan decided to leave high school coaching to take a similar job at UCLA. But this book is coming out in 2025, so what happened in the meantime? Brosnan only lasted a year coaching the Bruins' distance runners before UCLA fired him. He has said he believes he was fired because there were allegations that he tampered with runners from other schools before they entered the transfer portal. It's tough to tell about what happened there; this isn't the Alabama football program when it comes to media scrutiny. There's no sign that Brosnan has landed a full-time coaching job in the two years since his departure from Westwood. That's all a little disquieting from a distance.    

"Beyond Fast" ought to interest those who have a strong connection with cross country, particularly at the high school level. It's always good to read about how championship teams come together. More casual readers, though, might get a little bogged down at the description of training schedules and races. In other words, the book falls into a very cozy niche without room for most. 

Three stars

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Book Review: Baddest Man (2025)

By Mark Kriegel

You wouldn't expect a biography of Mike Tyson to be boring. 

But put it in the hands of a skilled reporter and writer like Mark Kriegel, and you truly have something special. 

That's a short description of "Baddest Man," which in itself is a shortened version of the phrase "The Baddest Man on the Planet" - one of Tyson's nicknames during the course of his career.  Such a description used to come automatically when someone was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, which Tyson was back in the day. An old-fashioned way of saying it was "He can lick any man in the house." 

These days, no one has been able to say that without a possible argument. There are three or four heavyweight boxing champions these days, and none of them at a given moment can be identified by most sports fans. The greed that caused boxing officials to split up the title into parts in an attempt to have more title fights caught up with the sport quickly. 

Therefore, it's a little easy to become nostalgic about Mike Tyson, although the accompanying noise that came with his years in the spotlight. were overwhelming for all concerned at times. Especially Tyson. He had quite a run, keeping the public's attention from 1985 until 2005 even as parts of his life were crumbling. 

Tyson came out of Brooklyn with a father that dropped out of sight pretty quickly, and with a mother who was willing to do almost anything to keep the family together in some form or another - even if meant a spiral downward in their living conditions. Mike was much more interested in an education from the streets than he was from the schools. Tyson was said to be arrested 38 times by the age of 13. The fact that he was built like a fire hydrant made it easy in some ways to take liberties with others, and he ended in the government system that tries (and often fails) to straighten out the lives of teens.

An unhappy life and a young death usually is the end product of such a combination, but Tyson received an unexpected lifeline in the form of an invitation to spend time with legendary boxing manager Cus D'Amato in upstate New York. D'Amato had heard that Tyson had some boxing ability, and brought him into his home. 

There Tyson fine-tuned his boxing skills, with D'Amato telling anyone that would listen that Mike was destined to be a great champion. Once he got in the ring for formal matches, people started to understand D'Amato's enthusiasm. This was someone who could clobber almost anyone who was matched up with him. Certainly he had a chance to rank with the great sluggers in heavyweight history, like George Foreman and Sonny Liston. Those are the types of fighters who generate buzz, which leads to ticket sales, which leads to dollars floating around. 

This being boxing, of course, people flocked to take advantage of that situation. The history of the financial side of the sport is one where others try to take money away from those who actually earn it, while the fighters themselves usually aren't financially sophisticated enough to fend them off. Tyson made plenty of money ... but not as much as he should have earned. The in-fighting in that sense was tougher for Tyson than it was in the ring itself. He won three championship belts. The book comes to an end just as the champ needs about 90 seconds to knock out Michael Spinks - the only legitimate threat that was left to him. As we know now, Tyson had few new worlds to conquer, and he let the ones he had get away eventually.   

The research here is extraordinary. There are several details in Tyson's life that come out here, and the reader must ask the question, "How did Kriegel find that out?" He tracked down almost everyone, and also has a variety of other sources available - such as Tyson's own volumes of his autobiography. The authenticity is present throughout the book.

The Mike Tyson we meet here has some contradictions built into his mind. At times he's a bully and a narcissist, but at other times he capable of loyalty and kindness. Tyson obviously knew he missed out on a more normal childhood, and it sounds like he was longing for one that era. It's also clear that Tyson was not unintelligent but simply uneducated. It would be easy to wonder what might have happened to him had he grown up in better circumstances. 

Along those lines, Kriegel starts his book with something of a final chapter. Mike is in the present day, playing tennis dad while watching a daughter practice. It couldn't be more "normal." But who could have predicted it?

Kriegel wrote superb biographies of Joe Namath, Ray Mancini and Pete Maravich. He told a former coworker of his and mine that he enjoyed probing the father-son relationship in his books. It wasn't present in Tyson's life, so "Baddest Man" is a slight change of direction for the author. Even so, this book might be even better than his other three works. 

Five stars

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Review: Big Loosh (2025)

By Jim Leeke

Let's start this review of "Big Loosh: The Unruly Life of Ron Luciano" with a story.

When Luciano was pushing one of his many books, he even took a half-hour to appear on my sports talk show back in the day. I knew that Ron had umpired in Buffalo when the Bisons were playing in War Memorial Stadium in the International League back in the 1960s. I asked if he had any particular memories of those days. 

As a matter of fact, he did. It seemed that that was a particularly loud woman who sat behind home plate back then every night. She seemed to think it was her job to criticize the umpires, no matter what happened in the game. "That pitch was outside!" "He was safe!" "You guys are terrible." And on and on it went. 

Ron and his crew grew tired of it all. Then they received a tip that the woman was a breakfast waitress at a suburban restaurant. So the three umpires got up early one morning and visited the restaurant, and they gave it to her with all sorts of orders. "These pancakes are cold." "I need more coffee." "How did you burn the toast so badly." "Where's the bill?" And so on. Finally, the woman came over to their table. "Guys, if you leave this place right now, I promise that I will never yell at you at a game again."

They left, and she kept her word. In fact, she became the umpires' best friend. She always said hello before the game, and would bring them a freshly baked pie to start the homestand. 

The rest of the 30-minute show was fun too. But that's a side of Luciano that doesn't really turn up in "Big Loosh." It's a straight biography about a surprisingly complicated man. 

If you were a baseball fan, it was tough to avoid Luciano during the 1970s and 1980s. He seemed like an unlikely choice to be a celebrity umpire. Ron came out of the Binghamton area as a young man large enough to receive a scholarship as a lineman on the football team at Syracuse University. Injuries were a problem there, but he was still good enough to be drafted by the Detroit Lions. But injuries were an issue there too, and he bounced through Minnesota before landing with the Buffalo Bills for two games in the American Football League. Yup, more injuries. Luciano's pro career was over before it started. 

What next? He ended up at umpire school, and he happened to be good at it. Who is going to argue with a man big enough to play defensive tackle in pro football? Luciano was good enough to work some of the game's Crown Jewels, like the All-Star Game and the playoffs. Yes, he didn't get along well with Baltimore manager Earl Weaver, but then again no umpire did. Luciano also showed a little flair with his work, sometimes using a pistol-shooting gesture to call a runner out instead of the traditional thumb going up. The fans seemed to like it, and Ron liked the attention - although baseball still had a tradition-bound reputation at that point, and forced separation seemed likely.

NBC called at just the right time, and Luciano signed up for work as the analyst for backup "Game of the Week" on Saturdays - in the days when only two regular-season games were nationally televised per week. The backup game was the broadcast that went into blacked-out markets, or was used during rain delays with the primary game. (Kids, ask your parents for a further explanation of all that if necessary.) The relationship lasted a short time; as he put it, by the time he got done at NBC, it was behind Atari in the ratings. From there, Luciano moved into the unlikely position of author. He was always naturally funny, and he knew how to tell a story, so "The Umpire Strikes Back" became a hit. There were four more books along those lines. 

But the literary gravy train eventually ended, and Luciano became a bit lost. His sporting goods store back home rose and fell along the way, and after a while he started receiving treatments for depression. Luciano committed suicide in 1995. 

In one sense, a straight-forward look at Luciano's life is a pretty good idea. Ron did have trouble keeping his facts straight, particularly when he was headed toward a punchline. Facts could be exaggerated beyond recognition. No, Luciano didn't eject Weaver every time they were in the same ballpark, although the possibility always seemed to be lurking in the background. It's also nice to see that Luciano really was a good umpire, particularly when he first arrived at the majors before fame started to turn his head a little. 

There's not much insight into what happened at the end, but Luciano was well out of the public eye at that point and probably wasn't giving too many clues to what he was thinking. But as co-author David Fisher told Leeke, "He didn't look or ask for any help because he didn't want to bother people." 

"Big Loosh" - a nickname picked up as a youth for obvious reasons - moves right along, a short book that tells the truth about this interesting man. That's fine. It's just that much of the fun came out of the story, and that guy that told the story about the waitress in Buffalo enjoyed a good laugh. It's easy to wish that side had come out a bit more.

Three stars

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Review: Rory Land (2025)

By Timothy M. Gay

It's difficult to read "Rory Land" and not think about how much the book would have changed had he written it a few months later ... or a few years later.

Timothy M. Gay obviously put a lot of effort in this biography of Rory McIlroy, one of the world's best and most famous golfers. The story line must have seemed set when it was finished, oh, probably late last year. Rory was the comet who blossomed into a superstar at an early age, only to develop the habit of not winning major championship soon after that. 

Then in April, McIlroy finally went out and slayed that dragon. He won the Masters title in slightly messy but a typically exciting way. The arc of the story has been altered, and we don't know where it's headed. 

It's easy to wonder, then, what the reaction of Gay might have been when McIlroy sank that last putt to win the playoff in Augusta. Certainly he couldn't have been upset that the subject of the soon-to-be-published biography was a topic of conversation around the golfing world for days, growing the fan base of the Northern Ireland native in the process. On the other hand, McIlroy is no longer the sympathetic equivalent of Sisyphus, the Greek mythology figure doomed to push a rock up a hill only to have it fall back down the slope.

McIlroy's golf career seems to have entered a new phase. Now he's one of the handful of golfers who have won the career Grand Slam - victories in the four major championships. It will be fascinating to see how McIlroy reacts to that. Free from the constant pressure of expectations, he may start winning majors with regularity through the peak of his playing days (at 36 as of this writing, he has some prime years left). On the other hand, he could relax a bit with the dragon slayed, even if he doesn't realize it at the time. It will be fascinating to watch.

Marketing matters aside, most of the book wouldn't be changed if it had been written this morning - so don't let that stop you if you're interested in McIlroy. He has had an uncommon life, with plenty of influencing factors ... starting with his birthplace.

McIlroy hails from Northern Ireland, born to a Catholic family in a mostly Protestant region. You probably know about the Troubles that took part in the world for many years. Rory's family tree has some difficult twists and turns, as Gay discovered, because of all that. But the situation has settled down a bit in the last 25 years ago. McIlroy never chose to make religion a big part of her life. He was too busy worrying about getting a tee time later in the week. If anything, the golfer became a unifying factor for both sides of the divide in that area. 

McIlroy was playing golf by age three, and dreaming at age seven of becoming a pro golfer someday. Upon reaching double digits, it was obvious that McIlroy was something of a prodigy and had a chance to be something special. His working class parents had to sacrifice a great deal to support their son, as they worked extra jobs and spent little on themselves. In his teens Rory was headed to the United States every so often to find better competition. 

McIlroy was a young man in a hurry by that point, and he wasn't too interested in books unless they were written by Nicklaus and Hogan. Rory left school and was playing in top events by the age of 16. He turned pro at 18 in 2007, and didn't need much time to make an impact. In 2009, Rory bought his parents a house and told them they'd never have to work another day in their lives. That promise certainly has been kept. 

McIlroy won four majors between 2011 and 2014 inclusive, and seemed to have a chance to be one of the all-time greats. Along the way, he's been very visible in the public eye, whether it's through endorsements or relationships (the tabloid press, you know). The 10-year drought changed the script a bit. He's still a great player, but perhaps not as good we thought he might be. McIlroy has become a thoughtful, interesting personality along the way, and it's easy to wonder what he might be like if taken the more traditional route of finishing high school and enrolling in college, But, as we know now, there's still some time to add to his life story.

Gay starts off a little slowly, trying to capture the whirl around McIlroy's life in recent years. The now-veteran has been involved in the "fight" between the PGA Tour in America and the Saudi's LIV Tour - all while trying to win a major. And there are a lot of golf shots described here, especially in describing the wins and near-misses. But for the most part, the author settles in nicely to presenting the story, aided by the occasional use of some hilarious footnotes. Gay - who has a couple of other good sports books to his credit - put in the hours of research to make this work, and it shows.

"Rory Lane" fills the assignment of showing what the first act of Rory McIlroy's life has been like. The book no doubt will increase your interest in following along as he takes it into the second act.

Four stars

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Review: When the Game Was War (2023)

By Rich Cohen

Rich Cohen deserves a lot of credit for his range. You just never know what book he might come up with next.

Cohen has written for a wide variety of publications - from the Wall Street Journal to the New Yorker to Rolling Stone.  Rich was the co-creator of an HBO series. His books including looks at the Rolling Stones and America's "banana king." Even the sports books are diverse, although it's fair to say they have a Chicago-bias in spots. Cohen has books about the Bears and Cubs to his credit. 

So what was he doing during the Pandemic? Thinking about basketball. In particular, the 1987-88 NBA season. You might remember that one if you are a basketball fan. There were four very good teams in that point in history, and all were in different stages of a hoop lifespan. The Boston Celtics still could be good, but they were getting old. The Los Angeles Lakers were a bit younger, but still had plenty in the tank for the moment. The Detroit Pistons were coming up from below, with a deep bench and a rough-and-tough style that left opponents bruised. The Chicago Bulls had Michael Jordan, but hadn't quite figured out how to reach the next level. 

Cohen admits at the very start of the book that Game Six of the NBA Finals turned him into a basketball fanatic. With Covid-forced time on his hands, he decided to write a book on that '87-88 season called "When the Game Was War."  The idea was to show that that year of basketball was the best in the NBA's history. That's a very difficult argument to win, but Cohen presents his best arguments here ... and brings enthsiasm with him.

It's no coincidence that the best teams had many of the best players; that's the way it often works in sports. The Lakers started with Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and that doesn't account for fellow Hall of Famer James Worthy. The Celtics offered Larry Bird along with Robert Parish, Kevin McHale and Dennis Johnson. Detroit was led by Isiah Thomas, followed by Joe Dumars and Adrian Dantley with a bench that included Dennis Rodman. Chicago had Michael Jordan, enough said, with Scottie Pippin slowly learning how to play Robin to Jordan's Batman. 

Cohen centers on a few regular-season games, but that only serves a launching point for background information on the players and teams. He gets plenty of points for the amount of information he covers, including some new items that usually come up with the passing of time. So the story moves right along into the playoffs, where fans who matched Cohen's intensity in those days probably can recite the details of the key contests without much effort. 

The Celtics lost their chance to stay relevant in the title picture when Len Bias died in 1986. The Bulls didn't have the right pieces yet, but they figured to be a handful if they did. The Pistons probably were the best team, but sometimes the best team didn't always win. And the Lakers had enough know-how and a break or two at the end of games to emerge on top. 

Was it the best year ever? Sometimes it seemed like Cohen forces the argument a little bit, overstating the ability of some players and teams at certain points. For example, the Atlanta Hawks are given a great deal of respect for starting the season with a division lead over Detroit and Chicago. Even at 25-9, it's hard to say anyone thought the Hawks would be there when it mattered in the spring. 

Cohen also has a second cause on the side. He thinks Isiah Thomas has been badly underrated for what he did in his career. Thomas's reputation took some hits during the course of his career, particularly in an incident involving Larry Bird in the playoffs. He and Magic Johnson were in each other's way in this particular season too, and their friendship suffered. Johnson was always going to win that popularity contest. Cohen's argument probably isn't air-tight, but it's an interesting discussion. Thomas' status is another portion of a book that shows the author trying to make a case along the way. I'm a little of the "show me, don't tell me" school on such matters, but I'm willing to listen.

"When the Game Was War" is book that's filled with research, some of it through direct interviews and some of it through other sources. It reads quite quickly. You may not be convinced about the validity of Cohen's two points, but if you remember this era you'll find it to be quite an entertaining book.

Four stars

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Review: Movies With Balls (2024)

By Kyle Bandujo and Rick Bryson

Here's a starting point that's relatively indisputable: Most sports fans like sports movies. Admittedly, there's nothing like real-life drama that can't be made up by any screenwriter. But such films can be a good reminder of why we love sports - the last-second finish, the plucky underdog triumph, the unlikely relationship, and so on. 

Every so often, someone seems to come up with a way to group such movies together in a book. That brings us to "Movies With Balls," a publication from Kyle Bandujo and Rick Bryson.

This one has a particularly interesting genesis story. The two authors wondered during a dull moment what the ticket stubs from some of the great moments in sports movies might look like. In other words, they doodled with tickets from "The Natural," "Bad News Bears," "The Replacements," "Rocky IV," etc. To do that, they looked at comparable events from the time period and went to work. 

They did a lot of work too. There are 26 main movies covered here, plus 11 "second stringers" that missed the cut and only received a paragraph and ticket stub at the end. The authors threw out some of the other motions pictures that could be candidates, such as "Miracle" or "Rudy." Their theory was that since those films are based on real events, they have real ticket stubs and not fake ones. There are a variety of breakdowns of the individual movies included here. That includes a description of the movie itself, the big game/event that climaxes the film, an MVP, an analysis of a key character, some graphics of key plays, a post-movie news conference, and some other notes. 

You'd have to say Bandujo and Bryson really, really, really know these movies to give them this much thought. Lives must have been rearranged on short notice when a network aired "Days of Thunder." What's more, they obviously had a lot of fun with the assignment, and some of the writing makes the reader (meaning me, I guess) laugh out loud.

On the other hand, your level of interest may not match the authors' level. Most sports fans have their favorite movies that forces them to stop what they are doing when channel surfing. They might even have a DVD/VHS copy of a big favorite somewhere in the house. Those particular chapters will come across as interesting and well done.

But if, in the reader's opinion, the movie was watched once and forgotten about, then the level of interest won't match the amount of detail in the book. In my case, that would be such movies as "Kingpin," "The Karate Kid" and "Creed" - worth watching, certainly, but maybe not memorizing. Others might be missed altogether. In such cases, the reader doesn't really know what's going on ... and starts flipping pages quickly. If you've see such movies as "She's the Man" and "Hot Rod," you are unquestionably a major expert in this field.   

Therefore, "Movies with Balls" is something of an accordion when it comes to interest. There are those who will enjoy every page as it hits the sweet spot, and the book will stay near the television set indefinitely for them. ("Look, 'Teen Wolf' and its group of adults trying to look like high school students are on TBS!") Certainly some of the public reviews have been enthusiastic. Others who will skim through it in little time at all. So take a look. If this sounds like it fits your niche, it might be worth your time.

Three stars

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Review: All Roads Home (2024)

By Bryan Trottier with Stephen Brunt

The New York Islanders had one of the great dynasties in hockey history more than 40 years ago. The Islanders ripped off four straight Stanley Cup championships from 1980 to 1983. It might not have been appreciated as much then as it is now, as the Montreal Canadiens had won four straight Cups immediately before the Islanders' run. Still it was a great team and a great accomplishment. No one has duplicated it since then.

Right at the center, literally and figuratively, of those Islanders teams was Bryan Trottier. He was one of the league's best players in his time, a top scorer who also could play some defense too. Trottier had help of course. Mike Bossy, Denis Potvin, Billy Smith, Clark Gillies and a great "supporting cast" helped out as well. But Trottier might have been the most valuable player of the bunch. 

It's always good when someone from a great team takes the time to write a book about his sports life. It took Trottier a while, but he finally got around to the task about 30 years after his playing days were over. The book is called "All Roads Home." 

Almost right from the start, Trottier comes across as an extremely modest and good person here. He'd be quick to give the credit to his family for that. It's not a story that pops up in the sports section too often. Trottier was the son of a First Nation (think Native) father and an Irish-Canadian mother. The family bounced around the West of Canada and the United States quite a bit, but Saskatchewan played a large role in the story. There were always chores to be done before and after school for the Trottier kids on the ranch/farm. It wasn't always easy, but the family seemed to have food on the table day after day. 

Trottier seemed to avoid some of the abuse and discrimination in sports that often comes with an Aboriginal background. (For more on that sort of life, read Ted Nolan's book.) It should be noted that Trottier was a very good player right from his teen-age years. He dropped out of school to concentrate on hockey, and finished as a second-round draft choice of the Islanders in 1974. It took him a year to reach the NHL, but he was an almost immediate smash in the pros. Bryan had 95 points in his rookie year, and in his third season he started a streak of five straight 100-point seasons. 

After staying with the Islanders through 1990, the relationship suffered from a genial split. Trottier became a free agent, and had some offers before deciding he wanted to play with Mario Lemieux. Good move. The Penguins won Stanley Cup in 1990-91 and 1991-92, bringing Trottier's total as a player to six. Not many NHL players can say that; no wonder he was once named one of the NHL's top 100 all-time players. 

Trottier moved into the coaching business after that, and he had the usual career there with a lot of different stops. The best one came in 2000-01, when he was an assistant with the Colorado Avalanche. That was Stanley Cup No. 7, as the air he breathed became even more rare. The worst stop might have been his one chance at serving as a head coach with the New York Rangers. It came in 2002, and it was odd for Islanders fans to see one of their greatest players coaching the team's biggest rival. The job only lasted 54 games. 

That brings us to an important point of the book. There's no score-settling here, no anger. Obviously 54 games aren't much in trying to evaluate a head coach, but Rangers' general manager Glen Sather gets off without a quick slash in passing from Trottier. Bryan's first two wives receive similar treatment - generally good words and no bad ones.

That's part of a wider discussion that can be made about Trottier's book. There are surprisingly few stories about his teammates and coaches, which is why we're reading in the first place. The playoff wins go by quite quickly.

A couple of other portions of Trottier's story are missing completely. If memory serves, he was involved in some sort of scam with an agent and at some point declared bankruptcy. Several hockey people were robbed that way, and it might be instructive to others to hear what happened there. Bryan also was hired as an assistant coach of the Buffalo Sabres in 2014 under Nolan. The head coach was fired at the end of that season, and so was Trottier. There's not a word about that entire experience in the book. The Sabres were in turmoil then, and it would have been interesting to hear about what happened from an inside perspective. 

If Trottier was your favorite player growing up, you were in good company. Steve Yzerman of the Detroit Red Wings wore Trottier's No. 19 in the NHL, and eventually joined Bryan in the Hall of Fame. There's enough material in "All Roads Home" that shows Trottier was worthy of such admiration during his hockey life. The omissions are a little troubling, but the autobiography still ought to please those who took enjoyment of watching Trottier at his peak.

Three stars

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Review: The Magnificent Seven (2025)

By Mark Mehler and Jeff Tiberii

Final Four Weekend in men's college basketball in an appropriate time to be reading "The Magnificent Seven." 

It's a book about the so-called "blue bloods" - the class teams that seem to be good year after year after year. Would it be a Final Four without them?

Not really. The history tells the story about Duke, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, UCLA, North Carolina and Connecticut. In the 2000s, there have been exactly two years in which none of those seven teams reached the Final Four - 2013 and 2019. Footnote: No one reached that round in 2020, due to the pandemic. 

Therefore, when picking up a copy of the book, there's a good chance that it's going to be relevant. Sure enough, Duke popped up in the Final Four this time around. The Blue Devils lost in the semifinals, but represented themselves well until the final minutes of a loss to Houston. It happens, especially against good teams. 

Mark Mehler and Jeff Tiberii probably could have written a book on these seven universities that could have served as a major doorstop. They wisely cut the size down to have a breezy, often fun look at the teams, all of which won four NCAA titles in the course of three decades. (That was the standard for inclusion; Villanova, Michigan State and Louisville were the near-misses.)

If there's a common denominator besides winning on this list, it's a great coach that set the standard. Sometimes that coach is followed by other great coaches, once the tradition was established, and sometimes he is not. 

Jim Calhoun set the stage for Connecticut's run after his arrival  in 1986; Dan Hurley has followed in his footsteps nicely. Mike Krzyzewski's record at Duke puts him with the all-time greats. You might have heard about Bobby Knight at Indiana. Kansas' first basketball coach was James Naismith, who merely invented the game. He's also the only coach in Jayhawks' history to have a losing record. Roy Williams and Bill Self have done better. Adolph Rupp became a legend at Kentucky, Rick Pitino and John Calipari had success of their own there. North Carolina plays in a facility named after Dean Smith for a reason, and John Wooden set an impossibly high standard for success at UCLA - as his successors often discovered the hard way. Yes, they all had great players, but the coaches were the constant in their runs of success. 

If a reader is particularly interested in one of the seven schools, a little digging should produce a library filled with possibilities. But that reader might not know that much about the other six universities. That's the fun part - it's not so in-depth that a reader can get lost in the weeds. You are almost sure to learn a few things about all of the programs included here, which is the idea. Mehler and Iberii also are willing to be judgmental when necessary. They've done plenty of research and talked to some people on the record in order to obtain some fresh perspectives. 

Sure, a 240-page book like this on such history-filled programs might be Basketball Lite for some. The guess here, though, "The Magnificent Seven" will be a fun and informative read that won't overwhelm most people. That's the goal of a book like this, and it succeeds nicely that way. 

Four stars

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Review: The Front Runner (2025)

By Brendan O'Meara

Fifty years?

Yes. Fifty years.

It has been a half-century since Steve Prefontaine died in an auto accident in Oregon in 1975. That means he'd be 74 in 2025.  

For those who weren't around yet to know who Steve Prefontaine was, it's tough to explain. He might have been one of the greatest runners ever produced by America. Steve, or as most people called him, "Pre," held almost all of the United States' records in distance running at one time or another. 

But it wasn't a case of what Prefontaine did. It was how he did it. Steve really was a front-runner. He usually took the lead in races rather quickly, and buried the hopes of the competition in virtually no time at all. None of this last-second sprint to the finish stuff for Prefontaine. Most of his races were well over well before that. It's almost as if he were saying, "Do you have what it takes to stay with me? No? Bye."

Prefontaine remains something of a legend in track circles, with some books and two movies covering his career. Now Brendan O'Meara has revisited that era with his comprehensive book, "The Front Runner."  

This starts at the beginning, with Prefontaine's family life. It sure sounds like it wasn't exactly a household filled with love and happiness. "Mommy Dearest" had nothing on Steve's mother, who used to beat him when he did something that was perceived to be wrong. Sometimes the mother asked her husband to take care of disciplinary business with a strap. Steve's older sister (nine years) often protected her little brother, taking the hits in his place.

It's easy to think of Frank Shorter while reading this. Shorter had what looked like a peaceful childhood from a distance, but the future Olympic marathon champion had a monster of a father who tried to abuse most of the residents of a small town. Running became an escape for Shorter and Prefontaine, as they literally could run away from their troubles - at least for a while. Were there many other runners who, pardon the expression, followed that path?

It took a little while for Prefontaine to figure out what sport would be a good fit for him once he reached the high school years. Eventually, though, Steve ended up in running, and - what do you know? - when he started winning races, the beatings stop. That sounds a particularly effective motivating force. Prefontaine quickly moved up the ladder, and by the time of high school graduation he was clearly on a different level than any one else in his native Coos Bay, Oregon - and perhaps most places in the country. 

By the time he arrived at the fabled running program at the University of Oregon with its legendary coach Bill Bowerman, Prefontaine was ready for the next step. Here's how good he was: Steve was on the cover of Sports Illustrated at the age of 19 in 1970. Prefontaine rampaged his way through the college ranks with the goal of reaching the Olympics. He did make the 1972 American team that went to Munich, and finished fourth in the 5,000 meters. That spot is always a good news/bad news spot. Fourth in the world in anything is very impressive, but no one remembers who finished fourth in an Olympic event. 

Prefontaine finished up his eligibility at Oregon after that, which must have been something of an anti-climax. Today he'd be making enough money from outside sources that he could continue to run competitively for many more years. But back in those primitive (or, if you prefer, just plain stupid) days, athletes in the so-called Olympic sports had strict rules about compensation or almost any kind. Most athletes had to get on with the rest of their lives by finding work, just to pay the bills. 

Prefontaine fought the old system as best he could, and caused a few cracks with his words and actions. Again, ever the front-runner. While his death in 1975 stopped his personal quest in that area, the Amateur Athletic Union lost most of its power to determine eligibility by the end of that decade. Remember the first rule of amateurism: it's a way to keep money out of the hands of the people who actually earned it. Maybe Prefontaine would have gone on to win an Olympic medal or set a world record, the two missing ingredients on his resume.  

Author Brendan O'Meara certainly put in an effort for this one. He found more than 100 people who sat down for interviews on the subject of Prefontaine, and mined a variety of other sources. Obviously some of the people who were part of Steve's life back then aren't around to talk about it now. But I can't say the finished product is missing anything obvious in that sense. 

"The Front Runner" portrays a man who in a sense could be called track and field's James Dean. Prefontaine and Dean were both big, charismatic stars as a young age who were taken from us too soon. The book might have lost a little of its potential audience after 50 years, but those in running circles who are looking for the full story will enjoy this thoroughly.

Four stars

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