Review: The Year's Best Sports Writing 2025

Edited by Hanif Abdurraqib

Take it from me, this is not your father's Best Sports Writing book. 

Come to think of it, I've probably read almost of these sports anthologies books - compiled by at least three different publishers over the years - since the early 1950s. This is not your grandfather's Best Sports Writing (or Best Sports Stories, as it was called in those days) book. 

Way back when, most of the nation's sports writing came from newspapers and magazines - and it stuck to the traditional sports as a subject. The book's contents reflected that fact. Television changed the industry quite a bit, as more people could now see for themselves what happened in a particular game. Articles had to explain why something happened, as well as covering personalities and issues. The book reflected that. 

In recent years, of course, newspapers and magazines have fallen on hard times in recent years, and the number of possible candidates from those outlets for inclusion into anthologies has gone down. In the meantime, some of the good writing has migrated to the Internet. That's been a frequent source of material for these anthologies in recent years. Along the way, the range of stories has grown wider. That can often lead to a pleasant surprise for the reader, who learns about some area that falls under the sports umbrella - even faintly.

That's brings us to the 2025 edition, in which Hanif Abdurraqib serves as the editor. Abdurraqib wrote a book about basketball and growing up poor in America that won some noteworthy awards.Almost any semblance of traditional sources has been thoroughly blown up. Taking a bow for their stories are such outlets as The Lever, Noema Magazine, Island, Block Club Chicago, Basketball Feelings, Flaming Hydra, The Contrapuntal, The New Arab, and Ultiworld. That's not exactly The Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated.  

Meanwhile, the list of story titles brings to mind the slang definition of "woke." One side of our political divide uses it as praise for those who are aware of social injustice, while the other side considers it a putdown for those who are too politically correct. Consider a handful of entries from the table of contents. "Nothing is Gayer than My Love for Women's Basketball." "The Ballet School." "Death of the Hiker." "Imane Khelif: Refusing the Violent Fiction of Binary Gender." "The Worrying Road Ahead of Muslim Sportswomen Amid Hijab Bans and Discrimination." Not much traditional sports coverage is implied there.

I approached this book the same as I do with any anthology. I start reading every article, and see how long I last. That includes stories that would never appear in the sports section of a newspaper. Good writing is good writing, and some of the pieces kept me going right through the conclusion with ease. I hadn't heard about the controversy surrounding a San Jose State transgender volleyball player, but it's a fine recounting of a complicated story. The tale about a former drug addict who essentially has run his way to sobriety is a page-turner. "Scholar's Mate" takes a look at the game of chess in a very different way. A tribute to Rafael Nadal held my interest, although it has a bit more of an outside-in approach to the story. 

But others couldn't lure me in. It's going to take some work to draw a more traditional reader into stories about recreational roller-skating, or ultimate frisbee, or walking/hiking, or ballet.  

Therefore, "The Year's Best Sports Writing 2025" is more of a hit-or-miss collection than usual. There were too many misses for me to be very enthusiastic about the book's good-sized change in direction this year. However, adventurous readers might find some stories that that wouldn't find anywhere else, and take delight from the range. In short, see if you are up to the challenge before paying $21.95 plus tax for this. And I'll be interested to see what the overall reaction might be by the sports public. 

Three stars.

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Review: Moses Malone (2025)

By Paul Knepper

Author Paul Knepper has taken on a difficult assignment here. It's not easy to put all of the pieces together in the life and times of Moses Malone.  

The basketball superstar had all sorts of twists and turns in his career. Knepper documents many of them in his book, "Moses Malone." That's a good idea, since most Hall of Famers deserve some sort of biographical treatment ... and Moses wasn't the most forthcoming person in the world with his public. 

Certainly Malone's experiences as a youth explain part of the story. He grew up in single parent home in Petersburg, Virginia, as Moses' father was kicked out of the house by his mother at the age of 2. Mom did a heroic job of making sure that Moses had clothes on his back and food on the table, although the rest of the family joined together to help out too. 

As for Moses, he picked up basketball at the age of 13. By the time he was in high school, Malone had started to become good at the game - in part because he kept growing and growing (his 6-foot-10 eventually height was quite a contrast to his mother's 5-2 frame) and in part because he kept working at it. By junior year, he had led his high school to an undefeated season and a state championship. Malone had placed a note in a Bible that he'd be the best high school player in the country. After that season, he wrote another note that read he'd be the first person ever to jump from high school to the pros. 

The route was difficult everywhere but on the court. There the Petersburg school again went unbeaten, and Malone remained the top college prospect in the nation. That sent a barrel of scouts and coaches chasing after him, some offering "fringe benefits." Maryland eventually won that battle, but it was a short-lived triumph. The American Basketball Association was losing its battle with the more established NBA, and was desperate for players. A pro contract convinced Malone to skip college and join Utah of the pros. 

Malone was raw, of course, but no one outworked him - on the court or off. He was the most determined rebounder in the game, and most of his points came off offensive rebounds. Malone also worked year round to improve his game in all areas. When the ABA merged with the NBA in 1976, Moses was thrown into limbo since his second ABA team, St. Louis, didn't enter the combined league. He went to Portland, which wanted to trade him since Bill Walton was already there. Malone was dealt to Buffalo, where problems with the coach and a dispute over playing time led to a quick trade to Houston. 

That's where everything clicked. Malone soon became a dominating force with the Rockets, leading them to the NBA Finals once and winning MVP and All-League honors. No one was anxious to play a somewhere mediocre Houston team, because Moses was capable of stealing a game. When contracts got in the way of that relationahship, Malone jumped to the Philadelphia 76ers. He was the missing link for the Sixers, who won the NBA title in 1982. Moses stayed through 1986, although Philadelphia couldn't duplicate the magic in that era.

We didn't know it yet, but - as Knepper effectively points out - Malone's best days were behind him at 30. Perhaps Moses had just worn himself down. He bounced through several teams with decreasing effectiveness in the years to come. Malone retired in 1995 after 21 years as a pro. He somewhat disappeared from the public eye at that point, serving as an assistant coach in the NBA briefly and playing lots of golf. Malone died at the age of 60 of heart disease. 

The book makes it clear that Malone was much better as a private friend than as a public figure. Moses certainly had a shy side that began as a child. That's not surprising for someone who was so tall, had a voice so deep it was difficult to understand, and some dental problems. Mix all that with the poor background and subpar schools, and some assumed that Malone simply wasn't that bright. But the superficial reading seems to be wrong. Many associates - including business people - say Malone actually was quite sharp on the court and off it. Teammates here recount how Malone often helped them adjust to the NBA game, and stayed friends in retirement - from stars to bench-warmers. 

Malone's biggest problem probably was with personal romantic relationships. He had too many of them, particularly when he was married. Malone also was charged with physical abuse of his wife, and was said to have made threats to her after the divorce. While it's tough to know the complete story from a distance, the episodes leave a very poor impression behind. Malone also had moments of great generosity and other moments of severe frugality. Moses wouldn't be the only basketball player to come out of poor surroundings without terrific money management skills. 

Malone died before getting his version of his life's events down on paper, and he probably wouldn't have been interested in doing so anyway. By definition, then, Malone's story has to be told more or less from the outside looking in. "Moses Malone" does feel a little like there's a hole in the middle of the story, but there's certainly value in finding out more about this basketball star who during the early 1980s was right up there with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson in terms of ranking with the NBA's best.  

Four stars

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Review: Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals, and Cooperstown (2025)

By Bill Madden

One of the pleasures of the journalism business is the chance to talk to some of the veterans of the field about their years in the business. They've been around the block more than a few times, and have encountered a variety of interesting people and gone through all sorts of experiences. 

Bill Madden is one of those veterans. He's been around the professional ranks for about 55 years, depending on how you count. Madden has been on the baseball beat in New York for 50 of those years. It's time for him to empty out the notebook and search through the memory bank. 

The resulting book is "Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals, and Cooperstown." It comes across as the chance to have a nice, fun chat with the man himself.

While Madden has covered a variety of teams and sports over the years when necessary, his biggest job has been to follow the comings and goings of the New York Yankees. He arrived on the job at the New York Daily News shortly after George Steinbrenner took over as the team's owner. It's fair to say that there wasn't a boring moment for the first 20 years or so of Madden's work days. 

One never knew what Steinbrenner was liable to do in a given moment. He loved the attention handed out by newspapers, especially when it meant the Yankees were on the back cover of the New York City tabloids. Steinbrenner and Billy Martin attracted publicity like moths to a fly, even if they couldn't figure out how much they needed each other. 

There were other names added to the mix, of course. Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Dave Winfield, Ron Guidry, Rich Gossage, Graig Nettles. As Madden writes, he never had to worry too much about finding some material for a first-edition story - the piece that was designed to be printed in the newspaper before the game itself ended. Madden only had to walk around the clubhouse before a game with a pen, and stories would appear out of the ether. 

Madden used some of those stories in a few books earlier in his carer. It's safe now to tell some of the details attached to the anecdotes. For instance, when Madden was thinking about writing a book on teinbrenner, another Yankees' executive not only gave Madden permission to write it, but helped convince others in the organization to talk to the author freely about George's life. 

Speaking of Steinbrenner, Madden does a good job of recapping the story behind the owner's suspension in the early 1990s. I hadn't followed the details that closely, but Madden makes a very good case that Fay Vincent was quite arrogant during that process. That issue turned out to be one of the nails in the coffin of the Commissioner of Baseball, who was fired soon after that. 

Speaking of surprises, Madden also takes an interesting look here at the memorabilia scandals that hit sports (but mostly baseball) in the 1990s. Bill wrote a column on baseball cards for The Sporting News starting in the 1980s, and he began to explore that entire hobby as the years went by. Turns out corruption was quite rampant in that particular business, as some of the old-time merchandise was less than authentic. 

Madden only has one chapter that's something of a "get off my lawn" moment. It comes at the end, and it's about baseball analytics. You might have guessed that. He's not sold on the movement in that direction, particularly when it wipes the human element out of the game. Perhaps we are overdoing it in some cases, but analytics are simply one tool of many in the toolbox. 

The veteran starts the book with what might have been a better ending. He won the Spink Award for Career Excellence in baseball reporting in 2011, which essentially makes him a member of the Hall of Fame. It's a good launching point for some stories about the greats of the game. For example, Madden went on a car ride to Cooperstown once with Joe DiMaggio. When the Yankee Clipper was asked about Lou Gehrig, DiMaggio said he was a great team ... and added that Gehrig once had an affair with Mae West. Can't say I saw that coming.

"Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals, and Cooperstown" goes down quickly and smoothly. I zipped through it in a few hours. While Yankee fans probably are the target audience for the book, an interest in the Bronx Bombers isn't exactly a prerequisite for enjoying this. Most baseball fans will enjoy the conversation.

Four stars

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Review: Every Day is Sunday (2025)

By Ken Belson

The on-field world of the National Football League can be engrossing and addicting. It's designed, at least, in theory, to be unpredictable in its results - making the five-month season something of a thrill ride for followers. That's why stadiums are sold out, and why the list of the most popular television broadcasts in a given year are absolutely dominated by NFL games. 

Even so, the off-the-field activities can be fascinating as well - maybe not quite as fascinating as the games, but they have a huge impact on America's favorite sport. The NFL is all about growing the game, which translates to growing the profits for the owners. To be fair, the players also get a share of that money, so they usually aren't upset when revenues go up either. There's plenty of cash to go around. 

The New York Times decided some years ago that the league itself and its dealings were worth covering on their own. Ken Belson picked up that assignment, and he's been on the job since then. It's not like he's had much down time during that span. What's more, he's been taking notes and writing stories about what has gone on over the years. 

Now he's emptied the notebook and dusted off the files in order to write a book on those years, "Every Day is Sunday." It's a solid look back at what's been going on in that span and beyond. 

The stars of the show are three different men. One, naturally, is the Commissioner. Roger Goodell by most standards has been effective in that role. He knows that his major goal is to keep the owners' accountants happy, and by all accounts he has done that. The value of NFL franchises has grown tremendously in recent years. Owners were never exactly candidates for financial aid, but lately only the super-super rich needed to apply to join the NFL club as entry fees (the cost of buying the team) has flown past $1 billion and into the mid-10 figures range. We might not be far from going into 11-figures ($10 billion) in the relatively near future. 

There's some good background information here on Goodell, who never has been a particularly warm and fuzzy public figure. There have been some slips along the way, but they haven't forced the league to change course very often. It's good to read something about Goodell's personal story and his overall philosophy regarding the job. 

Coming in just behind Goodell in terms of importance to the book are two owners: Jerry Jones and Bob Kraft. They take different approaches but are still the Biggest Dogs in a room full of them at owners' meetings. The personalities, however, are different. Jones is something of a rebel, always taking care to put the Dallas Cowboys first on his agenda - even if it may not go over well with his partners. Meanwhile, Kraft is more conciliatory. He often tries to bring parties together in the best interest of everyone. That can be thankless, but he's done it well. Both men are in the 80s, and both men have maintained their leadership spots for quite a while. 

Colson dedicates a chapter to most of the big issues that have come up over the years, even going back in time. For example, the NFL's jump to Fox Sports in the 1990s had a seismic effect on the broadcasting landscape, and not just in sports. It proved to be a huge move for Fox as it tried (and succeeded) in becoming the fourth major broadcast network. There are stories about franchise moves, poor player behavior, collective bargaining, the Colin Kaepernick saga (which affected free speech standards and team/player relations), and the continued rise of the Super Bowl as a quasi-national holiday. That's a good list by anyone's standards. 

Closer to home here in Buffalo, it was with some interest that there were a couple of references to Buffalo Bills' owner Terry Pegula along the way. It's interesting to see how Pegula has leaned on Jones for advice and guidance in several league matters since arriving in the Owners' Club. Pegula's predecessor, Ralph Wilson, didn't get along that well with Jones on policy matters involving the league, so the newcomer has flipped the script. At one point, Colson describes Pegula trying to solve a problem involving the league with a proposal at a meeting which was not only wrong, but almost painfully wrong. Terry has never been a particularly good speaker anyway, and it sounds like Pegula's opinion in league affairs has zero sway with anyone else in the league.

"Every Day is Sunday" may not have any great revelations in it about league affairs. Still, for those who haven't been paying attention to what's been going on with the league between Sundays, this is a good course on that subject. Meanwhile, those who do enjoy coverage of the NFL as a whole will find the behind-the-scenes information passed along at times to be quite interesting. Put those two aspects together, and the result is a worthwhile read for most football fans. 

Four stars

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Review: MISL 1980s

By Tim O'Bryhim

The Major Indoor Soccer League and I go way back. 

The Buffalo Stallions of the MISL were formed in 1979. The Buffalo Braves of the NBA had moved to San Diego the previous year, and there was an opening for another sports team to fill some dates in Memorial Auditorium. I had the chance to cover those games right from Day One, and it was a fun five years. I was even involved in the radio broadcasts of the home games for a couple of years. 

Sadly, things fell apart in a relatively short period of time, and the Stallions folded in 1984. It was nice while it lasted. I soon discovered that it's difficult to follow an indoor soccer team when your city doesn't have a franchise, although I kept an eye on the progress of the league as best I could. The MISL hung on in various forms until 1992.

It was with some degree of interest, then, that a suggested book from Amazon.com was something called "MISL 1980s." OK, I was in for that. Now after reading it, I have mixed emotions about it, starting with the idea that it's nice that someone still feels attached enough to the league to self-publish a book about it. 

O'Bryhim had written a book on the Wichita Wings, and also produced a documentary on that team. Having once written a book on the Braves, I know first-hand that such books about defunct teams from decades ago is more of a labor of love than an attempt to earn tons of money. 

Now comes a book from O'bryhim that's a little different than the first one, but there are some similarities. It's a collection of articles about the league in no particular order or format. That's means a particular article is going to be hit or miss in most cases.

For starters, the book is rather Wichita Wings-centric at times. There's not going to be too much drama three. The Wings were remarkably consistent over the years - but they were consistently mediocre. Wichita qualified for the playoffs in 11 of its 13 seasons, and never won a series. (By the way, the Wings moved over to the National Professional Soccer League after the MISL folded ... and went 0 for 8 in the playoffs there.) 

There are articles of various lengths that contain long interviews with players and coaches, and reviews of events in league history. The problem here is that the stories covers a lot of names and games that simply aren't going to be recognized by even casual fans of the league. It's not easy to make games from the 1980s interesting to an audience in the 2020s. I found myself skimming through some of the material. 

My favorite chapter in the book probably was "The Death of the MISL: A Postmortem." Several people, from fans to owners, chip in with thoughts on why the league didn't fully catch on and last longer. It's impressive how many different reasons come up - to playing at the wrong time of the year, to a union that asked for too much, to the rise of outdoor soccer and the growth of the NBA and NHL, to bad ownership, and to the lack of a national television contract. To some degree, all of those points have some truth to them. 

"MISL 1980s" is a book written by and for enthusiasts for indoor soccer, and their analysis sometimes is over the top. A good history of the league still might be fun to write, and it wouldn't have to be 20 volumes as O'Bryhim writes in this book. This isn't it, but it still might strike a chord with the good people of Wichita who are still keeping the faith in the Wings all these years later. 

Three stars

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Review: Fight Night 1939

By Joseph Monninger

Count me as among the relatively few around today who not only know something about Tony Galento, but had the chance to meet him. 

"Two-Ton Tony" (more on that in a moment) popped up a sports banquet in Elmira, New York, on a winter night in the late 1960s. As I recall, he told a few stories and signed a few autographs - in other words, a night of relatively easy money. I think I got his autograph that night. Galento came with his calling card - he was one of the few boxers who knocked Joe Louis down during Joe's championship run. Unhappily for Tony, Joe got off the canvas rather quickly and dispatched the challenger in short order.While continued excellence in anything is preferred, a one-time flash of greatness can last a lifetime in the right setting. 

It also can produce a book, which is in turn can be quite entertaining if the subject has a good backstory. "Fight Night 1939" is that book, and author Joseph Monninger has come up with an fun if relatively brief look at Galento and his brief brush with immortality. 

Galento was the son of immigrants and grew up in Orange, New Jersey. He dropped out of school at a young age, and picked up some odd jobs in his teens. The small but wide young man had more than his share of fights and brawls along the way, and he was pretty good at it. Tony also had a variety of jobs at that time, including one as an iceman. One time, after he started boxing, he was a little late for a bout. When asked why, he said he had two more tons of ice to deliver before he could leave. Thus, "Two Ton Tony" was born - although he wasn't exactly slim either. 

Galento wasn't stylish when he was in the ring. In other words, he was no Sugar Ray Robinson. Some of his fights degraded into wrestling matches at best and brawls at worst. But Tony could throw a punch and he could take a punch, and that made him a contender in the heavyweight condition. A 10-match winning streak earned him a shot at Louis, who remains one of the great champions in the sport's history and who was at the peak of his powers in 1939. Galento was a clear underdog, but one rule in boxing is that someone who can hit an opponent hard has a "punchers' chance" of winning against anyone.

Galento surprised everyone by staggering Louis with a punch in the first round, which led to him winning the road on the officials' scoring cards. If the population of Orange was thrilled by that development, it was ecstatic when Galento tagged Louis with a sharp left hook that sent the champ to the floor. There was barely enough time to consider the possibilities before Louis got up. By the fourth round, Galento was out of gas and the fight was stopped in favor of Louis. But the champ knew he had been in a fight, and the challenger had made a name for himself.  

Galento fought a while longer, losing to a couple of contenders, before World War II essentially ended his career. He kept his bar in Orange, did some wrestling and a little movie work (Hollywood always like a tough guy), and certainly told a million people about how he knocked Louis down. Tony died in 1979. 

Most of the book serves as a biography about Galento, which leaves Louis in the rare position (for him) or playing the role of a supporting character. And that's OK; there are other places to go to read about Louis and his impact on America - which was enormous.  

The book has a couple of areas that feel a little bit odd. Monninger didn't have a great deal of available research material, since Galento died in 1979. There are several moments when it felt like the author was expanding his descriptions of scenes in order to fill out the manuscript. At least he's a good enough writer to pull it off reasonably effectively.   

Meanwhile, the book was first published in 2006 under a different title. It's hard to know from a distance prompted the re-release of a book that came out 19 years ago. I missed that one, but at least I'm caught up on the story now.  

There don't seem to be many characters like Galento out there these days, and that's too bad. "Fight Night 1939" fills us in on Two Ton's story, and reading it is a pleasant way to find out about an interesting character from boxing's past.

Four stars

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Review: A Big Mess in Texas (2025)

By David Fleming

The sports book business seems specialized enough on its own, but there could be a subclass that could describe a particular type of literary effort. 

Let's call it, "Defunct Teams and Leagues."

While many sports books concentrate on success stories, and deservedly so, some cover the spots on the sports landscape where almost everything went wrong. It's particularly true for start-ups teams and leagues which is a reading exercise in "What were they thinking?" Such books have a serious side, naturally, since we're talking about events that affected people's lives. But they have the extra benefit of often bringing laughs to the table. 

That all brings us to "A Big Mess in Texas," by David Fleming. 

Hardly anyone remembers when the National Football League wasn't on particularly solid financial ground. It started in 1920, and ran through teams like tissues for several years. You'd think that the NFL would have been poised for success by 1950, when the league merged with its major rival, the All-American Football Conference. But even so, only a few teams were earning a profit, and most were hanging on. Pro football still took a back seat to the college game in terms of interest, and revenues weren't keeping up with expenses - and wouldn't until television entered the, um, picture.  

In 1951, a football team called the New York Yankees (no relation) was struggling in a major way in the NFL. It had lost a huge amount of money by the standards of the day, and competing with the New York Giants had become a bad idea. It was time for the franchise to go elsewhere. Anywhere. 

And Dallas was pretty much anywhere at the time. Texas certainly loved football, but mostly in the form of high school and college football. The pros hadn't even tried to put a team there yet. But Giles Miller, the son of a wealthy Dallas businessman who never saw a long-shot financial chance he couldn't bet on, decided to take a chance on it. He was so confident, in fact, that he agreed to be responsible for the Yankees' leftover debt from 1951 - which got the franchise off to a flying standstill. 

Everyone tried hard, but there were too many obstacles. Fleming does some of his best work in describing the racial situation in Dallas, which was not pretty at the time. The new Dallas Texans had three African-American players on the roster, and Miller had plans of having integrated seating in the Cotton Bowl for games. But the powers that be wouldn't let the races sit near each other, generating substantial anger among both whites - who wanted no part of integration - and blacks - who wanted no part of sitting in the worst seats while sections of the stadium went unused. It's not exactly a formula for success. Dallas wasn't quite ready for the NFL, although the Texans probably knocked down a few walls that helped pave the way for the arrival of the Dallas Cowboys in 1960.

(Just to confuse things a little more, 1960 also was the year that the American Football League was formed, and a team in Texas debuted as ... the Dallas Texans. That team couldn't compete with the Cowboys and eventually moved to Kansas City.) 

The original Texans started slowly and then got worse. Attendance was never good and quickly faded to virtually nothing. Before the season, ownership essentially gave up and handed the franchise back to the league, which had it finish the season by playing road games and paid its bills. The Texans finished 1-11, with the win coming over a Chicago team that didn't even bother to play its starters until late in the game. Coach George Halas of the Bears was a little too overconfident about that one. Eventually, NFL commissioner Bert Bell convinced Carroll Rosenbloom to take over the team and move it to Baltimore, where it thrived for quite a while.

But there's still a bit of a legacy here, as the Texans had more talent on the field than off it. Gino Marchetti found a home in Baltimore and became a legend. Art Donovan not only had Hall of Fame talent, joining Marchetti in Canton, but he also was a world-class party animal. Quite a few of the laughs in this book are provided by Donovan, and deservedly so. Running back Buddy Young, an African-American, was simply beloved by teammates and fans wherever he went. George Taliaferro is recognized as one of the Black pioneers of the sport, and went on to a life that earned him a statue by the stadium at Indiana University. There are several other connections to the Texans involving football standouts (on and off the field) that are pointed out here, thanks to some fine research. Therefore, it's easy to keep an interest in the material here, particularly if you enjoy reading about football history. 

Admittedly, not everyone qualifies for that last classification. Some gray hair might be needed to appreciate what happened in some cases. Even so, "A Big Mess in Texas" nicely paints a picture of the last NFL team go go under financially. It doesn't take very long to go through it, and there are plenty of interesting moments to push the reader along. Fleming did good work here.

Four stars

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Review: Brady vs. Belichick (2025)

By Gary Myers

A long, long time ago ... the Beatles and the Rolling Stones came across the Atlantic in search of fame and fortune. What's more, they succeeded by any standard. Most music fans enjoyed both bands, while some of them picked a side if asked who they preferred. 

Naturally, there was a way for outsiders to cash in on the argument. The odd magazine popped up on the newsstand entitled "Beatles vs. Rolling Stones." That sounds like there was a big competition between them, which would be an overstatement, even if such publications were an excuse for young fans to cut photographs out and paste them on scrapbooks 

Such magazines came to mind when I saw the title of a football book, "Brady vs. Belichick," and the discussion is still light-hearted but a bit more serious than the musical version 60 years ago. In 20 seasons, the New England Patriots won six NFL championships, played in nine Super Bowls and 13 AFC championship games, and won 17 division titles. That's the greatest run in league history, and there were two major common denominators in that stretch: Quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick. (Owner Bob Kraft also was involved, naturally, but had less direct involvement in the fate of the team on the field.)

But which one deserves the lion's share of the credit for the dynasty? That's the task veteran football writer Gary Myers takes on with this book, which is a rather thankless job. After all, both Brady and Belichick are at worst in the discussion as the greatest person to work at their respective occupations.

To review the situation, Myers essentially writes something of an informal history of the dynasty, jumping through specific episodes of the Patriots' past. With two decades to cover, there's plenty of material available to review.

On the good side, it's been five years since Brady fled to Tampa Bay and ended the relationship with the Patriots. (Tom spent three years with the Bucs before retiring, winning one more Super Bowl along the way.) That means some football people are more open about expressing opinions. Myers talked to some former players, opponents, coaches, etc. in his research. That means there are some good stories and opinions that come out now that are "safe" to discuss. 

Belichick comes off with single-minded devotion toward making the team better each and every day he was the coach. He didn't exactly spare his feelings along the way, often criticizing everyone from Brady all the way to the last man on the roster. It doesn't sound like anyone was too anxious to come to work, even if they liked the end result. It's easy to think of a comment made about Scotty Bowman, who coached the dynastic Montreal Canadiens teams of the 1970s. It was said that the players hated Bowman on 364 days of the year, and liked him after they won the Stanley Cup. 

Brady, meanwhile, was smart enough to realize that he needed to be one of the boys in the locker room no matter how wealthy and famous he became. Brady probably left millions of dollars on the table in his contracts in an attempt to try to have a better team around him. He also won over the offensive lineman by showing respect for their efforts and never thinking he wasn't "one of the boys" at heart. 

Myers winds his way through tales of the dynasty in a leisurely way, jumping around a bit in the process. Perhaps the biggest problem with the book is that the premise expressed in the title is unanswerable. Basketball coach John Wooden once summed up his thoughts on such as things by saying, "No coach can win without talent, but some coaches can't win with it." In other words, it takes coaches and players working together in order to have a chance at something special. The answer to the "Brady or Belichick" question - who was more responsible - depends more on your orientation than anything else, and we know that from page one. I would guess this won't change many minds, either way.  

The Patriots' great run hasn't exactly been underreported over the years, and you can be excused for being a little wary of the subject at the point and not needed to know more. But fans of those teams probably have an insatiable appetite for information and stories about the era, and they'll enjoy the insights offered in  "Brady vs. Belichick"  

Three stars

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Review: Balls of Confusion (2024)

By Bob Kuska

Sometimes you can learn something about a book by looking at the footnotes. 

Exhibit A would be the book, "Balls of Confusion," by Bob Kuska. There are references to interviews that he did in 2008. That was a mere 16 years before the book was actually published. 

With that sort of dedication, it's a credit to the author that he stuck with it so long and figured out a way to get it published ... all right, the first part published. The book covers the first half of the "relationship" between the established National Basketball Association and the upstart American Basketball Association. It looks at the years from 1965 to 1970.  The second part - which should examine the time period from 1970 to 1976 - is said to be coming at some point. There's little doubt that this two-part package is going to be the definite word on the subject of the relationship between the two leagues. 

The discussion starts with one of the basic principles about professional sports leagues. If a national organization has a little success and doesn't expand into new cities, chances are quite good that a rival league will be born. In baseball, for example, the National League had a closely knit group of eight teams as members, and other cities wanted in. Thus, the American League was born. The National Football League had quite a few rivals come and go once it was past its formative years in the 1920s. 

Such was the case for professional basketball. Once it settled down in the post-war period, the National Basketball Association carried the flag for pro hoops nationwide. But by the mid-1960s, there still were only nine teams stretched out across the country. Inevitably, someone would try to fill that vacuum, and the American Basketball Association was born to try to fill that gap in 1967.

The ABA's management and owners hoped that the teams involved would follow a certain path. They would slowly build to the point where a viable group was established, and then it would merge with the more established league. The American Football League followed that gameplan in the 1960s, and succeeded with a merger with the NFL. The catch was that a new league was bound to have a few hiccups along the way, and teams would have to change cities and some good-sized amounts of money would be lost in the process. Two leagues are good for players' salaries of course, due to bidding wars, but not so good for owners' bottom lines. Oh, and the lawyers would find plenty of excuses to pad their totals of billable hours. 

As the book outlines in great detail, that's essentially what happened - particularly during the 1965-1970 time span covered by this book. The NBA expanded a few times in this era, eventually reaching 17 teams for the start of the 1970-71 season, in an effort to remain solvent. In 1970, the NBA and ABA had worked out many of the details of a potential merger, and the end of the basketball wars seemed inevitable. Spoiler alert: It didn't happen right away. 

Kuska collected information from all sorts of sources. He came up with some documents, including extensive numbers of the minutes of the ABA's league meetings. That's rather valuable in a book like this. He also refers to plenty of newspaper stories written at the time as well as interviews with the people involved. There are some good personal nuggets thrown in along the way,  The author uncovers some information here along the way that should be new and interesting to those who followed that era. He also has a little fun in the writing to keep us involved. 

This book had to be written by someone with a love for the sport and that era. It was a long time ago - more than 50 years - and that's going to be ancient history to many. Admittedly such a story will have legal and technical complications along the way; I'm one of the few people who might consider this beach reading. This checks in at almost 500 pages, and it's only part one.  

No, "Balls of Confusion" isn't going to be a best-seller. But in terms of getting an historical record of a pivotal era in basketball out there, this succeeds quite nicely. If you hit the sweet spot of interest, a read is quite rewarding.

Four stars

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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

Learn more about this book from Amazon.com. (As an Amazon affiliate, I earn money from qualified purchases.) 

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