Sports Book Review Center

Review: One on One (2011)

2012-01-25T19:22:00.002-05:00

By John Feinstein

The idea behind media interviews for books is to move product. It worked for at least one copy of "One on One."

I stumbled on John Feinstein's interview with Mike Francesa on the YES Network one recent day. I heard them talk for 20 minutes, and wasn't the least bit tempted to change the channel.

Feinstein has written some of the biggest-selling and best sports books in the last 25 years, starting with the fabled "Season on the Brink." At this point in his career, he explained how he wanted to tell some of the back stories involved collecting information for those books, as well as catch up with some of the subjects from relatively long ago.

Some of Feinstein's anecdotes were funny, some were poignant, some were surprising, but all were interesting.

Sold.

Having now read the actual book, it's probably best to separate my reactions into professional and personal. On the professional side, there are many, many good stories here. It's probably as close as Feinstein will get to writing a full-blown autobiography, so it has a personal side to it. And all of the material doesn't deal with books; there's a gripping section about how Feinstein wound up in Kladno, Czechoslovakia,, one day being questioned by Czech authorities while talking to Michal Pivonka's mother for a newspaper article.

There's plenty of other good stuff here, though. If you are writing a book on golf, and Arnold Palmer invites you to his workshop for company when he works on clubs, you go. If you have the chance to have dinner with Tiger Woods, one on one, you go. Same with a late-night snack at Denny's with Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski. There are plenty of other interesting characters here that readers of other Feinstein books will enjoy hearing from again.

Two books certainly shine through here as the author looks back. Feinstein probably would be the first to agree that a year with Bobby Knight at Indiana wasn't always "enjoyable," but it was always fascinating. Feinstein's book on the Army-Navy game, and the players in it, was clearly a labor of love. It's not surprising, then, that these might be his two best efforts.

Again, speaking professionally, there certainly will be plenty of people who haven't read all or most of Feinstein's books and thus won't identify as closely with some personalities. Therefore, this is more of a "second read." "One on One" also checks in at more than 500 pages, which is a lot of reading and might be overdoing it for some. Most sports fans, however, will find more than enough to keep themselves entertained.

As for me personally... I loved it. I plowed through it in a few days, couldn't wait to get back to it when I put it down.

One of the best parts of journalism for me is the chance to sit around with other reporters and compare notes, opinions and stories. It can make a morning shootaround fascinating with the right mix. This is like sitting down with Feinstein and letting him talk about the greats and near-greats he's encountered.

"One on One" worked perfectly for me. I'm probably in the minority here, so I don't want to get anyone's hopes too high with a five-star rating. If you like Feinstein's other work, you'd join me in elevating the personal rating below from four to five stars.

Four stars

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Review: Over the Line (2011)

2012-01-22T11:58:00.004-05:00

By Al Strachan

It's easy to jump to a conclusion when reading Al Strachan's "Over the Line." As in, "Haven't I read something like this before?"

Perhaps. Those who read "I Am Not Making This Up" might find this version very familiar.

Reviewing here, Strachan is a former hockey columnist for several Canadian newspapers. He was always hard-nosed, always gruff, and always entertaining. Strachan even did a little television work over the years, popping up on CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada."

Strachan retired from the newspaper business a while ago, but has taken to writing more books in his spare time. His work with Don Cherry probably helped keep him quite comfortable. But this book, like "I Am Not...", is more personal in nature.

There are chapters here, but again it's hard to tell why. This is basically stream of consciousness writing, with one anecdote following another. Sometimes they go together, sometimes they don't. One chapter goes from the Islanders' owner to covering the Olympics to NHL rules to Scotty Bowman to a huge bar fight to dominant teams. Whew.

The opinions, though, remain strong. Gary Bettman and his pals on the NHL Board of Governors don't really know what they are doing. The salary cap is a terrible idea. Pat Burns and Don Cherry are Hall of Famers. And so on. You get the idea.

And again, this is very quick reading. You can get through it in a day without much effort.

The first book of this type probably could be called "Dinner With Al," a wide-ranging if one-way conversation with a veteran hockey journalist. "Over the Line" is a second helping of the same meal. It's not a seven-course serving filled with amazing delights, but rather a series of quick little snacks.

Three stars

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Review: Charlie Finley (2010)

2012-01-17T16:50:00.002-05:00

By G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius

It's difficult to describe what Charlie Finley's tenure as owner of the Athletics was like unless you lived through it.

It was, basically, a soap opera. No one really did know what might happen next. Finley was around for two decades, taking the team from Kansas City to Oakland at one point, and was never far from the headlines along the way.

Therefore, a full-fledged biography of Finley is a fine idea. G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius have filled in the baseball portion of the story quite well with "Charlie Finley."

Finley became rich in the 1950's when he basically invented the idea of creating and selling disability insurance to doctors. Amazing as it sounds now, no one had come up with the concept before. Finley did a ton of business in those initial years, becoming a millionaire and giving him a chance to realize some of his other dreams in life.

Having conquered the fortune part of the cliched combination, Finley moved on to fame. He did it by buying the Kansas City Athletics in late 1960. The Athletics at the time were a badly run team that played in a bad ballpark. The old owners essentially had to ship their best players to the Yankees every so often just to stay financially afloat.

Finley needed little time to make a mark in Kansas City. He went through managers like calendars (usually one per year), lying and bullying his way through life while trying to run the baseball operation. Finley had some bad teams in Kansas City in the Sixties, but he did have some good scouts who signed a boatload of players who were destined for stardom -- Jim Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, Vida Blue, Sal Bando, Rollie Fingers.

Finley finally moved the Athletes to Oakland for the 1968 season. From a business standpoint, it was a terrible move, as the team had to split the market with the San Francisco Giants -- and the Giants had the wealthy side of the Bay. But the talent stream was gushing. The A's ran off three straight championships from 1972 to 1974.

The Athletics never drew as well on the field as they probably should have, mostly because Finley wasn't exactly a promotional genius and never spent money to make money. There was no way he could afford to keep that team together, particularly when the onset of free agency in 1976. The A's dynasty broke up, and Oakland quickly headed for the basement. Finley eventually sold the team, in part because a messy divorce had left him cash-poor.

That's all quite a ride, but doesn't tell half the story. Who would try to fire one of his players in the middle of the World Series after the player made a couple of costly errors? Who would hire a mule as a mascot? Who put his team in green and gold uniforms, his favorite colors, with white shoes? Who would stubbornly refuse to make a contract payment to a player over a tax matter, which eventually resulted in that future Hall of Famer to walk away as a completely free agent? Who tried to sell three of his best players for $3.5 million, only to have the idea rejected by the Commissioner of baseball? Finley, in all cases.

It's difficult to say who might be comparable to Finley today. Jerry Jones of the Cowboys might be the best person for that job, since he's an owner/general manager capable of odd actions. But Jones has a lot more money, and has a better long-term record.

Green and Launius did a very good job of researching their subject. Media sources are comprehensively examined. They talked to several of the people from that era, including members of Finley's family.

There are a couple of drawbacks here. A few typos, such as the spellings of players like Carlton Fisk and Denny McLain, do jump out here. And the authors more or less stick only to Finley's baseball days. Finley also owned a basketball and hockey team, and there are plenty of stories associated with those days circulating. Another chapter just on the Seals and Tams would have been worthwhile.

But Green and Laurnius are baseball fans first; they are members of the Society for American Baseball Research. The authors are more than fair when it comes to Finley's legacy. They point out that while Finley had many drawbacks, he did come up with some ideas that helped the game move forward eventually -- interleague play, divisional realignment, night World Series games, the designated hitter rule, just to name a few.

It's nice to have all of this in one place. "Charlie Finley" is worth the time of those seeking to visit or revisit a head-shaking era.

Four stars

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Review: Sports Illustrated Hockey Talk

2012-01-09T21:47:00.004-05:00

A discussion of this book, oddly enough, probably has to start with marketing.

Sports Illustrated has come out with all sorts of anthologies over the years, and most of them have been very good. Some aren't sports specific, such as the one for its 50th anniversary, while others do concentrate on baseball, football, basketball, golf, etc.

Hockey usually has been exception, although SI did put out a coffee-table book on the sport recently. There have been stories that Sports Illustrated puts about one hockey subject on its cover per year because the sport just doesn't sell at the newsstand. I don't know if that's still true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is. Hockey's lack of American popularity (read, in the Sun Belt) also has meant the sport is under-reported and under-written by SI, relatively speaking.

Therefore, it was a nice surprise to see "Sports Illustrated Hockey Talk" pop up at the bookstores. The first page was another surprise, as it was put out by a Canadian publisher. Hmmm. Even the dates of the articles are presented in a Canadian format with the month second instead of first (as in 18/9/12). It's hard to say how familiar Canadian readers might be with the magazine on a consistent basis, but they certainly will like some of the work if they don't fit that classification.

Returning to America, Sports Illustrated always has had some excellent writers, and the stories picked out here are representative of their work. What's more, most of them still work quite well even in hindsight. Profiles of such figures as Don Cherry, Scotty Bowman, Bobby Orr and Mike Keenan were interesting then, and interesting now. Michael Farber's story on the gold medal-winning goal of the 2010 Olympics remains excellent. Personally, I don't remember articles on Maurice Richard and Gordie Howe, but they still work rather well.

There is a catch, though. This feels rather thin and a little too easy to read. The pages have rather big type and some extra white space on the margins, so it's easy to fly through this 300-plus-page book in only a few days. In a few cases, the stories were good but maybe not at the level of some of the others. Again, this may have been because of the lack of potential choices as compared to baseball or football. The profile of Bruce McNall seems really dated, since it was written when he was riding high and hadn't gone to jail for being a crook.

More than one picture for each story when possible might have been nice too -- it is Sports Illustrated -- as well as updates on the stories when needed.

"Sports Illustrated Hockey Talk" probably doesn't quite measure up to its predecessors from the SI plant, then, but it's worth your time if you like the game and don't read the magazine regularly. In such cases, this is worth an extra star.

Three stars

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Review: The Last Great Game

2011-12-31T10:36:00.004-05:00

By Gene Wojciechowski

The video of the play has become almost iconic in association with March Madness. In fact, it might be the most famous play in college basketball history.

With 2.1 seconds to go and Duke trailing Kentucky by one point, Grant Hill of the Blue Devils throws the ball about 75 feet to teammate Christian Laettner. The center catches the ball, dribbles once, fakes, and shoots a 15-footer that goes through the basket for the winning points. Pandemonium isn't an adequate word to describe the reaction in Philadelphia's Spectrum.

What's been slightly forgotten in the nearly 20 years since Hill's pass and Laettner's shot is how good the entire game was. Both teams made several great plays when it counted most; Duke simply made the last one.

It's a game worthy of a good-sized recap, and Gene Wojciechowski delivers that story in excellent fashion in "The Last Great Game."

The contrast between the teams was quite stark back then. Duke was the defending national champion entering the 1991-92 season. It had stars like Laettner, Hill and Bobby Hurley, and was hoping to play in its fourth straight Final Four. Duke had been adopted by fans across the nation as a program that did things the "right way," a roster filled with student-athletes.

Meanwhile, Kentucky was part of basketball aristocracy as well, but had fallen on hard times. A scandal almost resulted in the death penalty for the Wildcats. Instead, Kentucky wound up on probation and ineligible for a conference championship and postseason play for a while. Players scattered, leaving very little talent for Rick Pitino when he arrived in Lexington as the new coach.

Wojciechowski nicely goes back and forth between the two teams as they slowly march toward their meeting. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is a constant presence in that half of the book, but the most compelling figure for the Blue Devils is Laettner. We all figured his level of self-confidence was off the charts, but the author shows that Laettner pushed and pushed his teammates in his own way to excel. Sometimes they swung back.

Meanwhile at Kentucky, Pitino was the star of the show, forcing the program to climb out of the abyss. His training methods bordered on distant and brutal, but the ones that survived -- Richie Farmer, Deron Feldhaus, John Pelphrey and Sean Woods -- won't soon be forgotten in Lexington. Pitino convinced Jamal Mashburn to come to Kentucky, and the future pro helped put the Wildcats back on the map.

The author takes the back-and-forth approach through part of the game. In other words, the story is first told from a Kentucky perspective, and then the tale jumps to cover some of the same events from the Duke side. It all comes together for the final seconds. The technique works quite well, and it's easy for the reader to race through the final 75 pages even while knowing the outcome.

What's particularly impressive about Wojciechowski's work is how detailed it is, and the details matter in a book like this. Yes, he talked to the players and coaches about the game and the events leading up to it. But he talked to the parents -- the Laettners must have been sick of Wojciechowski by the time the book was done -- and the officials and the administrators and the broadcasters. Luckily, everyone seemed to remember plenty about what they were doing at key moments. In hindsight, it's a little amazing how many people instantly walked away from the contest thinking, "That was the greatest game ever."

There have been lots and lots of great games, of course, but considering the stakes and the circumstances, this one certainly is in the argument for that label. An interest in the subject is necessary to open up the book in the first place, of course. But for those that do, they couldn't expect to find a recap of a game that the one Wojciechowski puts together in "The Last Great Game."

Four stars

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Review: Wayne Gretzky's Ghost (2011)

2011-12-23T23:27:00.006-05:00

By Roy MacGregor

American hockey fans who like to read about their favorite sport might not know much about Roy MacGregor. It's about time that they do.

MacGregor has been one of Canada's top columnists and authors for three decades, and not just because of his work on a number of books. MacGregor can be sentimental when the occasion calls for it, but he can also do a little carving. But when he criticizes he uses a scalpel instead of a club.

A top sports columnist in Canada naturally writes about hockey, a lot. MacGregor has attended many of the major events in the sport over the last 30-plus years. Now he's picked up some of his best work in this anthology, "Wayne Gretzky's Ghost." And it's fabulous.

The title refers to one of MacGregor's assignments. When Gretzky retired, he was hired to "write" some columns the following season. It was MacGregor's job to shape Gretzky's thoughts into columns. In other words, MacGregor was a ghost writer.

Once the author gets through that story, the work from his career comes out one after another. There are stories about big NHL games, profiles of players and coaches, looks at international tournaments and Olympics. Some are straight features that gives MacGregor time enough to stretch out a bit, while others are obviously written right on deadline. There are stories on the state of hockey, and how it can be improved. There's even fun stuff -- a section on "Bar Debates" wonders about a study that says that best way to get your son into the NHL is to make sure he's born early in the year.

Want to see what Bryan Trottier was like when he was just breaking into the NHL? How about Jean Beliveau, still regal in retirement? The riddle of Alexandre Daigle? Here's your chance. There's plenty to be read about the Gretzky family, naturally. The stories tend to lean toward more current columns, so this anthology doesn't feel particularly dated. Even so, it's fun to read about someone like Borje Salming from the perspective of 35 or so years later.

Some of MacGregor's best work comes on some sad stories, such as the painful loss by Bob Gainey of his daughter, or a look back at when a Sakatchewan town mourned the deaths of four of its junior hockey players. Throughout the collection, it's obvious that MacGregor understands the grip that hockey has on his country, and how important it is in terms of national pride. There's nothing like it in America, and it gives many of the stories a bit of urgency and importance.

By the way, MacGregor adds a personal update on all of the articles. He might tell what happened to the players or teams since the story appeared in print, or how well his idea did down the road.

You should get the idea by now. "Wayne Gretzky's Ghost" is a delight, and it's thankfully available to American audiences. Do yourself a favor and read the work on one of the best writers in the business.

Five stars

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Review: Color Him Orange (2011)

2011-12-15T10:31:00.008-05:00

By Scott Pitoniak

Timing, as they say, is everything. Ask Scott Pitoniak.

The respected Rochester newspaper writer decided a while ago to write a biography of Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim. It's a good idea. Boeheim is in the Basketball Hall of Fame, has won a national championship in 2003 and gotten victories in more games than most people can count since landing the Syracuse job in 1976. What's more, he's never been an overly public person, especially for someone so frequently in the spotlight.

Pitoniak went to work, talking with people who have known Boeheim since his days of growing up in Lyons (a small town between Syracuse and Rochester) through the present day. The resulting book is "Color Me Orange."

The volume arrived in the bookstores in November, and most people probably had the same reaction. It went something along the lines of "I don't think this story is quite finished yet."

The alleged sexual abuse scandal surrounding Syracuse assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine was just starting to break then. Boeheim attacked the accusers in strong terms, and then backed off once more evidence came to light. Fine was fired by the university, while the investigation into the matter continues.

Pitoniak, then, has something of an incomplete tale on his hands, since we don't know how the story will play out. On the other hand, he does have plenty of material for the epilogue of the paperback edition, and he's probably done many extra media interviews about Boeheim and the book in the light of events.

We can't judge what the next version of this book will be, but this book covers Boeheim's life nicely enough. The SU coach is a tough personality to wrap ones arms around in a sense. Boeheim has built the program to unimagined heights in his 35-plus years on the job. Along the way he's often been surprising whiny and thin-skinned at times. As one recruit's mother once said about him more than 30 years ago, Boeheim isn't the first guy you'd invite to the house for a cookout. In fairness, Pitonik points out that Boeheim has opened up a bit later in life and become more open, thanks in part of his current wife Juli.

Pitoniak does a good balancing act of balancing the good parts and the bad parts of Boeheim's personality. The early portions of the book are particularly interesting, as Boeheim's early days as a child in Lyons and as a player at Syracuse are covered.

Once Boeheim takes over as coach, though, the emphasis of the story shifts from the coach himself to his teams. Pitoniak goes through the Boeheim years season by season, obviously with special emphasis to the Final Four teams of 1987, 1996 and 2003. It is a difficult task to make all of this fascinating reading, since not every season was overly interesting. Rabid fans certainly will get a kick out of reliving players and games that were favorites, but there isn't a great deal of literary color supplied that can fill out the picture. We might have to wait until Boeheim himself writes a book, which apparently won't be until after his retirement at the earliest.

Fine, by the way, is barely mentioned in the book. In fact, his name didn't even make the index.

Those looking for a nice, easy read about the Boeheim Era at Syracuse will find "Color Me Orange" relatively satisfying. Readers, though, probably will wonder how the tale will come out at the end; we'll have to wait and see for that.

Three stars

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Review: The Father ... The Son ... and the Sweet Sixteen (2011)

2011-12-13T10:07:00.004-05:00

By Paul Wieland

The St. Bonaventure basketball scandal of 2002-03 seems like a bad dream from the perspective of nearly 10 years later. A school president who was overzealous about putting together a strong basketball team installed his son as an assistant coach, essentially put his son on the coaching staff, worked to get a clearly unqualified player admitted to the university, and had one of that student's grades well after the fact.

Things like that weren't supposed to happen at St. Bonaventure, a small university in the southwestern part of New York state near the Pennsylvania line. It's instructive, then, to find out what the heck happened.

Paul Wieland was up to the task. The Bonaventure faculty member looked into the matter and has self-published "The Father ... the Son ... and the Sweet Sixteen."

Wieland had access to some of the testimony of the participants in the investigations into the matter, and he also talked to some of the involved people as well. So the book does do a good job of answering the question, "What the heck went wrong there?"

Wieland wisely sets the scene first by describing a bit of St. Bonaventure's basketball history. It was, at times, a national power, perhaps climaxed with the Final Four appearance in 1970 thanks to the play of superstar Bob Lanier. But the college basketball landscape has changed since then, and it's very difficult to get top African-American players to rural Olean, New York, these days.

Enter Dr. Robert Wickenheiser, hired as the school president. He quickly established himself as the loudest fan at Bonnies games. Wickenheiser had Jan van Breda Kolff as his head coach, who like any coach had his own ambitions. Having the school president's son, Kort, as an assistant didn't hurt when it came to internal office politics.

They all teamed up to recruit a big junior college player named Jamil Terrell and made sure he was eligible to play, even though he only held a welding certificate from a junior college. In the process, they ran over athletic director Gothard Lane, who comes off here as one of the few "good guys" of the story.

Eventually, the problems were discovered and publicized, investigations followed, the team went on probation, and just about everyone left in some form of disgrace. The school's reputation was damaged in the process.

Wieland certainly knows enough about the sport and the university to give a sharp, focused recounting of events. While I'm not a huge fan of self-publishing -- it can lead to a lot of typographical errors -- it was a good idea here. The book checks in at 127 short pages. That's a bit short for a commercial book project, but too long for a magazine story. This allows Wieland to tell the story, and then get out without padding it.

I'm a longtime friend of Wieland, so I'm not going to give this a formal rating. I'll merely say that those interested in what can go wrong in college athletics will find "The Father ... The Son ... and the Sweet Sixteen" a valuable case study.

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Review: Shaq Uncut (2011)

2011-12-12T10:19:00.004-05:00

By Shaquille O'Neal with Jackie MacMullan

(This review first appeared in The Buffalo News. This is a slightly longer version.)

When you are 7-foot-1 and 325 pounds, you have to do everything in a big way.

In Shaquille O'Neal's case, that includes publishing.

O'Neal came out with an autobiography about 10 years ago called "Shaq Talks Back." That wasn't enough for the supersized basketball center, so he's come out with "Shaq Uncut" now that he's retired. Even if the story is familiar, in part because it's tough to stay off the radar screen when you are that big and that good, the new version has some entertaining moments.

O'Neal's early story is rather familiar at this point. His father was in the army, so Shaq did some bouncing around when growing up. He lived in such places as New Jersey, Georgia, Germany and Texas. Along the way, his large size developed, eventually followed by some coordination.

That developed the attention, not surprisingly, of basketball recruiters, although O'Neal probably was a little overlooked by the public because of all the moving around. Still, longtime LSU coach Dale Brown found him and recruited him. O'Neal's father signed on when Brown said he planned to be part of Shaq's life for years to come in order to help him become a better person. By the way, Brown kept his word on that.

O'Neal became the NBA's first overall draft choice in 1992, and basketball fans can recite what happened next. Shaq suddenly had all sorts of freedom and money with their accompanying temptations. No doubt about it, Shaq had fun. He built big houses, drove fancy cars, went to clubs and parties and so on. It's no doubt a natural reaction to a childhood filled with military-level discipline.

O'Neal eventually jumped as a free agent to the Los Angeles Lakers, and won three straight championships there. He teamed up with Kobe Bryant along the way, although it didn't turn out to be a match made in heaven. Indeed, any one interested in Shaq probably went right to the section on the Lakers in order to see what O'Neal had to say about his ex-teammate now that retirement had freed him somewhat to speak freely. There's plenty to see here, as two of the game's biggest stars tried to coexist in a Los Angeles media environment that was ready to blow up over the slightest incident.

O'Neal always considered Bryant a bit of a loner, and someone who devoted almost all of his energy to basketball. That's quite a contrast to O'Neal, someone who put out rap albums and appeared in movies. When Bryant was hit with a sexual assault charge during a summer visit to Colorado in 2003, O'Neal says Bryant's relationship with his teammates changed. Kobe said he thought he didn't get enough support from his fellow Lakers. Interestingly enough, former Lakers executive Jerry West said in his own book this fall he had heard much the same thing about Bryant's behavior.

The book has received some other publicity for two particular anecdotes. One comes with the way O'Neal blames Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak, saying Kupchak lied to him during the negotiations and forced him out. It sounds like O'Neal had a legitimate complaint, although his reaction of forcing a trade comes off as a bit immature. Shaq also devotes just a little space to his lack of a relationship with the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It's almost as if both people were too shy to make the first move.

O'Neal bounced from Los Angeles to Miami (one more ring), to Phoenix, to Cleveland and finally to Boston. There are plenty of stories told about his life along the way, and it doesn't take a degree in psychology to see what Shaq has been throughout his life -- a big kid.

O'Neal is the type of guy that when he was in a Bentley dealership and Mike Tyson came in to buy two cars, Shaq had to buy three to top him. As he puts it, the thrill of buying such items was more important to him than the actual ownership of them. He was capable of great acts of kindness; one time as "Shaq-a-Claus," he bought out the entire video game collection at a Toys R Us to give to children. O'Neal also has a certain goofiness that's endearing. But at other times, O'Neal admits he wasn't particularly mature, which probably cost him his marriage.

O'Neal accomplished a great deal in his just-completed basketball career that no doubt will put him in the Hall of Fame some day. That's in spite of the fact that some might say he still was a bit of an underachiever. Shaq always seemed to battling injuries, perhaps in part because of the abuse his body took but perhaps also because he often seemed a bit out of shape. The obvious comparison is to Wilt Chamberlain, another giant who was a bit more driven to dominate his sport on an individual basis.

Still, as "Shaq Uncut" shows, O'Neal did pretty darn well on the court and had plenty of fun along the way. It sure doesn't sound like he'll ask for a do-over.

Three stars

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Review: Howard Cosell (2012)

2011-12-08T20:21:00.005-05:00

By Mark Ribowsky

Many famous and successful people are on the insecure side. Howard Cosell, though, took that character trait to unprecedented heights.

That's the biggest impression given by author Mark Ribowsky in his book, "Howard Cosell." It's a sprawling, comprehensive look at one of the great personalities in television history.

Those under the age of, say, 40, have no strong recollection of Cosell. You really had to see it to believe it. Broadcasting never has had a career arc quite like it.

Cosell was a lawyer who wanted the fame that came with a career in broadcasting, so he traded time on legal documents for lugging a tape recorder around ball parks and stadiums to conduct radio interviews. His distinctive voice and huge intellect quickly set him apart from anyone else in the business.

While Cosell had all sorts of aspects to his professional life, he'll be best remembered for two areas. Cosell worked boxing matches for ABC sports, where he developed a relationship with Muhammad Ali. That proved beneficial to both parties, but especially Ali. When the champion was stripped of his title for refusing to enter military service, Cosell was one of the few media members to defend Ali's right to make a living. The announcer proved to be right, and he's remembered for it to this day.

Then Cosell turned up on something called "Monday Night Football," lasted more than a decade as one of the announcers. Ribowsky brings to life those days when those weekly broadcasts were an event, and then some. The ratings were enormous, and Cosell was a lightning rod for attention.

The problem was that there, like in almost everything he did, Cosell drew an emotional reaction from the public -- good and bad. Lots loved him, lots hated him. How many announcers get death threats just for doing their job? Cosell did.

All of that attention took its toll. Stories have been making the rounds in NFL press boxes about Cosell partaking in alcoholic beverages at times during games, and Ribowsky finds confirmation here. There were all sorts of plenty of three-martini lunches and dinners, along the way too. It was a different era, but there is head-shaking information about the problem here.

That may have been at least part of the reason why the private Cosell seems so much less than admirable. The author piles on the stories about Cosell. There are stunningly petty and mean-spirited moments with co-workers. Even friends and admirers were stunned by the broadcaster's behavior at times. For a man who thought the print media was becoming more irrelevant, Cosell sure knew every word written about him anywhere in the U.S. (emphasis on anywhere). It's difficult reading.

There's plenty on the record about Cosell, and many characters from ABC have written autobiographies over the years. Ribowsky adds his own interviews with such people as Frank Deford, who supply perspective and insight. It's certainly a sad ending, with Cosell withering away as a bitter recluse rather than as a raging elder statesman.

Along the way, Ribowsky comes up with a fact in passing that seems quite remarkable. Don Meredith left an announcing job on Monday Night Football in the summer of 1974, and the author reports that O.J. Simpson was ready to quit football if he could get that job. Considering Simpson was coming off his 2,003-yard season with the Buffalo Bills, it's amazing that he would consider such a move at that point in his life. Either the author got some bad information about the timing of such a move, or he has a big scoop on his hands.

By the way, Ribowsky's best work in the book may come in a chapter in which Cosell played only a secondary role. That's the one called "Munich," concerning the terrorist attack on the 1972 Olympic Games which resulted in the death of 11 members of the Israeli team. It's absolutely gripping.

At 430 pages or so, and those pages are packed with type, it's a lot to get through. The author uses quite a few words that aren't exactly common. It's appropriate to use a big vocabulary about Cosell, who was known for that, but some uses of the language may bring the reader to a halt every so often.

While Cosell's warts are fully exposed here, Ribowsky's biggest point might be that there are no Howard Cosells on the horizon, as the relationship between leagues and rights-holders has gotten cozier over the years to the point where an independent voice like Cosell's would be a shock. And that's something of a shame.

"Howard Cosell" doesn't make the subject a very sympathetic character, but it's hard to look away. This may not be for the young readers out there, Still, if you want to see what the circus was like back then, this is a good admission ticket.

Four stars

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Review: Life After Favre (2009)

2011-11-21T10:17:00.002-05:00

By Phil Hanrahan

When an author of a book on a sports season picks a year, he's subject to the whims of fate. Sometimes he or she gets lucky, sometimes he doesn't.

Phil Hanrahan, the author of "Life After Favre," was rather unlucky.

He started off nicely off. He decided to move to Green Bay for a few months in 2008 and write a book about the Packers. When he came up with the idea, Brett Favre was apparently headed toward retirement with Aaron Rodgers taking over the quarterback position of a team that was one pass away from a Super Bowl the previous year.

But then Favre decided he wasn't done after all, starting a drama that Shakespeare would have stolen for his next play had he been around to see it. Favre and the Packers had a public disagreement, and so the public took sides on whether to keep their beloved quarterback or move on with Rodgers. The team's management opted to let Favre move on to the Jets via trade eventually, angering part of the fan base.

That gets the start of Hanrahan's book off to a good start, even if we know how the story turns out -- especially a couple of years after publication. But once the quarterback controversy settles down a bit, as Rodgers plays pretty well and Favre has his ups and downs in New York, the book heads in a few different directions.

Hanrahan tries something of an inside-and-out approach to the story. He does get some media access to the team, allowing him to attend the odd practice and news conference as well as to conduct some interviews. But for the most part, Hanrahan looks at the team from the outside, along the lines of how a Packer fan might.

Indeed, the best parts of the book are the ones that cover Packer Nation. Football fans know that the Packers play in the smallest city in the National Football League by far and that the team is technically owned by the community. Packers fans are known for their devotion no matter where they live, and Hanrahan talks to quite a few of them during the course of the book. He even goes to the hometowns of Favre and a couple of the current players. The fans are devoted but not without perspective, so the author paints a very pleasant picture there. No wonder most of the reviews on Amazon.com are very positive. Hanrahan also does some good work on Packers' history; he happened to pick a hotel that used to house Vince Lombardi's office, which served as inspiration.

As for the season itself, it didn't work out well for the author or the team. After a decent start, the Packers slowly unraveled through a string of close losses. Green Bay finished 6-10, well out of the playoffs. The portions of the book are rather detailed and don't date particularly well. At the point of three years out, it is easy to see the mind wander while reading. It also would have been nice to have had a roster and week-by-week record of the team in the appendix for reference.

Hanrahan gets one final bit of bad luck at the end, when he writes that Favre had retired again from football and everyone was moving on from the drama of 2008. As we know, Favre wrote a sequel to the drama by coming back to football in the summer of 2009. There were no happy endings for him in Minnesota either, but the Packers got one under Rodgers in February 2011 when they won another Super Bowl.

"Life After Favre" comes across as a little unfocused in spots as the story bounces around a bit with only some attention paid to chronology. Still, it's a pleasant look at a franchise that is rather special in a number of ways, and thus should still be read and liked by those in Wisconsin and elsewhere who bleed green and gold.

Three stars

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Review: West by West (2011)

2011-11-05T00:43:00.003-04:00

By Jerry West and Jonathan Coleman

"West by West" is subtitled "My Charmed, Tormented Life." It's fair to say Jerry West isn't kidding with that one.

Yikes.

The former basketball legend, on and off the court, is out with an autobiography. Those looking for a retelling of his exploits should look elsewhere. This is a very human story of the proverbial tormented soul who just happens to be a basketball life. It's fair to say there haven't been many autobiographies like in any part of the bookstore, let alone in sports where few have the guts to let their guard down to put something like this for public view.

Stories of West's odd behavior have come out over the last 30 years or so. There were reports that West couldn't bear to watch the Los Angeles Lakers teams he assembled actually play basketball most of the time. He'd drive around, or go home, or sit in an empty movie theater instead. The logical thought at the time was that West was so competitive that it was difficult for him to watch an event in which he had a vested interest, but had no way of controlling its outcome. This was a man who resigned from a general manager's job with the Lakers, and didn't attend the farewell news conference.

It turns out there was more to the story than that. A lot more.

West reveals here how little love there was in his household growing up, as his father beat him. He tried to take refuge by following his older (by several years) brother, who everyone loved and who went off to Korea and was killed in action. Combine those two developments, and you have enough information to keep a team of psychologists busy for months ... if West had been willing to listen to them for long.

Basketball became a refuge from that life, and he quickly became enveloped in it. He was an All-American at West Virginia, and an All-Pro with the Lakers. You know the NBA's official logo? That's West's image. The superstar made it to one NCAA final and many NBA finals, and lost all but one of them. As Gary Smith pointed out in a fascinating article in Sports Illustrated, today that sort of record would force talk-show callers to come up with new ways of saying "choker." West's nickname in his playing days, though, was "Mr. Clutch," and there was no sarcasm involved.

No matter how brilliant West was, and he certainly was all of that, he always thought he could do more to have helped his team win. Even the great UCLA coach John Wooden tried to convince them that he shouldn't take all the blame for losing since he knew he couldn't take all the credit for winning. West realized Wooden was right, but just couldn't bring himself to make that emotional step.

Those seeking inside basketball stories will find a few here. West provides some on his own, such as the tale about how Laker coach Phil Jackson never talked to West the GM. (Jackson didn't get along with the general manager with the Bulls, and thought it was a good working model apparently.) Co-author Jonathan Coleman also had the chance to talk to several of the key figures in West's basketball life to get their stories about their enigmatic boss. Other voices sometimes don't work well in autobiographies, but these fit in nicely.

Still, this is at root a story of a very human being, with flaws and phobias that any of us might have. Some of us hate surprises, but West is one of the few that, when greeted by a surprise birthday party, would turn around and walk out the door ... and then offer to pay for everything. West says it's wasn't one of his better moments. It's almost tough to read this, and raises all sorts of questions and thoughts in the reader's mind ... and not just about West.

The author says he has reached a tenuous peace with himself, which provides something of a happy ending to the story. West certainly deserves that. Writing a book like this probably wasn't easy -- it took about three years -- but certainly it must have been therapeutic to do it if not downright cathartic. "West by West" will forever change your viewpoint about this basketball legend, and it ranks with the most interesting books of the year.

Five stars

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Review: The Mets (2011)

2011-10-29T19:52:00.004-04:00

By Anthony McCarron and Anthony Martino

The New York Mets have been a lot of things over their 50 years of play. However, they haven't been boring most of the time.

That's the impression that comes across in a book put out by the New York Daily News this fall as the Mets wound up their 50th anniversary season. All of the highs, and many of the lows, are covered here.

The Mets had an unusual beginning in 1962. They came in as an expansion team and as a replacement to the moved Giants and Dodgers. The Mets figured to struggle, so they opted to look to as many familiar names as possible to attract attention. That included the hiring of Casey Stengel, the former Yankee manager, as skipper. The strategy probably meant the Mets were unnecessarily bad in those early days.

When the team finally become competent, it happened all at once. The Mets went from ninth to first on a group of fine young pitchers, and shocked the baseball world in 1969. The authors spend plenty of time on that particular year, and for good reason. It will be remembered by the fans who were around to see it until the day they die.

The story has the usual baseball ups and downs from there. The team made the World Series in 1973, and won the championship in 1986. New York was back in the Fall Classic in 2000, losing to the Yankees. Those years receive plenty of coverage with almost weekly updates on the team's play, while the bad years get passed through relatively quickly. In fact, in some cases it's difficult to identify which dreary season is being covered.

The authors, who write for the Daily News, obviously know their stuff, and they do a nice job of putting seasons into perspective. The Mets have the same big-market advantages as some other teams, but haven't used them well at times. That's resulted in lots of excitement, for better or for worse. In other words, McCarron and Martino don't ignore the bad times.

The Daily News obviously emptied its photo files for this project, so the book, which runs more than 300 pages, has plenty of pictures. The color shots are phased in from about 10-12 years ago. The shots hit the major figures and events, even though there aren't a great many pictures that comes across as particularly striking.

The biggest drawback to the book might be the lack of fresh perspective on matters. The chapters are broken up into decades, and at the end of a couple of them, ex-Mets check in with their memories of the team. A few others also pop up in the main text with references to 2010 interviews. It would have been nice to have done a lot more of those conversations, so that the book doesn't read like someone simply went through the clippings file for information.

By the way, Ron Darling writes a very good foreword to the book that gets it off to a fine start. It would have been nice to hear more from him.

"The Mets" is a reasonably good effort overall -- nothing groundbreaking, but pleasant and informative. It would make a good gift for rabid fans of the team.

Three stars

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Review: The Best American Sports Writing 2011

2011-10-26T14:39:00.004-04:00

Edited by Jane Leavy

Glenn Stout, the series editor of "The Best American Sports Writing" annual publications, deserves a little credit here.

Last year, when I asked in a review on this site about whether it would be good to have a woman serve as a year's guest editor, he commented personally that he had tried to do so in the past but couldn't find an appropriate person to agree.

Since then, Stout found such a woman in Jane Leavy, who has written books on Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle among other works. What's more, she gave me something to write about.

The Sports Writing series is also a highlight of the reading year. It offers plenty of surprising stories that are worthwhile mixed in with some favorites I've read during the year. It can be difficult to review an anthology like that; it's tough to come up with new ways to say how good it is. Leavy gives us all something to consider here, and in doing so shows that the guest editor really can make a difference in the book.

In the introduction, Leavy sets the tone right away by saying that she likes to read about the risk-takers in life, even if they might not fit into the proverbial neat box when it comes to sports. Her selection of articles certainly reflect that.

Whether or not that sort of approach works here is rather subjective. For me, at least, I had the feeling that a few of the articles were not quite a good fit for what traditionally had been included. It's not that the stories aren't well crafted, but might not work for this audience.

For example, I wasn't too interested in an article on someone who works as a mountaineering guide, or a horse whisperer, or a dog trainer. A story by ABC News on abuse by swimming coaches of their athletes is important, but tough to judge without the pictures and the narration. While I'm not limited in my interest to mainstream sports, stories on BASE jumping, fishing and skateboarding didn't grab me either. (I know, I know -- I should just shut up and read when John McPhee writes anything.)

But then comes along a story on the strange life of Darryl Dawkins, the former hoop man-child who is now, of all things, a coach. S.L. Price explores the game of lacrosse in a way that explained much to me, someone who covers lacrosse. Dusty Baker tells Howard Bryant about almost everything, including wearing diapers in the clubhouse after prostate surgery. Patrick Hruby writes about the history of the Madden video game.

And the book closes like a Springsteen concert, with one hit topping the last. Mark Kram Jr.'s story on a boxer's death goes in unexpected ways, Chris Ballard's piece on a Stanford crew team member left me weepy, and Wright Thompson puts a human face on the Chilean miners who were trapped underground. The last story about a transsexual sports writer hit me personally; by coincidence, I knew his/her wife about 20 years ago.

As a whole, then, "The Best American Sports Writing 2011" might not have quite as hits for me as in past years. But when someone truly gets a hold of a hanging fastball, the majestic flight over the fence is a sight to behold.

Four stars

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Review: Between the Lies (2011)

2011-10-23T15:42:00.003-04:00

By Marv Levy

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write: "I was up late last night, finishing Marv Levy's novel."

There are two surprises there. Not too many football coaches write novels, although we have known Levy was different than the stereotype for years. And I read about one novel every three years, at most.

When word came out that Levy had indeed written a novel, though, I figured it was worth a read. Indeed it is.

"Between the Lies" deals mostly with the mythical story of a couple of expansion teams, the Los Angeles Leopards and the Portland Pioneers. According to the novel, the Leopards arrived in the NFL when the Rams moved to St. Louis, and the Pioneers followed to balance the conferences.

It's a rather breezy tale, covering a handful of football seasons as the two squads work their way up the ladder. Serving as the "moral balance" of the story is sportswriter Mel Herbert, who seems to represent all that's good about the game. By an amazing coincidence, his wife has the same first name as Levy's real-life wife, Fran. Herbert slowly discovers instances of cheating, or at least bending the rules, along the way.

When the description of the book came out about the plot, it came across as rather dark. But it's hardly that. Levy uses a couple of devices to accomplish that. One is in the language of the team equipment manager, who is a friend of Herbert. You can tell Levy got a big kick out of writing the mangled sentences for the character.

Then there are the names of the characters. It doesn't take much to go from the real Jim Kelly to the fake Kelly James here. The list is a long one, and isn't limited to members of the Bills' Super Bowl teams (Andre Reed, Thurman Thomas, etc.) Such people as John Elway and Archie Manning also come up. Former Cowboys' executive Gil Brandt was turned into Brant Gilbert. If you know something about the front office of the Bills, there are even more laughs to be found; I'm sure the real-life Denny Lynch, former Bills' P.R. person, got a big smile out of the way his name turned up here.

Levy says he's been jotting down anecdotes for the book for some time, and the stories reflect that. Some of the incidents are variations of stories that really did happen, while others at least were rumored to have happened. It's also fun to guess how much Levy used from certain people in putting together characters. Let's see -- a loud, media-friendly coach named Randy Dolbermeier who didn't get along with the head coach. That sounds a bit like the relationship that Levy had with assistant coach Chuck Dickerson. Maybe Mel Herbert is a bit of a tribute to Los Angeles football writer Mel Durslag, who was close to Bills' owner Ralph Wilson during Durslag's career.

The book sails along pretty nicely, and even gives the ex-coach a chance to write a little poetry along the way. I'm not sure there are any deep insights into how football is played, but that's fine. It's fair to say that most football fans, particularly those who followed Levy's career, will enjoy "Between the Lies."

Four stars

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Review: Hockey Prospectus 2011-12 (2011)

2011-10-21T00:07:00.005-04:00

Edited by Timo Seppa

The Baseball Prospectus annual has become one of the must-reads of the spring for baseball fans. Not only has it introduced new statistical measures into the game and made excellent projections of the coming seasons for teams and players, it's also filled with good writing and a sense of humor.

Reading the Hockey Prospectus, then, is something like watching a little brother grow up. You know the gene pool is good, and it's just a matter of seeing what develops here. This is the second year that I've read "Hockey Prospectus," and the 2011-12 edition is definitely headed in the right direction -- if you can find it. While the baseball edition fills up the bookstores, the hockey book is nowhere to be found even in Buffalo -- so Amazon.com is a good option.

The format is reasonably familiar for those who know the baseball book. Each team gets an essay, and each player of consequence (one who should play in even a handful of games in the coming season) gets a few sentences. No, the hockey version isn't the size of a medium-sized city's phone book like in baseball, but that's OK. Hockey farm systems are filled with players who don't really matter much in the grand scheme of things.

The end of the book has some essays as well as a few tables. A list of the top prospects in hockey, from 1 to 105 (five goalies are ranked separately) are included there.

I don't follow hockey as closely as I used to watch it, so what I'm seeking is information on trends for teams and players. The writers here use a variety of tools to do that. Some of the statistical formulas are a little difficult to comprehend from a distance, but they seem to be pointing toward some good conclusions -- which is the important part.

Some of the team essays definitely shine. It's interesting to read about how the Ranges and Blues seem ready for a step forward. Meanwhile the Coyotes were sort of trapped into not matching a bad contract for a goalie and couldn't replace him -- and are thus probably sentenced to missing the playoffs.

Plus, while the stars take care of themselves, the authors go out of their way to identify some of the good two-way players who make a decent living checking their way through life on the third line. Each player has a projected scoring line, useful for fantasy players, I suppose, although with the season now underway it's more a good tool for the rest of us.

The down side here is a bit of inconsistency. The writing is rather uneven, whether it concerns players or coaches. Some of the essays don't really work too well, whether it's because they aren't too relevant or are too technical.

That ties into the next point, which deals with numbers. Some of the authors assume the reader is not only familiar with terms raised in the book, but they rely on methods used by outside sources that are very unfamiliar. By the book's end I was getting to the point where I understood a bit of Corsi Ratings. But at times there's a lot to take in here, and some certainly won't have the patience to do so.

But the key is that the "Hockey Prospectus" seems to be getting more comfortable in its own skin. The writers are getting more comfortable with the vocabulary of their books, and they are often willing to consider a variety of factors that go into a player's or team's development.

This gets the same rating as last season because I don't issue half-stars, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. This is on its way to becoming an annual purchase.

Three stars

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Review: Fenway 1912 (2011)

2011-10-16T22:25:00.005-04:00

By Glenn Stout

Fenway Park just completed its 100th season of baseball, even if it didn't get to host any games deep into October this time around. Sounds like a good idea to see how everything got started in that part of Boston.

Glenn Stout might have had that same thought about three years ago. That's when he started working on "Fenway 1912," a very detailed and well-written account of the Red Sox' first season in their current home.

The Red Sox had been rather dormant after a strong start to their history, which included a win in the first-ever World Series in 1903. But the franchise's fortunes slipped, and the Huntington Ave. Grounds were clearly not good enough to compete against some of the other stadiums that were going up around the country for major league baseball teams.

The Red Sox bought an oddly-shaped plot of land in the Fenway district of Boston, the architect, construction crew and groundskeepers went to work in the fall of 1911, and a stadium rose in close to record time. It was more or less ready for Opening Day of the 1912 season, although a few things still needed work. But ... there was a wall present in left field, which at the time had an embankment firming it up that caused something of a "cliff" in front of it. Eventually, the wall would become Fenway Park's more identifiable characteristic; the cliff eventually was flattened.

Once the season starts, Stout gets to work on the day-by-day account of the team. Luckily for Boston and the narrative, it was a great season. The Red Sox were the surprise team of baseball and easily won the American League pennant. From there it was on to the World Series, where an absolutely classic matchup with the New York Giants took place. It may not be the best Series ever played, but it might have been the closest.

There's plenty to like here. Stout does a nice job of making comparisons of century-old events and players to modern times, which is very useful. I assume that much of the information on the building of Fenway Park is presented to modern audiences for the first time here, thanks to the author's research. He also makes some interesting speculation, including notes that Joe Wood's arm trouble seems to have started in 1912 and not later on.

It's easy to get caught up in the finish. Those who have read Mike Vaccaro's good book on the 1912 season in general know some of the stories about that year, but that really doesn't matter too much.

About my only complaint probably deals with a necessary part of the story. It's difficult to get into architectural and construction matters and keep things interesting. So, no doubt the first 100 pages or so (not counting offseason baseball news) are relatively slow reading in spots for many. And clearly, it would be helpful to be at least somewhat familiar with Fenway Park.

But it's rather clear that Stout has completed his goal of chronicling year one of Fenway Park nicely. And his point that the main reason the ballpark has survived this long is that it has adapted to the times is a good one indeed -- and that those adaptations started before most people know it. "Fenway 1912" is a very good addition to the baseball library, and Stout ("Red Sox Century," "Impossible Dreams") continues to be an impressive historian of all things Red Sox.

Four stars

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Review: The Last Icon (2011)

2011-10-08T20:12:00.003-04:00

By Steven Travers

It could be easily argued that Tom Seaver has been a little underrated by the public over the past couple of decades. Yes, he's an obvious Hall of Famer after a brilliant baseball career, mostly with the New York Mets. (Seaver wasn't called "The Franchise" for nothing.) He was good, dependable and relatively quotable in a career that spanned about two decades. He has disappeared a bit over the past several years, mostly sticking to his California vineyard and not being particularly visible.

Therefore, it would be nice to have a good biography to remind us of his career. "The Last Icon," though, isn't it.

Author Steven Travers spends most of the 288 pages glorifying Seaver and his career. I'm not sure the Seaver family would enjoy this recounting, perhaps rejecting it for a lack of modesty. The text reaches the point where the book becomes stunning to read in a number of ways.

Problems? Hmmm, let's see:

* It takes less than a page to get the idea of what's to come. For example, the second paragraph has "He was the primary, dominant figure in a story generally accepted to be the greatest in athletic history, so impossible it is still viewed as much an act of God as an earthly event." It's easy to guess we're not going to get much balance here.

Seaver gets credit for not cashing in on the boom in salaries in the free agency era, although the financial details going on aren't really explained well. He also gets frequent praise for being about the only faithfully married player in the game at the time, which at the least would require much research.

* There's a certain mean-spiritedness that comes up a lot here, mostly in the form of award results (Cy Young, Most Valuable Player, etc.) In 1976, Seaver won 14 games. The award went to, in the author's words, "a soft-tossing southpaw from Brea, California, Randy Jones of the San Diego Padres, a figure barely recalled by history who also could not carry Seaver's dirty jockstrap." If you want to make the case that Seaver's achievements were underrated because of a lack of batting support -- we're getting better at realizing that now, but we didn't think about it back then -- fine. But there's no reason to get nasty about it. Jones was still a major-league pitcher, an achievement under most circumstances. There are a few other cases of criticism here, such as Tommy John being unfit to finish ahead of Seaver in anything let alone voting for the Cy Young.

* And if you are going to argue that Seaver didn't get much offensive support at times, show me and don't tell me. There's never any statistic for a given year cited, which hurts the credibility of the argument.

* There are a few head-scratching moments in here concerning baseball. Seaver is said to throw at least 99 miles per hour on several occasions, and at one point turned it up noticeably during the 1969 season to well above triple-digits. The catch is the speed guns didn't really become too common until the mid-1970's, so there's no good way to determine how fast Seaver was then. But he usually doesn't appear on a list of the fastest pitchers ever despite being high in strikeouts, and a 105 mph fastball (which would be about the fastest ever) certainly would have been noticed.

Meanwhile, the section about free agency in baseball is misrepresented here. Travers seems to think there was a direct connection between the granting of free agency and the Curt Flood case. Flood lost that case, and it wasn't until arbitrator Peter Seitz struck down the reserve clause for free agency to arrive. Interestingly, the backing quotes get the story right.

* There are some odd historical lessons drawn here. Comparing the 1969 and 1973 seasons, Travers writes, "... the 1970s -- a period of long hair, drug abuse, sexual immorality, and a lack of patriotism unmatched in American history -- resulted in sporting scenes more resembling a Latin American soccer mob." You mean it was that different in 1969? Ever hear of Woodstock?

Along similar lines, New York is described this way before Game Three of the '69 Series: "It was the most exciting sporting scene the city had ever known, and probably the most fevered sense of anticipation for an athletic event in American or even world history." That covers a lot of ground, including World Cups.

* Travers supplies one last bit of exaggeration about the story near the end. In discussing Seaver's career, he is surprised that no one had done films or documentaries about him. Then the author adds, "Curiously, the 'quintessential Seaver book' was never written ... until, finally, this one!" I think that's tongue-in-cheek.

The classic Seaver book wouldn't have needed to take an unrealistic approach to the story. The facts do well enough alone. And it would have been nice to have gotten a few fresh voices here in the form of new interviews of teammates and opponents, but there are only a couple to be found.

"The Last Icon" might appeal to those looking for a retelling of some of Seaver's story, since there are facts and quotes collected. But, it could have been done with more objectivity and presented in a less annoying fashion,

Two stars

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Review: Born to Play (2009)

2011-09-28T16:21:00.003-04:00

By Dustin Pedroia with Edward J. Delaney

Longtime readers of this blog know there are two rules that are generally good signs that an autobiography is not going to be particularly interesting.

1. The subject only recently started his or her career, meaning there are plenty of more events coming and little perspective has been gained on what has happened already.

2. Space is filled up with comments by others.

When it comes to Dustin Pedroia's book, "Born to Play," we go check and check on that list.

That's not to say Pedroia isn't worthy of admiration among baseball fans. He's always been small of stature, but determined to be a top-flight ball player. Pedroia shows here that he's always worked hard, always had some talent, always had a chip on his shoulder for those who thought he couldn't make it to the next level.

That was true when Pedroia was playing baseball as a child outside out Sacramento with his older brothers. Then it was on to high school, where he was a star but didn't get drafted by the pros. Then he landed a scholarship at Arizona State, where he surprised everyone with an excellent career.

He was a second-round draft choice of the Boston Red Sox, and still had doubters that he was a major league. The rookie or the year award in 2007 (with a world championship) and a most valuable player trophy in 2008 shut those people up.

You can see how Pedroia has used the comments from others for motivation. Maybe that's why many baseball people think Pedroia is off the charts when it comes to intangibles.

He covers his life quickly enough here. Each chapter has an addition written by someone else, including former and present teammates and coaches. It seems like everyone has drawn the same conclusion -- Pedroia is like your pesky little brother who won't shut up, but you still love him for his attitude.

This book originally came out in 2009, no doubt to capitalize on the MVP season. That's why it has filtered down to appearing in the dollar stores. Certainly, "Born to Play" is worth a dollar, or even a few dollars more. But, it would have been better from a literary standpoint if he had waited a few years. This effort is for Pedroia's biggest fans, and that's about it.

Two stars

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Review; A Moment in Time (2011)

2011-09-28T00:34:00.000-04:00

By Ralph Branca with David Ritz

This is definitely the right book to read this particular week.

On October 3, we hit the 60th anniversary of one of the most famous home runs in baseball history. Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants hit a walk-off home run off Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the 1951 National League pennant. (It's also the 60th birthday of Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, and my Hall of Fame sister, although that's besides the point.) It capped a frantic comeback by the Giants. Throw in the whole Dodgers/Giants rivalry in New York City, and it's a moment that won't be forgotten.

Branca certainly won't forget it. It hasn't been easy living with that moment from 1951. Those emotions probably are the centerpiece of Branca's book, "A Moment in Time."

Branca's career naturally was overshadowed by that one pitch. He broke into professional baseball straight out of high school, and was one of the game's best pitchers for the latter half of the 1940's. He pitched in All-Star Games, pitched in the World Series, etc. For a kid who grew up just outside the New York City limits in Mount Vernon, it was a pretty good deal. How many major leaguers saw their mothers prepare breakfast for them most of the time?

Books about the Dodgers of that era have been plentiful over the years, but it's interesting to read Branca's take on the people events of the time. He didn't like executive Branch Rickey or manager Burt Shotton, admired manager Leo Durocher's smarts even though they couldn't be more different, and loved teammates like Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges and Pee Wee Reese.

Indeed, those Dodgers teams were part of a unique social experiment, as Robinson integrated major league baseball. Branca had a front-row seat, and he leaves little doubt about how much he admired Robinson for his play on the field and his conduct off of it.

Charlie Dressen became the Dodgers' manager in 1951, and he had a doghouse as big as a kennel. Players kept going in and out of it. Brooklyn seemed to win in spite of Dressen, who was focused on finishing ahead of the Giants, now managed by Durocher. When the Dodgers' double-digit lead started to slip away, Dressen turned up the pressure on his players instead of trying to let the air out of the tires a bit. Brooklyn played .500 ball, but the Giants won game after game -- setting up you know what.

It's fair to say not many people know the story from there, and Branca supplies the details. He suffered an injury the following year, and was never the same pitcher. Branca was out of baseball in a few years, and went on to the insurance business where he tried to live happily ever after.

That was tough, since he was told in 1953 that the Giants had been stealing signs down the stretch during the 1951 season. A telescope was placed in the Giants' offices in dead center. Branca opted to keep quiet about it, but was redeemed in 2001 when the Wall Street Journal exposed the story. A fine book came out with the full details a few years later, throwing the entire season into a whole new light. Thompson, by the way, actually became friends with Thomson.

The book goes by quite quickly, checking in at a little more than 200 pages. It probably could be argued that Branca waited a bit too long to write his story. Not too many fans remember the Dodgers and Giants in their New York City days at this point. I noticed a few typos that will cause some editor to pound a fist into a desk, although they don't seem to be a major problem.

Branca comes off as a bright guy who can afford to be very honest at this point in his life. He'd still probably like that one pitch back, but he had a good life with a nice family. Sounds like he's more or less at peace, which is nice. He certainly deserves that, especially under the circumstances.

We tend to stick to stereotypes of heroes and goats in our society, even if they are without much of a foundation. "A Moment in Time" will leave a reader with some appreciation of that, and will help those interested in the era to understand it a bit better.

Three stars

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Review: Moment of Glory (2010)

2011-09-21T23:22:00.003-04:00

By John Feinstein

It might take a moment to realize what John Feinstein is talking about when reading the subtitle to his 2010 book, "The Year Underdogs Ruled Golf."

A clue is right on the cover, as shown above. There's a golfer obviously celebrating a victory. Some golf fans might recognize the man on the green as Mike Weir, but maybe not a ton of them outside of Canada.

It's Weir, all right, obviously thrilled about winning the Masters in Augusta. In 2003. That's the year chronicled by Feinstein, a prolific and talented reporter and writer. It's taken a while, but Feinstein has come up with another very readable effort in his usual thorough style.

The 2003 season was unusual for its time because Tiger Woods wasn't much of a factor in the major tournaments. Feinstein starts the book with the story about how Woods went about firing his swing coach at the time, Butch Harmon. Woods, a constant at majors in that era, rebuilt his swing and didn't really come too close to winning of the major championships in 2003. Thus, the door was open, and four men marched through it.

After Weir took the Masters, Jim Furyk had the moment of his career to date (as this is written) by taking the U.S. Open. Ben Curtis followed in the British Open, winning in the first major he ever played in. Shaun Micheel was only a slightly more likely winner in the PGA.

There's no such thing as an overnight success on the pro golf tour, except for the odd superstar like Woods or Phil Mickelson. Usually it's a long grind, filled with stops and starts. Feinstein gives short biographies of these four champions as they went into the tournament. In their own way, all four are interesting stories.

Then it's on to the tournaments, and Feinstein always does a good job of bringing such events to life. The distance between now and 2003 almost help here, and the course of events has been more or less forgotten. Some fans might remember there was a Masters playoff that year, and most will remember Micheel's approach shot on the 18th hole that wrapped up the PGA.

Feinstein also spends a bit of time on the players who finished second. Had fate acted a little differently, we might have better memories of Len Mattiace, Stephen Leaney, Thomas Bjorn and Chad Campbell. Only Campbell seemed to recover fully, and Bjorn needed eight years to contend again in the British Open this past year.

The first 300 pages or so of the book go up through 2003. It was easy to guess that there would be a little more examination of the years following those major championships. But the careers of the four men are covered well enough, and it's obviously they still enjoy reliving the moment.

Feinstein had planned to get this book out a couple of years earlier than he did. However, he had the chance to write a book with U.S. Open runner-up Rocco Mediate, and since that one was a best-seller it's hard to criticize that move. Feinstein also had major bypass surgery along the way; that's been known to change a person's plans in a hurry.

This book probably would have sold better in 2004 or 2005. Still, it's the proverbial good, easy read for golf fans. "Moment of Glory" works more than well enough to be worth your time.

Four stars

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Review: It's What's Inside the Lines That Counts (2010)

2011-09-18T14:50:00.004-04:00

By Fay Vincent

Call this the third of a three-game series.

Fay Vincent, the former baseball commissioner, has been part of an oral history project in association with the Baseball Hall of Fame. He's sat down with some important figures in the game's history in order to get first-person impressions of the events of their time.

Then, Vincent did a little editing of the transcripts, and put out books more or less grouped by era. "It's What Inside the Lines That Counts" is the third in the series. I haven't read the first two books in the series, but my guess is that they worked a little better than this one. The third comes across as somewhat nondescript.

Vincent has chapters of conversations with 10 different people here. The list is a good one in terms of talent, including Tom Seaver, Willie McCovey, Don Baylor, umpire Bruce Froemming, Juan Marichal, Dick Williams, Earl Weaver, Cal Ripken, Ozzie Smith and labor leader Marvin Miller.

The conversations are cleaned up a bit for the print version, but the transition isn't quite seemless. There are a couple of mistakes, such as calling Tommy Davis "Tony Davis" during the McCovey chapter, and the material jumps around a bit.

The quality of the material is rather spotty. Some interview subjects are bound to be better than others; the ones who draw in others and tell stories about famous incidents in their career do the best. Seaver comes across quite well here, as does Baylor. Ripken isn't shy, but his story has been told numerous times over the years and feels rather familiar. McCovey and Marichal both left me a little cold. Miller, by the way, might seem like a curious choice, but those who at least have a passing interest in off-the-field activities will enjoy his take on the rise of the Players' Association.

Vincent supplies the introductions to the chapters. He's rather enthusiastic about the game in person, and covers the bases in that format. It's a little difficult to tell how he does an interviewer, since this isn't presented in the classic Q&A format. But the stories, at least, move along well enough most of the time to make this an easy read, and he deserves credit for that.

It's easy to guess that this idea works better with older players with less familiar stories. And it certainly will have some value to researchers down the road. Still, judging "It's What's Inside the Lines That Counts" at the time it was written, it's easy to say there are better ways to get an education about baseball history from the 1970's and 1980's.

Two stars

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Review: Nothing Comes Easy (2009)

2011-09-10T13:17:00.003-04:00

By Y.A. Tittle with Kristine Setting Clark

There aren't many people known as Y.A. in this world. I think Yelberton Abraham has the distinction cornered, more of less. For those who were football fans about 50 years ago, particularly in the New York City area, the name of Y.A. Tittle was simply magic. He was the leader of some great Giants' teams that made the NFL championship game for three straight years.

It's usually good for any Hall of Fame player to get his life story down on paper for historical purposes. Then again, it's easy to wonder if Tittle should have bothered. For "Nothing Comes Easy" comes off as quickly produced and rarely insightful.

Tittle came out of a Texas high school to play college ball at LSU. He signed with the All-American Football Conference after graduation, going from Baltimore to San Francisco. When the AAFC folded after 1949's season, Tittle played in the NFL.

It was a different era, obviously. The days of having a clear number one quarterback under all circumstances was still in the future. Tittle often had to share playing time with someone like Frankie Albert in San Francisco; Albert was a very good player himself. When Tittle did get the chance to play, he was fine. But he didn't get to start all of his team's games until 1955, which says a lot.

Tittle was supposedly close to finished when he landed with the Giants in a trade before the 1961 season. He again had to share time with Charlie Conerly, but his effectivness went up a notch. When Conerly retired after the '61 season, Tittle was absolutely brilliant in the next two seasons, throwing 33 and 36 touchdown passes. The Giants were one of the NFL's great offensive machines in that era. In 1963 alone, they scored 30 or more points in 10 of 14 games.

Clearly, there's plenty of discuss here, but Tittle isn't up to that task. He provides a little insight into what was going through his mind at certain times, but there aren't many surprises given along the way. What's more, it's a bit odd that there are very few anecdotes told about personalities of coaches, teammates, games, etc.

At one point, Tittle says a win over Detroit in 1952 was "one of the most memorable games I ever played in." There's a basic explanation given for that a few paragraphs later, as the 49ers only had 28 available players but still shut out the Lions, 28-0. But the initial comment certainly cried out for a fuller and more immediate explanation.

Meanwhile, there are some odd mistakes and omissions. There's a reference to the College All-Star Game as if it were still taking place; it was discontinued in the mid-1970's. Sometimes scores don't quite add up, probably due to typos. It's a little shocking that the 1963 regular season, Tittle's greatest statistically, is virtually ignored.

A couple of other notes: This book has 34 chapters in 208 pages of text, which in this case is a good sign that nothing will be covered particularly in depth. And if you are looking for much about the rest of his life off the field, forget it. This is subtitled "My Life in Football," so references to family members once Tittle becomes an adult are made in passing.

Tittle wrote an autobiography in 1964 called "Y.A. Tittle: I Pass!" in 1964. This updated version only supplies a few pages on what has happened to him since then. We only learn that he was happy to make the Hall of Fame, and that he's glad to have played in his era rather than today.

"Nothing Comes Easy" isn't offensive at all, and takes no time to read. Even so, it reveals little about this football hero. Even old-time Giants' fans will come away disappointed.

Two stars

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Review: The Games That Changed the Game (2010)

2011-09-08T23:51:00.003-04:00

By Ron Jaworski with Greg Cosell and David Plaut

There's little doubt that Ron Jaworski has established a niche in pro football broadcasting as an expert analyst. He's served in a variety of roles, including his present one as a commentator on ESPN's Monday Night Football. Jaworski will tell you what's going on, and why it happened that way.

A book must have seemed like a good way for the ex-pro quarterback to expand his horizons a bit. Thus, with the help of two producers at NFL Films (Greg Cosell and David Plaut), "The Games That Changed The Game" was created.

The premise is reasonably simple. Jaworski and his co-authors take a detailed look at the seven of the biggest innovations to take place in pro football in the past 50 years. They take one game in details that's representative of that innovation, and break it down almost play by play.

The choices are fine. For the record, there's Sid Gillman and his diversified attack, Bud Carson's cover-two defense, Don Coryell's offensive philosophy, Bill Walsh's West Coast offense, Buddy Ryan's 46 defense, Dick LeBeau's zone blitz and Bill Belichick's unique gameplans.

Jaworski has access to the library at NFL Films, which includes enough interviews and video to fill up a small city in New Jersey. So, the book can include quotes from the late Walsh from the time of the game and from later retrospectives. In addition, Jaworski reached out to a variety of people to get fresh insight into what happened in a given game or or a specific innovation.

There's no doubt that Jaworski was very enthusiastic about this idea; it shows throughout the book. He obviously watched every bit of film he could find.

By the way, one of my favorite parts of the book came unexpectedly. In the chapter on LeBeau's zone blitz, Jaworski breaks down a loss by the Steelers to the Buffalo Bills. But he goes on to point out that the Steelers started to figure out how to slow the Bills' famous no-huddle offense in that playoff game. After a couple of more chances, the Steelers had solved the riddle of that approach and handled the Bills with ease. I always wondered about what happened there.

There's a catch to this review, and it could be a big one for some. This assumes that the reader has a strong technical interest in football. That's asking a lot. The use of jargon is rather difficult to avoid in such a book, and I'd bet the casual fan would get lost rather quickly here no matter how hard Jaworski tries to explain the concepts.

Therefore, don't pick up "The Games That Changed the Games" unless you want something of a graduate level course in the game. Those who do, though, should come away quite satisfied.

Four stars

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Review: The Silent Season of a Hero (2010)

2011-09-01T08:50:00.003-04:00

By Gay Talese

Gay Talese is one of those writers who probably deserves to be called a Writer, with a capital W. He might be best known as one of the early practioners of the so-called "New Journalism" in the 1950's. Talese was part of a group of writers who were fans of certain fictional writers, and took some of their techniques and applied them to nonfiction, journalistic writing. When done right, it can be very effective.

Talese got his start as a sports writer. Here some of his work of the years in that area is finally collected in one place. The resulting book is called "The Silent Season of a Hero," and it's certainly worth a look.

Talese came out of Ocean City, N.J. and the University of Alabama, landing a job with the New York Times. One can just imagine the reaction of some of the traditionalists to his work. For example, he went to a sparcely attended college baseball game, and found out why the few fans in attendance bothered to show up on such a cold spring day. For example, he did a short profile of a boxer without mentioning his name until the last paragraph.

Overall, you can see imagination and creativity at work in those early pieces. There is a story on a boxing referee, a person who makes mouthpieces for a living, a maker of horseshoes, a roller derby pioneer. The business people would call it "outside the box thinking."

From there, the anthology moves into some of Talese's longer areas. The highlight is a story on Joe DiMaggio; the title of that article is the title of the book. DiMaggio was shown about 15 years after retirement, a barrel of contradictions. Remember, this is a person who claimed he wanted to live his life in peace ... and then goes and marries Marilyn Monroe, the most glamourous movie star in the world at the time. The story has been picked up by various anthologies as a classic, and deservedly so.

But there are other good stories here as well, with profiles of golf architect Robert Trent Jones and boxers Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali on the list.

Editor Michael Rosenwald did make the odd decision to include a bit of Talese's work from high school and college. Some of the subjects might seem a little dated to today's audience, although frequently the themes are worthwhile and universal.

"The Silent Season of a Hero" does let us see what some of the fuss is about for those not familiar with Talese's work. That in itself makes publication quite worthwhile.

Four stars.

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Review: Open (2009)

2011-08-27T12:58:00.007-04:00

By Andre Agassi

Who knew?

Who knew what a crazy life Andre Agassi led during his tennis-playing days? Only Andre did, more or less, and he wasn't telling much about it until he started writing his autobiography.

The finished product, "Open," caused something of a sensation when it was first released. While some facts came out upon publication and author interviews, it doesn't spoil the impact of a constantly fascinating piece of work. It must have been almost cathartic to write it.

Agassi comes out firing. After a chapter on what life was like as he prepared for a match in his final tournament -- and you'll wonder how he ever got out of bed in that physical shape, let alone win matches at the U.S. Open -- Agassi starts right in on tennis. As has been publicized, he hated the game from an early age. His father drove him tirelessly, determined to make him a star whether his son liked it or not. And he didn't like it, giving up his childhood, essentially, to hit balls back at a machine that never got tired and never took a day off.

When Agassi showed signs of being a prodigy, his father shipped him off to Florida to learn more about the game at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy. Agassi makes it pretty clear that as much as life wasn't too good back home in Las Vegas, it was worse at times away from home in Florida. Even when he rebelled, though, his tennis abilities were such that all was forgiven most of the time.

From there it was on to a very odd career, which features all sorts of highs and lows over two decades. From a tennis standpoint, he remains one of the few to win all of the sport's Grand Slam events. But the personal side of things, as well as injuries, sometimes brought him down to stunning places. It's not the least bit surprising that Agassi admits a bit of recreational drug use; it's difficult to believe it made much news at the time. From a distance, it was hard to figure out what was going on with Agassi at times. But that's all right, because he makes it clear he wasn't sure what he was doing either.

That theory also applied to his personal relationships. He married actress Brooke Shields, who reportedly had one of the great "stage mothers" in history and who guided her into a modeling/acting career. Think Brooke and Andre had something in common? They did, but not much else. Agassi preferred his small posse, while Shields like to party with as many Hollywood types as possible. That was one doomed marriage.

Agassi did better the second time around with Steffi Graf, another tennis great with an overbearing father. Think they had something in common? Yup, but at this point they had learned some lessons in dealing with it. They didn't even invite their fathers to the wedding. Graf does come off as a little idealized, but Agassi probably can't be blamed for that.

Along the way, Agassi shows a fine memory for matches against the top players of the day, everyone from John McEnroe to Boris Becker (those two aren't exactly close) to Pete Sampras to Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. You won't read a better description of how a particular tennis match evolved than some of the tales of old matches here.

Agassi says along the way that he was charged with reinventing himself during his career, and that wasn't fair. He was actually inventing himself. The finished product turns out to be worth knowing. "Open" should appeal to anyone interested in the subject of fame and its effects when thrown at someone not ready to handle it. Go read it.

Five stars

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Review: An Accidental Athlete (2011)

2011-08-21T11:11:00.006-04:00

By John "The Penguin" Bingham

There's something of a running argument (sorry) in the running community, and John Bingham is somewhat in the middle of it.

Bingham, known as "The Penguin" as a tribute to his running style, has carved out something of a niche in the field. He has written frequently and sometimes eloquently about the joys of running, even though he took up the sport in his 40's and hasn't seen many winners cross the finish line in his races. It's led to an unexpected career for Bingham, who makes several speaking engagements and has a couple of books to his credit.

There has been a little backlash from the super-competitive types out there, but for those of us who don't win medals all the time at races, Bingham has been a good spokesman for the cause of supporting those in the back of the pack.

That brings us to "An Accidental Athlete." It's Bingham's autobiography, at least in terms of his running history. He may have taken things a step too far here.

Bingham starts with stories about growing up as a non-athlete in an athletic world. There's an anecdote about playing junior high basketball, featuring his coach berating him for taking a bad shot that would have won the game at the end, that's almost painful to read even now. Bingham went into music, and became a respected teacher and administrator at a couple of fine universities.

Still, even though Bingham was a heavy smoker and found it hard to push himself away from the breakfast, lunch and dinner table, he still had those longings to display some athletic ability. And so, he took up running, if you could call it that. After a bit of work, he could actually break the 15-minute mile with a walk/run combination. Note: some fit people can walk 15-minute miles.

It's right about at this point in the story, around halfway through the book, where the book changes. And not for the better.

"An Accidental Athlete" becomes something of a guidebook for the athletically challenged. There are a few stories about his own experiences, such as handling failure or finishing a first marathon, but there is more written about the philosophy of the joys of participation. Bingham's magazine articles usually have a better ratio of anecdote to philosophy.

Bingham certainly has had an interesting running life, and it's easy to guess that he's participated in events all over the country and met some of the best runners in the world. What has that been like? That what a Bingham autobiography could be expected to contain, but really doesn't.

Bingham's book, "The Courage to Start," worked pretty well. For those looking for a little inspiration in starting or continuing a running hobby, it's a fine addition to the library. "An Accidental Athlete" is a painless enough read at just over 200 short pages, but it leaves the impression that there are some other good stories about Bingham's life out there that are still waiting to be told.

Two stars

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Review: Super Bowl Monday (2011)

2011-08-18T22:50:00.003-04:00

By Adam Lazarus

Balance. It's an important word in football. Teams like to be balanced between the passing game and the running game, or between offense and defensive, just for openers.

Balance is also important in books, and what makes Adam Lazarus' book, "Super Bowl Monday" worth reading is that it has that quality. It's an interesting recap of the 1991 game between the New York Giants and Buffalo Bills.

It would have been very easy to tilt this book in the direction of the Giants. They were the winners, of course, and there are a lot more book-buyers in the New York metropolitan area than there are in Western New York. It's an easy storyline -- 20 years after the fact, the Giants pulled a dramatic Super Bowl upset, etc., etc. etc.

Instead, Lazarus plays it straight. He probably sensed he had chosen a very dramatic game to chronicle, featuring two distinctive and very good teams. So why not let the game tell the story?

There's some good background reporting leading up to the game. Jeff Hostetler, the Giants' quarterback, was a good story. He had never had much of a chance to play as a starter for one reason for another. Fate, in the form of an injury to Phil Simms, gave him a chance to perform in the glare of the playoff spotlight, and he did just fine. Hostetler may not have outplayed future Hall of Famer Jim Kelly in Super Bowl XXV, but he was good enough to win.

In fact, the Hostetler-Kelly comparison is a good one was measuring the teams. The Bills; no-huddle offense was capable of putting up points in a hurry. Whoosh. The Giants preferred to grind out the yardage one first down at a time. There are other comparisons, of course -- the ever-fascinating Bill Parcells and the literate Marv Levy serving as head coaches, plus stars like Thurman Thomas, Ottis Anderson, Lawrence Taylor and Bruce Smith.

Lazarus tracked down plenty of the principals in the game, and their quotes about the contest that 20 years of perspective can provide are striking. Both sides had their chances to build big leads and couldn't get it done. There's plenty of quotes and information given at the time it happens here as well.

Fittingly, the game came down to one play. You might have heard that Scott Norwood missed a 47-yard field goal that would have won the game for the Bills. However, the kick was outside of Norwood's range, and it's really too bad for him on a personal level that he's remembered for the miss. Norwood was no goat; he just needed to be five yards closer. In that sense, while the Giants certainly deserve credit for winning the game, the Bills didn't really lose it -- they just ran out of time.

The story adds an interesting postscript to the game's story. The city of Buffalo had a huge rally for the Bills after the game, unusual to say the least about a team that lost a championship. The Giants didn't have anything like it; they took a bus back to the stadium and dispersed for the offseason. Everson Walls of New York still sounds upset about it.

"Super Bowl Monday" goes by quickly, and doesn't suffer from the problem of having most readers know the outcome. Readers will learn why the game developed the way it did, and enjoy the story all over again -- although, admittedly, that's more true for Giants' fans than Bills' boosters.

Four stars

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Review: A Talk in the Park (2011)

2011-08-04T15:35:00.002-04:00

By Curt Smith

Sometimes it's easy to think that Curt Smith has listened and watched more baseball games than anyone who isn't directly involved in the baseball business. When it comes to broadcasters, he's written more books than anyone.

He's back here with another one: "A Talk in the Park." This one might be the simplest yet, practically, as they say in the movie business, a "high concept" idea -- one that can be told in a sentence.

The sentence in this case is, turn on a recorder during interviews with many baseball announcers, and let them talk. The addendum is, then get out of their way when the book comes out.

Smith talked to all sorts of baseball announcers for this book. It's an idea he first covered in "The Storytellers" about 15 years ago. What's striking about this update is that there are so many more announcers these days.

In the past, a team had a radio crew and a television crew period. The Mets, for example, used Lindsay Nelson, Ralph Kiner and Bob Murphy on both for decades. Add some national announcers, and that was the baseball broadcasting business. Now, we have pregame and postgame hosts on radio and television, sometimes three announcers per game on local television, Spanish-language broadcasts, Fox, TBS, ESPN, sideline reporters, and so on.

In other words, there's plenty of material to be mined here. Most of it is new, with only a little recycled from other sources. And biographies of those interviewed goes from page 1 to page 25. Whew.

It's grouped loosely into chapters and edited slightly to supply context. Basically, though, it's simply a collection of stories, one after another. Some, you'll want to tell a friend -- like Jim Bohannon sending writer and Cubs' fan George Will a Christmas card every year with a picture of Lou Brock as a Cub, reminding Will of one of the most one-sided trades in baseball history. Or Charlie Steiner, listening to Vin Scully compare the palm trees in a ball park to spring training itself -- as close to poetry as we get.

Books like these are relatively common, and easy to read. There's a market for that, naturally, and broadcasters do like to tell stories ... particularly when they won't be interrupted by another pitch 20 seconds later. I think it's in the DNA.

"A Talk in the Park" won't knock you over with insight, but it will leave you entertained. It's easy to picture reading this book on a nice summer day with a game on in the background. Plus, some of the proceeds will benefit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. So baseball fans, the obvious target audience, ought to enjoy this one.

Three stars

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Review: Satchel (2009)

2011-07-21T13:16:00.003-04:00

By Larry Tye

One more mystery of life has been cleared up.

Satchel Paige's story seems to have fully told for the first time. And what a story it is.

Larry Tye spent about two years chasing down all the stories about the legendary pitcher. He puts them together in "Satchel," a great look at putting together the pieces.

For those who make up lists about such matters, Paige might be the best baseball pitcher who ever lived. He's certainly in the argument. The problem with the argument is that Paige spent his prime years in the Negro Leagues of the 1920's and 1930's, where record-keeping wasn't at its best and relatively few got to see the lanky right-hander pitch on a regular basis.

But that's not the worst of it. This is the story of how a young man from Mobile, Ala., named LeRoy Page somehow became Satchel Paige, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. That's unlikely enough, but throw in the fact that Paige was never one to worry too much about details. He told a different story about the same incident wherever he went, so a biography is a big, big job.

Tye comes through beautifully. He starts with the tough one, figuring out that Paige was born in 1906 to a huge family. Paige quickly figured out that he preferred baseball to school, and before he almost knew it he was playing in the legendary Negro Leagues.

While quickly showing himself to be dominating on the mound, he had some problems off it. Mostly, Paige didn't take to rules very well. When someone else came along offering more money than he was currently earning, Paige was gone. So he bounced from Pittsburgh to the Dominican Republic to North Dakota to Kansas City, with a few other stops along the way. The stories grew as he went along.

Paige was a little bitter that he wasn't picked to be the first black signed by a major league team, as that distinction went to Jackie Robinson. (It's fair to say that Paige might not have been the best man for that job, considering his disdain for rules.) But he did turn up at the age of 42 in Cleveland, and helped the Indians win the World Series in 1948 as a "rookie." Even then, Paige wasn't done. He pitched for the Browns in the 1950's, the Miami Marlins in 1956-58 (finishing at the age of 52 with a 10-10 record and a 2.95 earned-run average), and then as a member of a barnstorming team for some years after that.

In the meantime, Paige walked around Jim Crow laws, spent money as fast as he got it, and dominated most opposing lineups. He became such a gate attraction that he only threw a few innings at a time, so that he could pitch in more stadiums. This was a one-of-a-kind figure.

Paige himself wrote a couple of biographies, and there are plenty of other published tales available on the pitcher. This, though, is the first attempt to get it all straight through tons of research. For example, it looks as if Paige was legally a bigamist. Tye spends a chapter setting some things straight, including who actually wrote Paige's famous rules for life.

The subject's personality still shines through here. Tye is obviously fond of Paige and his entire mystique, as the truth is still an attractive story. This book won the Casey Award as the best baseball book for 2009. "Satchel" ought to charm anyone with even a slight interest in the subject.

Five stars

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Review: The Right Angle (2011)

2011-07-13T14:35:00.007-04:00

By Bob Rich

Bob Rich is best known to the business world at large as the successful head of Rich Products, which has put such items as non-dairy creamers and eclairs on thousands and thousands of dining room tables.

He'd probably rather be known as a sportsman. His latest book, "The Right Angle," proves that point nicely.

Rich already has written a couple of books about fishing. Here he opens up on his sporting life, and does so in a friendly, conversational way.

This latest literary effort is divided into sections that cover a wide variety of his many athletic interests. Rich was a hockey goalie growing up, and had plenty of fun along the way. He also started a team handball group in the Buffalo area on something of a lark, and won three medals at the Empire State Games with the help of some good recruiting skills. Even a chapter on polo works pretty well, as it serves as something of a primer on the sport.

The major points of interest for most, though, certainly deal with Rich's association with big league sports. He was involved in the ownership of the Buffalo Sabres for more than a quarter of a century, albeit in a behind-the-scenes role. Rich's most interesting comments come when talking about the painful transition from the team's first ownership group to the Rigas family in the late 1990's. You might recall that members of the group were convicted of moving billions (with a B) of dollars around illegally. Rich has plenty of stories about how he had serious doubts about how good a fit that was, and that his suspicions were more than justified.

One bit of news in these pages -- Rich reveals that he told NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman at one point that he'd be willing to buy the Sabres entirely if a new local owner couldn't be found once the Rigas situation fell apart. Rich didn't need to make good on that pledge, as Tom Golisano came in from Rochester to buy the team.

Rich also got involved in baseball in the 1980's, saving Buffalo's minor league team in 1983 and eventually leading a drive to acquire a major-league expansion team for that city in the decade to come. There are some good stories to be told along the way. Rich made an honest effort to get a team, but as it turned out the city probably couldn't have supported one for long given the changing economics of the sport. Rich does mention that he could have purchased seven different teams in the majors along the way had he been willing to leave them in their current city. There was even talk about taking the San Francisco Giants and bringing them to Buffalo, creating -- again -- the New York Giants. That fell through too.

About my only problem with the book, and it's my problem and not the author's, is that frankly I have very little interest in fishing. I've never done it, and I'm not curious about it. (Note how many outdoors titles are in this blog.) So I'm far less than qualified to judge the section of the book that deals with the subject, and it's about a third of the pages. I'd guess that it works just as well as the rest of the book, though.

Rich ends with some personal stories. They may be a little out of place in a book like this, but they are still on the charming side -- how he and his wife got a new dog, how he became an English lord, etc.

From an historical sense, it's nice to get an insider's view of some moments in Buffalo's sports history on the record. What's more, it's all told in a style that backs up my belief that Rich is a fun person who enjoys a laugh even at his own expense. "The Right Angle" even will send some of its proceeds to the Boys and Girls Club of Western New York, making it well worth a purchase for those in that particular area.

Four stars

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Review: Running on Empty (2011)

2011-06-30T23:05:00.002-04:00

By Marshall Ulrich

You probably haven't been ever tempted to run across the country. As in, San Francisco to New York.

For those who have been, "Running on Empty" must be just the cure.

Marshall Ulrich did that exact feat in the fall of 2008. He shows in full detail just how difficult it is to go that far, and adds some good detail about what drives such athletes.

Ulrich has an unusual life story to tell here. The first question non-runners ask about ultramarathoners (people who are willing to go much further than 26 miles at a time) is about what drives them. It's on display here, in full color.

Ulrich found refuge in running when his first wife became ill. The worse her story got, the longer his runs became. By the time she died, Ulrich couldn't find enough of adrenaline-filled events to satisfy his feelings. Although he tried.
The athlete found tougher and tougher events and then set even more ridiculous goals for himself from there. Ulrich even found the time and motivation to climb Mount Everest. Yes, that Mount Everest.

In the meantime, he ignored two wives and some children along the way, leading to separations and divorces. That sort of reaction to tragedy obviously isn't typical and isn't a complete explanation for these actions, but we get an idea. Ulrich also had some deaths in his circle of friends and family just before the cross-country attempt, which jacks up the drama another couple of notches as the start approaches.

Ulrich didn't just want to run from coast to coast; he wanted to break the all-time record for fastest crossing. That put a little pressure on the 57-year-old to keep putting the miles behind him, day after day. Right from the start, his body rebelled against the constant pressure.

Some of the best portions of the book deal with what Ulrich had to do just to keep going. He needed a support crew with him along the way, but he also didn't sleep too much and had a doctor watching him most of the way. Mostly, though, he'd just block out the pain as best he could and keep going.

The author doesn't get into mind-numbing detail along the way, but the book is long enough to give the sense of just how long a trip it was and is. It's fun when he passes through familiar towns and locations. He also throws in some sidebar items on various aspects of the trip that work pretty well. It's not a spoiler to say Ulrich eventually makes it to New York's City Hall, since that is mentioned on the front cover of the book.

This certainly is Ulrich's story, and he admits that he became self-absorbed and sometimes grumpy ... particularly toward the end. It's tough to call him a likeable character by the end of the book, but it's good to see him finish. Ulrich fills out the book with such items as a mileage log, sponsors, charities, etc. in the six appendixes.

By the conclusion of "Running on Empty," Ulrich seems to have learned a little balance in his life, which makes for a happy ending. It's tough to say that the book will find a huge audience, but those with curiosity about such athletes are sure to enjoy it a great deal.

Four stars

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Review: Runners on Running (2011)

2011-06-21T23:55:00.004-04:00

By Rich Elliott

It seems to be a pretty good time for anthologies on running. First Runner's World came out with "Going Long," a wonderful celebration of the best articles from that magazine's pages over the years. (Tip: You don't have to be a runner to enjoy that book, so get it if you can.)

Now "Runners on Running" comes along. This is relatively satisfying too.

Editor Rich Elliott has picked out 32 running-related stories for this anthology, which runs about 300 pages. He's lined up the work of some of the best writers in the field for this book, including such names as Kenny Moore, Amby Burfoot, Hal Higdon, and John Brant.

It's easy to conclude that runners seem to make good writers, at least in proportion to other sports. All that time on the road gives them time to think. There are articles in this book that are from world-class athletes who nicely articulate their feelings at given moments. Marty Liquori and Joan Benoit Samuelson certaly qualify.

I had some other favorites here as well. "The Toughest Miler Ever" tells a great story about a promising track career that was cut short by World War II. "The Battle of a Lifetime" brought back a good yarn about a New Zealand runner who set his major goal in life way in advance. "The Bridge" takes the reader in a very unexpected direction -- mental illness. "My Old Buick" is also fun.

There's one major catch here, at least in my case. I've done lots of reading about running over the last several years. Some of the best stories in this book are reprints from "Sports Illustrated" or "Runner's World" or come from books. "Duel in the Sun," about the Boston Marathon, certainly qualifies, as does Kathrine Switzer's story of being the first woman to run in Boston. So a lot of the book covers some familiar ground, and some of the unfamiliar stories don't work quite as well.

Still, there's some good material here no matter what the circumstances, and the batting average is quite high. "Runners on Running" certainly ranks as a good introduction if you want to get a good sample of well-done writing about an endlessly fascinating subject.

Four stars

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Review: Those Guys Have All the Fun (2011)

2011-06-08T16:13:00.006-04:00

By James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

The doorbell rang, and the delivery man handed off a copy of "Those Guys Have All the Fun" with a thud.

And I do mean thud.

This is a mighty big book -- 761 pages, including the index. There's no doubt that it will be devoured by the many fans of ESPN in record time, and there's little doubt now that there are a lot of those fans. The book immediately landed in the number two spot on some national best-seller lists.

James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales previously teamed up for a similar type of book on the history of NBC's "Saturday Night Live." Shales, as some of you may know, is about as good as it gets in the area of media criticism. He never came across as that much of a sports fan, but his name on the cover indicates that this going to be a serious effort.

That it is. The two of them talked to literally hundreds of people to cover the sprawling history of ESPN, which now dates back more than 30 years. The channel, which led to the various other outlets over the years, has become ever-present in the lives of sports fans these days. I believe it was political commentator George Will who said that if all of television went off the air, he'd only notice when he wanted to watch ESPN.

The authors might have left some one out of this oral history project, but it's difficult to guess who might not have been willing to talk -- although some people didn't want to be quoted directly on the record, according to the authors' comments. Virtually every on-air personality from Day One seems to be covered, and several executives of ESPN check in at length as well.

Sports fans are vaguely aware of the major events in ESPN's history -- their humble beginnings in Connecticut (boy, Bristol, Conn., takes something of a beating along the way here), their slow rise to become a major player in the business, their movement into covering all of the major sports at one time or another, their successes (SportsCenter, NFL draft coverage) and failures (on some level, "Playmakers.")

Still, it's the people on the air that will be of most interest to fans and viewers. After all, the talent comes into our dens, our bedrooms, our phones, our computer screens. The ups and downs of those people are fully explored here. The long interviews with many of them give a good uncensored look at what these people are like.

In the 32-year-history of ESPN, the most complicated figure appears to be Keith Olbermann, a brilliant and talented broadcaster who never suffered fools gladly, by any definition. He and Dan Patrick were the most influential anchors in ESPN history, as the authors point out. They were smart and hip and funny and brought attitude to SportsCenter, leaving a bunch of wanna-bees in their wake throughout the country.

The problem was that Olbermann could be a handful. A quote from Bob Ley on the back cover reveals a lot. On Olbermann's departure, Ley said, "We felt not so much relief when Keith left as unrestrained bleeping joy. People were thrilled."

Meanwhile, it would seem that Chris Berman acts the same way on the air as off, Tony Kornheiser is cranky, and Bill Simmons is a little strange. But there seem to be plenty of good, normal people as well -- Linda Cohn, John Saunders, Suzy Kolber, Ley, etc. ESPN seems to have worked to develop fewer "stars" since the Olbermann/Patrick days, which is why sometimes it feels like it's difficult to tell some of the SportsCenter anchors apart these days.

While that material generally is on target and will find an audience, the business side of affairs won't be as interesting to most. The authors include a great deal of background information on rights negotiations, internal politics, corporate purchases, and so on. It certainly could be argued that such information helps makes the book more complete, a little editing might have made the book a little less colossal.

Miller and Shales made one decision that probably was the right one, even though it has generated some criticism. They didn't really get into the fact that ESPN's relationship with some of its rights-holders (NFL, NBA, NASCAR, and so forth) can be cozy. The network has been tough journalistically on some stories involving those sports. Still, when a lead story on SportsCenter or on the crawl just happens to be a relatively minor event that just happens to be coming up on ESPN that night, well, it does give you reason for pause.

But there are few who would deny ESPN has carved out a huge niche in the sports world. Speaking of criticism, Tim Marchmen wrote a review for the Wall Street Journal, including this sentence: "If there is any surprise on offer in 'Those Guys Have All the Fun, an oral history of the network, it is just how deeply ESPN's success is rooted in its awfulness."

Having Marchmen, with that attitude right up front, review this book is kind of like having Ron Paul review a book on necessary government spending. Think he's going to like any of it?

ESPN certainly does some things brilliantly, and reading about its evolution will be of great interest to its millions of followers. Oral histories don't make for great literature, but "These Guys Have All the Fun" is sure to satisfy many.

Four stars

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Review: The Big Fight (2011)

2011-06-05T12:26:00.002-04:00

By Sugar Ray Leonard

Click here for the full review in The Buffalo News. Short version -- Ray Leonard gets some good-sized points for honesty here, and it is interesting to read about his great fights. Still, Leonard has had a difficult journey through life at times, and it's not exactly a feel-good book.

Three stars

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Review: Endgame (2011)

2011-05-23T14:44:00.006-04:00

By Frank Brady

The author of "Endgame," Frank Brady, does something almost beyond belief in a mere 330 pages.

He more or less figures out Bobby Fischer.

This is something along the lines of checkmating a grandmaster in about 15 minutes. Fischer certainly ranks as the most controversial chess champion in history -- he really doesn't have a great deal of competition -- and sorting out his life story must have been a difficult task.

Luckily for us, Brady is more than up to it. The pages crackle with good research, and the author brings the dual skill of a knowledge of chess and the experience of an author who has done books on other subjects. It's odd to put a chess book in with stories of more traditional sports here, but this is good enough to deserve your attention. Call this the Sports and Games Book Review Center if you like.

Brady takes back to Fischer's early days in New York, when he was never sure who his father might have been and his mother was out protesting or studying something or other. As a result, this bright kid was essentially a latchkey child before the term was popular. He needed an outlet, and somehow chess fit it.

Before long, Fischer was the greatest child prodigy in the history of the game. He was given memberships to New York chess clubs, and sponsored as he worked his way up the chess rankings in record time. At the age of 13, Fischer defeated Donald Byrne with a strategy that was so brilliant that the contest was almost instantly called "The Game of the Century." Let's repeat that -- Fischer was 13.

By the time he was 16, Fischer was ready to quit school to study chess full-time, even though one of his high school classmates had a crush on him. Her name: Barbra Streisand. (Kudos to Brady for getting that quote from her in the story.) Fischer ran off some American titles but couldn't quite get to world champion's status, in part because he kept inventing problems that got in the way. Fischer started to develop a mistrust and eventual hatred for the Soviets back then, which cost him opportunities.

Fischer finally did meet Boris Spassky in a championship match in 1972, and after making everyone jump through hoops in negotiations did manage to win the title handily. But he forfeited the crown three years later when he wouldn't agree to the terms of a rematch, and his behavior spiraled down from there. Fischer soon added the American government and Jews to his enemies list (odd for someone whose parents probably were both Jewish), and his list of friends soon dwindled to those who admired his play enough to tolerate his boorish behavior.

Fischer received some notoriety in 2001 for a radio broadcast in which he applauded the 9/11 attacks on the United States. He wasn't popular with the U.S. government for violating sanctions and playing a chess match in Serbia several years before that. By the end of the story, he was an exile in Iceland, a man who had taken the fillings out of his teeth for alleged medical reasons and who was finding real or imagined slights to anger anyone he touched.

What's great about all this is that Brady merely sticks to the facts without much editorializing. And those facts are quite damning enough. The author even fills in some details of the lost years, when Fischer simply disappeared from public view. The picture is of someone whose genius enraptured many who came in contact with him, and they were a little too willing to excuse his behavior. Fischer is clearly someone with major issues, starting as a teen and having them blossom to extreme levels over the years.

Fischer will always fascinate the chess-playing audience, in part because he's the greatest mind ever to become a major part of the game's history. Brady describes a scene in a restaurant in which he asks Fischer how he prepares for a game. Fischer pulled out a small chess board, and reviewed a long series of moves from dozens of games at rapid-fire succession. By the time Fischer was done, Brady said he shed tears because he knew he was in the presence of genius.

But chess isn't the only attraction here. The Bobby Fischer in this book is many-sided -- dedicated to the game, capable of seeing what few others could on the chessboard, probably incapable of displaying much affection, filled with so many demons that by the end it's hard to believe he could get out of bed.

Even someone who doesn't know a rook from a pawn will find much worthwhile about "Endgame." I can't imagine a stranger American life, or a better literary treatment of it.

Five stars

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Review: Beating About the Bushes (2008)

2011-05-15T14:44:00.007-04:00

By Tim Sommer

Sometimes you stumble on a book that demands a personal, intense reaction. For me, "Beating About the Bushes" was such a book.

When I was in the 10-to-14 age group, I was living in Elmira, New York, near the Pennsylvania border. Elmira had a Double-A baseball team than, usually affiliated with the Orioles. Dad's company had season tickets that were rarely used -- good for the community, tax write-off, etc. -- so we could get them almost any time we wanted. So I'd grab a friend and head for a box seat just past the Elmira dugout on the first baseline. I watched a lot of pro baseball back then, and learned a lot about the game.

And, when possible, I'd pester the players for autographs. I'd have them sign my program, which was about a quarter and used for keeping score and winning lucky number prizes. The players rarely went on to bigger things, although some did make it to the majors (Jim Hardin and Fred Beene come to mind). But you never knew who might make it, especially at age 12, and it was fun to get signatures anyway, so you'd ask whenever you had the chance. I still have a program from 1966, complete with about six autographs from such people as Jim White and Gary Fancher. I must have had Tim Sommer autograph a dozen programs over the years, and can still remember his neat signature.

Therefore, when I discovered Sommer had written a book about his days in pro baseball, I knew I had to have it. I wasn't disappointed. It's filled with names about long-forgotten players and coaches from the past, as well as some insights into the more famous names such as Frank Robinson and Boog Powell. What's more, it silently knocks down the wall between autographer-seeker and autograph-giver. We're on the same page now, so to speak.

There are a variety of good stories here, and not just about Elmira. Sommer writes about how he and Cal Ripken Sr. were driving on a road in Georgia in the early Sixties during spring training and passed an actual cross-burning that left them speechless. He happened to stop in Selma, Alabama, while driving cross-country, right in the middle of the civil rights explosion; clearly it was no place for a Yankee (as in Northerner) from Ohio. He faced a young Reggie Jackson when the superstar-to-be was just out of college, and was ordered by the manager to hit him with a pitch to settle some imagined score. Sommer started one of the few brawls in baseball history where everyone but the manager was laughing uncontrollably.

The stories with Elmira connections resonated with me, obviously. I knew Fred Kendall was a promising catcher (he eventually made the majors) who was said to be dating the great-looking guidance counselors' secretary in my junior high; Sommer says that, um, the secretary wasn't the only person Kendall saw, particularly on the road. There was the public address announcer, whose voice I can still hear in my head ("Batting first, number six, Bobby Floyd, shortstop"), getting intoxicated and leaving the mike on while berating the umpires for a bad call.

There was Lloyd Fourroux, a pretty good hitter in 1965 who turned up two years later as a pitcher in Elmira. Sommer points out that Fourroux couldn't hit the curve ball at that level, and what's more couldn't throw it well enough to get to the majors either. The author fills in the gaps on Fourroux, who it turns out was a Louisiana legend in high school sports. And there's Darrell Johnson, best-known as the manager of the 1975 Boston Red Sox. Who knew that Johnson was such a ladies' man, and such a bad influence, that the Orioles fired him in 1966 even though he had won a pennant by 20 games with a team without a .300 hitter or 14-game winning pitcher?

"Beating About the Bushes" is self-published, and it could use some professional copy editing. A few names, like basketball star John Havlicek, are mangled. Apostrophe use is rather inconsistent, and compound words come out as two words and vice-verse. I heard a little later that this was something of a personal journal for family and friends, so the standards have to be a little different than other books.

There's also the matter of reprinting an entire Sports Illustrated article on Billy Scripture, a minor-league legend who would take grounders off his chest and bite into baseballs, without any sign of getting permission from Sports Illustrated to do so. I don't think Sommer will get sued for it. The overall story isn't too smooth, as you might expect. That makes it a little amateurish, so it's tough to give too high rating here to a casual reader who isn't award of the nature of the project in that sense.

But, it's certainly a heartfelt, honest look at the times and a career in pro baseball. For fans who remember that era and who like minor league baseball, it will bring a smile or six to their faces. And the book will do much more than that to those of a certain aga in the Elmira area.

Three stars

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Review: Don Cherry's Hockey Stories and Stuff (2009)

2011-05-11T10:06:00.004-04:00

As told to Al Strachan

For those of you who don't follow hockey, or live in or near Canada, it's a little difficult to explain Don Cherry.

Cherry used to be a minor-league hockey player way back when, moved into coaching, and became the head coach of the Boston Bruins and Colorado Rockies in the 1970's. He was always a personality; the media in other cities used to line up to hear him and laugh with him whenever he brought a team into town. But he wore out his welcome as a coach, at least with management. Fans always loved him.

Cherry eventually worked his way into a job as a guest during the first intermission of CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada." He was himself, which meant blunt and unscripted. The viewers never knew what was coming next, so they didn't reach for the remote after the first intermission. Perhaps they just wanted to see Cherry's suits, which sort of defy description. It's held up like that for around 30 years now. His partner is the show's host, Ron MacLean, who is as smooth as can be.

Cherry has turned that television success into a full-fledged career. He has a radio show, has done some syndicated television, and speaks around the country.

Cherry has written a couple of other books in the past, but he's found a new outlet in the last few years. He's come up with "Don Cherry's Hockey Stories and Stuff," which is the book discussed here. The ex-coach later did a sequel, following the same format.

This must have been one of the easiest books in history to ghost-write. Al Strachan turned on the tape recorder, let Cherry talk -- which doesn't take much prompting, did a little fact-checking and transcribing, and headed for the publisher. A short time later, a best-seller was born.

Two things jump out rather quickly about this. One, this approach is relatively common. Triumph Books in the U.S. has done a series like this, having athletes tell some stories about their careers. The books are subtitled, "The Greatest (Your Team Here) Stories Ever Told." But that series has books that can be read in about two hours. Cherry reaches 275 or so pages here, so there's plenty to read.

Second, don't look for any organization. It's one story after another -- sometimes funny, sometimes interesting. Cherry may string a few tales about playing minor league hockey, and then jump to an anecdote about his television days. And then go back. There are no chapters to be found here. In other words, it's like a regular conversation with a person.

It would be difficult for someone to enjoy this book at its fullest without knowing something about Cherry and his background. Plus, some hockey knowledge obviously helps. But for those that qualify, readers will certainly find "Don Cherry's Hockey Storeis and Stuff" worth reading. Heck, I'd read the sequel.

Four stars.

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Review: High Strung (2011)

2011-05-01T14:49:00.002-04:00

By Stephen Tignor

Sometimes it takes a book to put matters in perspective.

Such is the case when it comes to men's tennis around 1980. What a cast of characters -- Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Vitas Gerulaitis, just for starters. These weren't just tennis players, they were polarizing personalities.

Discussing someone like McEnroe and his behavior was enough to start an argument, at least with some people. He took the polite game of tennis a long way in terms of behavior, although you could argue that Connors moved the needle even more than McEnroe did.

That's the setting for Stephen Tignor's book, "High Strung." He draws on the stories of the day to put matters into some sort of order, and those who remember the era will find it quite helpful in sorting everything out.

Tignor starts with the famous Borg-McEnroe match at Wimbledon in 1980. You might remember it for the Battle of 18-16, the tiebreaker in the fourth set that seemed to go on forever thanks to great shot after great shot. McEnroe won the set, but Borg won the match by elevating his game another notch.

As the author points out, Borg won that war but McEnroe won even more -- he could stay with the greatest player of his generation. It wasn't long before McEnroe was beating Borg, and in less than two years from the '80 All-England final Borg had dropped off the tour in a stunning departure.

Tignor adds a couple of fascinating points to the discussion. In writing about the sport's exit from the amateur days, he shows how tennis started to reflect the times by the type of players it attracted. It became the Wild, Wild West on the men's side, with the individual taking over from any sort of concept of team or sport unity. Even the unemotional (at least outwardly) Borg kept his distance from most.

Tignor has plenty of good, sometimes painfully frank stories about the players involved. Ilie Nastase's story is a particularly amazing one, even if he's a big older than some of the others in the story. And Gerulaitis has been forgotten by many, perhaps because he was a very good -- but not a great -- player who could party and then hit with the best of them.

There also is some very good technical information here. Tignor writes about the introduction of the metal racket, as McEnroe and Borg's wooden equipment became dinosaurs in relative short order. Before we knew it, people like Ivan Lendl can captured the power of the lightweight but big and powerful rackets, and changed the game in the process. The evolutionary process continued a few years later with Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras, who also took the game toward a more "professional" arc.

It's easy to forget that McEnroe, for all his touch and talent -- who had better hands? -- was done winning Grand Slams at age 25.

This story does jump around a bit at times, and some should know that the language and anecdotes do veer into adult territory every so often. To be fair, those interested in the subject probably won't be kids anyway.

Otherwise, "High Strung" is a crash course in hindsight on an amazing era in men's tennis. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal will seem rather boring in hindsight, except when they are actually on the court.

Four stars

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Review: An Accidental Sportswriter (2011)

2011-04-24T21:11:00.005-04:00

By Robert Lipsyte

Robert Lipsyte took over duties as a sports columnist at the New York Times in the late 1960's. I think I was about 12 at the time, but I don't think my reaction to his work was favorable. He was obviously smart and could write, because everyone at the Times was like that. But -- like the rest of the Times' section -- the stories weren't particularly lively and didn't seem too concerned with the games. And that's what you want when your age has just crossed into double digits.

Eventually, though, I learned that the issues surrounding the games were often more interesting than the games themselves. Lipsyte wrote a book about that fact called "Sportsworld," which I recall reading quite a while ago, and then moved on to other things. Lipsyte has written several novels for young adults, written and appeared as a reporter for television shows, hosted general-interest TV programs -- a wide-ranging career if there ever was one.

At this point, about 50 years into a life in journalism, Lipsyte has some stories to tell. He spills them out in "An Accidental Sportswriter," which mostly -- but not exclusively -- deals with his time in the sportswriting field.

No doubt about it, Lipsyte did take some exciting rides in journalism. Imagine what it was like to follow Muhammad Ali and Billie Jean King in their primes, and see first-hand what they did on and off the field of play. The author got to hang out with Bill Walton and his counter-culture pal, Jack Scott, in the Seventies. Heck, Lipsyte not only worked side-by-side with legendary broadcaster Howard Cosell, he worked for Cosell -- as a contributor to his Saturday night variety show that lasted only a few weeks.

The author liked finding stories off the proverbial beaten trail, particularly for his work on CBS' Sunday morning. Lipsyte certainly was ahead of his time in the area of gay athletes. He also has a nice chapter on a Native American chief (and professor at the University at Buffalo) from outside of Syracuse that touches on the game of lacrosse. There's even a chapter on NASCAR racing, as Lipsyte was one of the first mainstream Northeast writers to investigate what all the fuss was about in that part of the world.

Some of the material isn't about sports. He served as the ghostwriter for Dick Gregory's autobiography, featuring a one-word, n-word title. Lipsyte points out that the African-American Gregory dedicated the book to his mother, saying that she should consider it a plug for the book every time she heard the word. But Lipsyte also says the title hurt sales of the book by the trendy, hip and funny comic.

Some other material is added as well. He has memories of his first days at the Times and see Gay Talese at work, as well as a poignant ending about his relationship with his father.

This probably isn't going to appeal to a wide audience. A reader probably would have to be at least closing in on Social Security in order to appreciate some of the anecdotes. Lipsyte also still is the outsider, still struggling with his brief interactions from people such as Mickey Mantle and Bob Costas over the years.

Still, this is a thoughtful look at a career well spent. "An Accidental Sportswriter" may make you think about some issues past and present, and prove that you don't have to be 12 in order to respect Lipsyte's opinions.

Four stars

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Review: Golf List Mania (2011)

2011-04-21T18:52:00.003-04:00

By Leonard Shapiro and Ed Sherman

This blogging host won't let me put the real title of this book in the appropriate section. It is really called "Golf List Mania!" It's good to know someone besides the authors are excited about this.

Books of lists have been a staple of the publishing industry since at least the 1970's, when generic book of lists starts to appear on the scene. They are generally easy to read, kind of fun, and nothing too memorable.

That's "Golf List Mania! in a nutshell, the first attempt to do a book like this about golf that I know about.

Leonard Shapiro and Ed Sherman are suitably good candidates to write a book like this. They both like the game, and have covered it for years and years. Their good humor comes through quiet a bit here.

They have filled 282 pages with lists here. Most golfers could come up with many of them -- best U.S. Opens, biggest chokes, top lefties, best Ryder Cups, most memorable shots, top players. Not much controversy to be found there.

Shapiro and Sherman have added a couple of wrinkles, though. The first is some lists with a bit of bite. It's funny to read a list called "Eight [Jerks] is Enough," about the players who are, um, less than friendly. The reverse, "Class Acts," is also interesting. It's good to have a Sports Illustrated writer, John Garrity, chime in about golf fiction; too bad someone didn't come up with a list on best nonfiction work centering on the game.

There are also a few guest contributors. Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer sent in a couple of lists each, and Tiger Woods' former caddy, "Fluff," checks in as well. Peter Kessler has three of his favorite golf interviews -- great stuff. Special mention goes to Jim Nantz here. Not only did he contribute a list for the book, but he wrote the foreword and used lists of his own in it. Nice touch.

Still, there's some duplication here that's almost inevitable. Think Nicklaus' Masters' win in 1986 comes up more than once? Of course it does, as does Tom Watson's chip on 17 to clinch the Open at Pebble Beach.

Part of the fun is remembering specific shots and tournaments, and that's a bit of a problem with some of the lists devoted to women's golf. Some golfers know the best women's players, but the viewing audience is obviously a lot smaller than it is for the men. It's a good idea to include some highlights, but as a "buyer beware" notice those items may not have the impact of others.

We don't need to over-analyze this book. "Golf List Mania!" does what is sets out to do reasonably well. I just wouldn't put an exclamation point at the end of it.

Three stars

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Review: When the Game Was Ours (2010)

2011-04-20T19:14:00.001-04:00

By Larry Bird and Earvin Magic Johnson with Jackie MacMullen

It practically took a village to write this book.

There are Larry Bird and Earvin Johnson, of course. You've probably heard of them. Then there's Jackie MacMullan, who spent many years with the Boston Globe and now contributes to ESPN.

They all seemed to chip in for "When the Game Was Ours," a look back at one of basketball's golden eras. It works quite well, too.

The format of the book is an obvious question after looking at the cast of characters involved. After all, both Bird and Johnson have written autobiographies. Bird's book was particularly interesting, as he was quite candid about the many aspects of his life. So what could be new?

MacMullan takes the proper step of concentrating on the Bird-Magic rivalry, for the most part. The two principals obviously talked at length about their glory days, particularly in games against each other. There were some good ones, weren't there.

But MacMullan also adds quotes from a variety of other people, including teammates and coaches. Even Michael Jordan chips in here. And since we're talking about stuff that happened a quarter-century ago -- I know, I know -- time has allowed people to speak with a little perspective and a little candor. Isiah Thomas' reputation takes a bit of a beating here, for example.

It's the little personal stuff that makes the book work though. When Bird and Johnson got together in French Lick, Indiana, to film a commercial, Bird's mother was thrilled that Magic was coming. She cooked a special lunch for him. Then the two sat in Bird's house and found out they had much more common than they thought, thus setting the stage for a friendship that really surprised both of them.

There are plenty of anecdotes about the Lakers-Celtics finals of the 1980's, times when it didn't seem like a real championship unless the two of them were involved. There are stories about the Dream Team, when Larry and Magic got to play together for the first time since a college all-star team came together briefly in the 1970's.

It sure is fun to read material about such moments as the time Bird asked then-Bulls coach what the scoring record was in Chicago. When Collins asked why, Bird said his ticket order had been messed up and someone was going to pay for that. The scoring record wasn't threatened, but the Bulls got waxed.

Those looking for basic information about the two players' career probably can do better to start with their autobiographies. But as additional reading, "When the Game Was Ours" is a nice update on that era. And I have no doubt that big fans of Magic and Larry will gobble it up.

Four stars

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Review: Odd Man Out (2009)

2011-04-15T15:21:00.003-04:00

By Matt McCarthy

Minor league baseball is an odd world, filled with young players who are hoping to move up the ladder from Class A to the majors, from small towns to the biggest cities. They know the odds are generally against them, but they pursue the dream anyway for a variety of reasons -- in some cases, because they aren't long on other options.

Matt McCarthy had other options. He graduated from Yale, and eventually was headed to Harvard's medical school to pursue a career as a doctor. But when he was drafted by the Anaheim Angels in 2002, he put that thought aside to pursue his baseball goals.

The resulting book, "Odd Man Out," reviews McCarthy's year as a pro baseball player. It comes as close to being an authentic recreation of the experience than any book of its type that I've read.

McCarthy played baseball for some bad teams at Yale, and came out of the experience as a marginal pro prospect. He was drafted in the 22nd round, signed for a $1,000 bonus, and was shipped to extended spring training in Arizona. From there it was on to short-season A ball in Provo, Utah.

Minor league teams are an odd collection of people. They come from all different backgrounds and countries. There's a world of difference between a Joe Saunders, McCarthy's Provo teammate who was a first-round draft choice who had signed a seven-figure bonus, and some of the Hispanic players who had come from poverty in the Caribbean.

The manager is Tom Kotchman, also known as Casey's father, a baseball lifer who certainly wants to win games. However, he's quite a character -- profane and rough around the edges. Let's put it this way -- he and McCarthy weren't likely to sit around talking about biochemistry.

Plus, Provo isn't a typical setting for a minor-league team. The town is the home of Brigham Young University, and most of the population is Mormon. Young baseball players are going through enough cultural shock as they try to adapt to living on their own, and they respond to the religious culture as you'd expect most young men to do -- making fun of it and putting it down.

McCarthy is a stranger in a strange land, then -- not above it all but certainly out of the usual mold. He tries to notice what's going on around him, but he is naturally preoccupied by the fact that he can't have two good outings in a row and that his pitching velocity is down at least 5 mph.

It's easy to root for McCarthy here as the story moves along through the 2002 season, even if you can guess by the subtitle ("A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit") that he isn't destined for greatness. If you are wondering about the time lapse from season to publication, it doesn't really hurt the story. If anything, it's fun to read about Saunders and Prince Fielder in their early pro days, and the other experiences seem rather universal.

The book did receive some criticism for some minor factual errors, such as players being promoted a couple of days before they were said to be part of an incident that's part of the book. Although that's never a good idea, the general storyline comes through loud and clear here. I raced through "Odd Man Out" and was sad to see it end, sad to know McCarthy is done writing about baseball.

Five stars

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Review: Monday Morning Quarterback (2009)

2011-04-14T00:22:00.003-04:00

By Peter King

It's tough to miss Peter King if you follow the National Football League. He writes stories for Sports Illustrated and appears on television outlets.

Plus, he writes "Monday Morning Quarterback," a diversion that turned into a monster.

King was told by his editor several years ago to take his leftover notes (there are always a few) and write a few hundred words of stories and opinions each week during the season so it could go on the Internet. The reporter was also told to make it personal, since the net was relatively new way back when and a different format was welcome. That assignment eventually grew into 8,000 words or so a week and a good-sized following.

After more than a decade, King had the chance to turn the column's greatest hits into "Monday Morning Quarterback." It works better than you think it might, even from the perspective of more than a year after its original publication. (In other words, this popped up in the remainder pile.)

King starts with some of his favorite columns -- background information on interviewing Peyton Manning of the Colts in a hot equipment shed so that Manning could give King undivided attention, for example. A good story is a good story, no matter when it is told, and the tales here on such items as when Mike Martz was coaching the Rams still read pretty well despite the water under the bridge since then.

The author throws in some new stuff as well, such as opinions about the 100 best players in history or in the league now, or steps for Commissioner Roger Goodell to take.

One of the risks an author takes in a more personal blog like this is opening up other parts of his life, and King has gotten some criticism over the years along the lines of "I DON'T CARE ABOUT HIS DAUGHTER'S SOFTBALL TEAM!!!" He does include a couple of stories about high school sports here -- the angry client base can skip them easily enough. But it's worth mentioning that his story on the death of his dog will strike a chord with many; in fact, it already did.

King throws in a footnote on virtually every page of some sort. Sometimes they have something to do with the nearby story, but it's more likely to be something completely different. Travel stories. Good predictions. Bad predictions. I'm not a coffee drinker and could care less about Starbucks, and I never warmed to "Seinfeld." But King and I have Bruce Springsteen and the Red Sox in common, so that's fine.

"Monday Morning Quarterback" can be gobbled up in a few days, and is really more interesting than it has any right to be -- especially after the usual expiration date on the side of the carton, er, book. This might have gotten another star in 2009, but as it is, it's a fun, light read.

Three stars

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Review: The House That Ruth Built (2011)

2011-04-11T10:49:00.002-04:00

By Robert Weinstraub

Mention the year 1923 to a baseball fan, and he or she will probably come up with two events.

The first is that 1923 was one of Babe Ruth's greatest all-around seasons. The 1927 season might be more remembered for 60 home runs, but in '23 Ruth hit .393 with 41 home runs, 131 runs batted in, 151 runs, and an on-base percentage of .545.

Then there was the matter of the opening of Yankee Stadium, a sporting cathedral that lasted in one form or another until 2008. It's forgotten by some that the Yankees used to share the Polo Grounds with the New York Giants until the respective ownerships stopped getting along and the Yankees picked up their belongings and moved across the nearby river to the Bronx.

Those two facts are something of the foundation of Robert Weintraub's book on the 1923 season, "The House That Ruth Built." It's an extremely detailed look at a season that is more or less forgotten.

Weintraub's major point, and it's a fair one, is that the 1923 season once and for all changed the way the game was played. The dead ball era's style of play, called scientific baseball by many, featured plenty of stolen bases and bunts. Its main architect was Giants' manager John McGraw, who seemed to revel in his reputation as the smartest man in the game. McGraw was always willing to bend the rulebook, and he seemed to take the credit for wins and blame the players for losses.

But he also was smart enough to realize the game was changing in 1923, and Ruth personified that change. One base at a time was on its way out; Ruth could change a game with one swing of his mighty bat. Ruth was a great symbol of the Twenties, a man of huge appetites and excess and impatience, and McGraw hated him for it. So the Giants' skipper usually insulted Ruth whenever he got the chance.

McGraw got another chance in the fall of 1923. The Giants had beaten the Yankees in 1921 and 1922 in the World Series, and marched toward another almost destined meeting in 1923. Ruth, as opposed to the earlier meetings, was ready for McGraw and the Giants in '23.

Another book featuring Ruth and McGraw won't be lacking for color, and they aren't alone. Casey Stengel, a member of that Giant team, learned plenty of lessons from McGraw, just as Billy Martin learned from Stengel with the Yankees years later. The Yankees' two owners, Jacob Ruppert and Tul Huston, get plenty of coverage, although the Giants' owner is more or less ignored. Lou Gehrig even makes a cameo appearance in the story, as he was just beginning his baseball career in 1923.

Weintraub's biggest problem might be the season itself, as there wasn't a great deal of drama. The Yankees won the pennant by 16 games, so you can guess how much drama was involved there. The Giants finished 4.5 games ahead of the Cincinnati Reds, but it wasn't a classic pennant race by any means.

That leaves something of a doughnut in terms of interest. Stories about Ruth, McGraw and the opening of Yankee Stadium start the book in exciting fashion, and the World Series has plenty of excitement attached. But the story of the regular season drags a bit, even though the author does his best to give short descriptions of some of the other characters involved in the story.

"The House That Ruth Built" probably will have a relatively limited audience, as most casual fans will prefer to read full biographies of Ruth and McGraw in order to get the full flavor of the era. Still, Weintraub covers the season nicely enough, and those with an interest in the subject should find it valuable.

Three stars

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Review: How Lucky Can You Be (2010)

2011-04-10T18:33:00.006-04:00

By Buster Olney

This review appeared in The Buffalo News a while ago. You can find it here.

Short version -- Olney keeps just the right distance in writing the story of one of those legendary college coaches that don't get much national publicity ... until tragedy struck. It would have been easy to turn this into a weapy story, but it really is quite inspirational.

Four stars

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Review: Campy (2011)

2011-04-10T14:33:00.003-04:00

By Neil Lanctot

A full review appeared in The Buffalo News; you can find it on this link.

To sum it up in a paragraph -- Roy Campanella is one of the greatest catchers in baseball history, and he led a far more interesting life than many know. He might be one of the first "celebrities," particular with a sports connection, to appear in public in a wheelchair. Lanctot does a thorough, nice job on this book, which is overdue.

Four stars

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Review: The Great Expansion (2011)

2011-04-02T19:18:00.007-04:00

By Alan Bass

If you were to pick an event that's the obvious biggest before-and-after event in the history of the National Hockey League, the 1967 expansion probably would be it. The league went from a close-knit community that few cared about outside of six cities, to a major North American enterprise. Once the NHL went up to 12 teams, there would be little turning back on its way to its current 30 teams.

It's a little surprising that a book hasn't been done on this subject yet, although trying to get a general hockey book published can be quite a chore. Freelance author Alan Bass decided to go the self-publishing route, and the result is "The Great Expansion." The book is a slightly curious mix of plenty of research and some original interviews with an odd structure and strange conclusions.

The NHL started in 1917 in Canada, and had the usual growing pains over the years. Finally in 1942, we got down to the six-team era most people consider the golden age of the sport. The teams played 14 times a year, and there were less than 120 players in the major leagues at a given moment -- which meant there was a great deal of competition for roster spots. If you didn't make it to NHL, you were stuck taking bus rides from Rochester to Springfield. That's hardly fair for someone who might be the 121st best player in North America (which, realistically, applied only to Canadians with a couple of American exceptions).

The NHL teams essentially ran out of ways to make money, and television was the obvious outlet. The only way to do that, though, was to get a deal in the United States, and the only way was to have teams in places other than New York, Boston, Detroit and Chicago.

Bass goes through the run-up to the expansion, the terms of the deal, and the expansion draft. He even uncovers some interesting stories that had gone unsaid for years Then he switches his attention to the six new teams, with each one getting a chapter. The teams are examined from their creation through their early history. That's followed by a few general chapters about expansion's success in the NHL and in other sports.

All right, fine. But there are some good-sized problems here in a number of areas. It didn't take long for them to come out, either. I can put up with miscounting the number of Cups the Maple Leafs won during the Original Six era, or misspelling Gil Perreault's name once. However, blaming World War II on some of the folding franchises in the 1930's seems like bad judgment; the Depression is a much more logical explanation.

Later on, the author misses out on a main reason why the NHL kept expanding in the 1970's -- not only was the cost of doing business going up because of the World Hockey Association so that expansion fees helped there, but it also kept the WHA out of certain markets. And the Anaheim/Miami expansion is ignored, a case when the NHL was anxious to get two then-economic powers (including Disney) into the league.

In addition, sometimes the narrative just doesn't add up. I have some first-person knowledge here about Buffalo's attempt to get into the NHL in 1967, because I interviewed Seymour and Norty Knox for a book I wrote about it. They told me that they had celebrated the night before the announcement because they were told by a league owner that they were all set to get in. Then the next day, they found out they had essentially finished eighth in a seven team race, as St. Louis was given a franchise even though there was no bidder. Knox was told by Rangers' owner Bill Jennings that Leafs' owner Stafford Smythe had killed Buffalo's hopes. From there, Montreal voted with Toronto, Chicago voted against Buffalo because James Norris lost money on a Buffalo business deal, and Detroit followed Chicago.

Buffalo isn't given much credit early in the book for being a contender in the expansion derby. Then there's a media report that does briefly reveal Toronto's role in Buffalo's demise. And in the Pittsburgh section, Art Rooney is shown making several calls on that city's behalf in order to get Pittsburgh a team over Buffalo. I'm still under the assumption that the Knox brothers' version is the one to believe -- because I heard it with my own ears -- but I'm still confused.

Some of the material is a little dry, such as the round by round descriptions of the expansion draft or of the early seasons of the new teams. That's at least understandable.

It's easy to appreciate the effort Bass put into "The Great Expansion," as well as the courage for publishing it himself. I found myself wishing that it had gotten one more rewrite with a few more original sources of information. But I'm rooting for Bass to come back and try again soon, because he certainly has the dedication needed to tackle future book projects.

Two stars

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Review: The Extra 2% (2011)

2011-03-31T23:26:00.006-04:00

By Jonah Keri

Before getting to the review of "The Extra 2%," here's a relevant story:

I spent six years working for a professional sports franchise. There were good parts and bad parts about it, and one of the good parts was the chance to see a sports team from up close.

And in this case, I learned that there were reasons why this particular sports team was mediocre. The organization as a whole had something of a commitment to mediocrity at the time. There was lip service to winning it all, of course, but generally the entire organization didn't put winning at the top of its priorities. And the results showed it.

Jonah Keri never worked for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays or Rays, but he did the next-best thing. He interviewed all sorts of people with connections to the franchise, past and present. That includes the decade that the franchise spent wandering in the proverbial desert, and the time after that when they finally reached the oasis of postseason play.

The resulting book, "The Extra 2%," is a terrific look at what the world of major league baseball is like right now.

The then-Devil Rays did just about everything wrong in those early years. It started with the original owner, Vince Naimoli, who knew all about stripping businesses and selling them off at a profit but who knew nothing about the unique aspects of the baseball business. The team went from an emphasis on experience to youth to experience, depending on the whims of the moment. Sometimes the spending was merely wasteful, sometimes the checkbook was firmly closed.

Keri has great fun in talking with some of the veterans of those times. Even the team's first general manager reviews his mistakes and miscalculations with good humor and candor. Everyone will love the story about how a lone scout thought a prospect was worth a flier as a draft choice. When his opinion went unnoticed, he left ... and the player soon started a Hall of Fame career. (No spoilers here.)

Finally, and mercifully, former Wall Street workers Stuart Sternberg and Matthew Silverman took control of the team in 2005. They accumulated smart people wherever they could find them, seemingly from a variety of walks of life. All of their work didn't produce results immediately, but the team eventually had a magical last-to-first season in 2008 that put the team in the World Series.

The baseball business sure has changed in the last 20 years. Every team has a statistical department filled with people who probably could make huge money elsewhere if they weren't so busy having fun. Throw in the matter of regional sports networks, international scouting, stadium issues, and so on, and it's a complicated world. Sternberg and Silverman were looking for that extra two percent that would give them the edge over the competition, and they found it eventually.

This could have been really dry material, but Keri works in real-life, first-person stories into the narrative. About the only part that drags a bit is a chapter that explains what the new ownership group did in financial circles -- but it's really necessary to the story.

Keri is one of the smart people who used to work for Baseball Prospectus -- not that there aren't some bright folks there now. He's done a number of stories for a variety of publications about baseball and business. Keri knows his stuff, but he's also gone through a variety of sources -- from 175 interviews to checking out blogs and bloggers -- to find information.

I haven't read every baseball book out there this spring, but I have to believe this one is one of the best. "The Extra 2%" is a superb case study about the baseball business.

Five stars

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Review: 162-0 - A Mets Perfect Season (2011)

2011-03-29T10:38:00.006-04:00

By Howie Karpin

If you've read the sports section of a newspaper over the last upteen years, you are no doubt familiar with the format of a basic Associated Press game story. It starts off by saying "Kevin Chase twirled a three-hitter while Glenn Locke had four hits to lead the Boston Red Sox to a 12-0 win over ..." It's quick and fast to write, and has the added advantage of being accurate.

However, you wouldn't want to read a book of them.

Alas, that's the style, and the biggest problem, of "162-0 - A Mets Perfect Season."

It's part of a series of baseball books by Triumph Books. An author looks over the history of the team, day-by-day, and picks out the biggest win of a particular day. He or she fills out the year that way so that the baseball team in question has 162 wins in a row covered.

It can be an interesting idea. But history becomes a lot more compelling when viewed in the perspective of time. This is where this particular story by Howie Karpin tends to fall rather flat. Each game gets a full recap, with notes on the game as it went along. The narrative would have worked much better with the Associated Press' second story about the game (or the equivalent), which has a more "featury" approach and probably would make the interesting parts of the game come alive a bit more.

To his credit, Karpin does add a few quotes in some of the stories, although I did find myself wondering where the quotes came from since the author didn't cover the team for the past 49 years. A few of the entries also have a paragraph or two of historical facts about the players involved in a particular game, along the lines of "Ron Svoboda went on to play six full seasons with the Mets, and hit..." But it's pretty dry material as well.

In addition, the book has some pictures of famous Mets, some short biographies, box scores of important games, and short recaps of other famous contests in Mets' history that weren't wins or didn't make the cut. It would have been nice if Karpin had quotes from a few players from interviews years later, which would have helped the game stories from a 2011 perspective, but they are nowhere to be found.

"162-0" could serve as a decent enough reference book for those who need such a publication. For those who are just fans of the Mets, though, this dry treatment of Mets' history probably should be passed over.

Two stars

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Review: Baseball Prospectus 2011

2011-03-28T14:33:00.005-04:00

Edited by Steven Goldman

Another baseball season is ready to start, and I'm ready for it. That's because I've read "Baseball Prospectus 2011." It's become something of a ritual for me in March. In fact, I'm starting to understand what VORP and some of the other abbreviations are.

For the most part, this is another solid entrant in the series. To brief the uninitiated, the Baseball Prospectus series has information on something like 1,600 baseball players. That covers just about everyone who might play in the majors in 2011, and several who with luck might make it there someday. The major players all get a brightly-written paragraph along with stats (conventional and otherwise) and a 2011 projection of sorts.

Those are framed with a brief essay on how each team is doing entering the upcoming season. There's also a list at the back of the top 101 prospects in baseball, which is always fun to ready -- especially in hindsight.

My usual comments about the book apply here. I'm not a player in fantasy sports, but I would think that the relatively early deadline for publication means that any sort of projections are going to be a little dates. The book's authors do have a website for such matters. That's one possible location for such estimates; there are others out there by other writers as well. Plus, the stats can be intimidating to those unfamiliar with the concepts. Yes, there are explanations in the front of the book, but some may not want to bother looking up terms like FRAA.

This year's book does warrant a couple of new thoughts, and they aren't completely positive. First, there seem to be more typos and errors slipped in along the way than usual -- some unclear or repetitive writing, stat mistakes, etc. It's not easy to put out a phone book-sized publication in a relatively short time span; the deadlines may be catching up to this crew.

Meanwhile, the team essays seem a little more spotty than normal. Some are right on target, while others come off as recycled from the player comments. Since the team of writers changes from year to year, it's easy to guess that it's a brief lapse.

If you are a baseball fan, though, I don't want to scare you off. "Baseball Prospectus 2011" is definitely worth your time and money. You'll find yourself going through it when it first arrives, and then you'll refer back to it when a game is on television.

Four stars

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Review: Solid Fool's Gold (2011)

2011-03-21T22:19:00.005-04:00

By Bill James

There might not be an odder title for a baseball book than "Solid Fool's Gold," especially if you don't know a little bit of background about baseball writer Bill James. The subtitle, "Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom," doesn't help either.

An explanation is in order, then. James, who has been writing about baseball in various ways for more than 30 years, has an on-line service dedicated to analysis of the sport. For the last couple of years, he's been involved in the publication of an annual book called, "The Bill James Goldmine." It's a collection of facts and essays; they've been reviewed here and James' work has definitely been the best part of the book. Otherwise, I'm not sure how much use it is to most fans.

Apparently, I wasn't alone. The old format has been ditched. The new book is a collection of essays from the past year by James alone, mostly on the website. "Solid Fool's Gold" is an odd book, especially by baseball standards, but still quite interesting.

Most of the essays deal with some little baseball question that James try to answer through his usual inquisitive nature. The Pirates have really been bad for the last few years, but are they on the worst run in baseball history? What are some of the best pitching rotations in baseball history? Do clutch pitchers, who turn it up a bit to win close games, really exist? Are we headed to higher standards when it comes to Hall of Fame inductions in the near future?

You'll notice that none of those topics has much direct relevance to the 2010 season. There is some work that obviously has been updated to recent times, but many of the articles have more of an historical approach. If you are looking for a reason why the San Francisco Giants came out relatively nowhere to win it all last season, this is not the place.

This is generally good stuff, especially if you are familiar and like James' previous work. But there are some other essays that are way, way out of the box -- in fact, they have nothing to do with baseball.

Ever consider the issue of tipping? James has. He thinks it will be banned in several years. James doesn't like the idea of cameras monitoring cars that run red lights. He thinks we went too far toward the goal of having completely fair trials back in the 1960's, and paid for it with a high crime rate. James even mentions an ancestor who served on the Supreme Court, and a completely silly way of setting up the NASCAR Olympics.

James always has been known for original thinking, and it's great fun to see his mind work in original ways. He has a book coming out on crime later this year, and this convinced me to take a look at it despite a lack of interest in the subject. Heck, I might learn something. That all said, I can almost guarantee you that some people will leave comments on review sites that are along the lines of "WHAT THE BLEEP DO MANY OF THESE ESSAYS HAVE TO DO WITH BASEBALL? I THOUGHT I WAS BUYING A BASEBALL BOOK!"

This is a quick read under any circumstances, certainly worth the $10 I paid for it on Amazon.com. That's why I rate it the way I do, but any potential reader should definitely know what's ahead before ordering it. "Solid Fool's Gold" is definitely full of surprises.

Four stars

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Review: Baseball Miscellany (2011)

2011-03-02T23:58:00.003-05:00

By Matthew Silverman

There are all sorts of baseball books out there -- big books, small books, stat books, history books, dense books, light books.

"Baseball Miscellany" is one of the small, light ones.

Written by Matthew Silverman, the idea is to go through some relatively obscure portions of baseball history with a light touch. How well it works may depend on your base of knowledge.

Silverman starts with a reasonable enough idea. He presents 27 questions about baseball, covering a wide variety of subject. Why does the visiting team bat first? What is a Met? Why is the spitball illegal? Why is Fenway Park's "Green Monster" so tall? And so on.

The answers tie in to the questions ... sort of. To be sure, there are lots of tangents here. Sometimes in fact, Silverman asks questions that don't really have a factual answer, or they could be answered in a sentence or a paragraph.

For example: "So who invented baseball?" You might know that there's no true answer to that, because the game went through a very gradual evolution spanning decades if not centuries. At least we don't believe Abner Doubleday sat down and made up the game anymore; Doubleday is better known now for being at Fort Sumter in South Carolina when the Civil War started in 1861.

"Why do managers wear uniforms in the dugout?" Mostly tradition, a remnant of the time when the manager played on the field as well. "How many times did Ty Cobb steal home?" The answer is 54, which would make a very short chapter without more information about the baseball great.

The chapters are filled out with some quotes about baseball, definitions of baseball terms such as "fungo" and "doubleheader," and some photographs that have a least a small connection to the chapter heading.

The success rate for the questions are a mixed bag. I've never read an explanation of why batters are "on deck," and never heard the story of why Joe DiMaggio was the "Yankee Clipper." Others, though, are rather basic in nature.

"Baseball Miscellany" is short enough at only 180 pages, and can be read in no time at all. What's more, how many hard cover books can be purchased for $14.95 retail, or about $10 at amazon.com? Not many.

It's a little difficult to say where the audience is for this one -- perhaps the mid-teen set that is looking for a quick course on some of the quirks of baseball history. But I shouldn't be too hard on this book; it's designed as feathery, harmless entertainment, and it meets that test.

Two stars

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Review: The Greatest Game Ever Pitched (2011)

2011-03-02T14:07:00.004-05:00

By Jim Kaplan

Some sports events become unexpectedly legendary, and thus become obvious subjects for books ... after they are written.

"The Greatest Game Ever Pitched" certainly qualifies.

Jim Kaplan, a freelance author and former Sports Illustrated baseball writer, probably wondered why no one had ever gone into detail about a game between the San Francisco Giants and Milwaukee Braves on May 2, 1963, in Candlestick Park in San Francisco. It's become relatively famous, as regular-season games go.

Two Hall of Fame pitchers, Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal, hooked up in what could be described as the best pitchers' duel of all time. The two men kept throwing zeroes at the other team, and neither pitcher wanted to leave. On and on the game went, until it finally ended in a relatively fitting fashion (no spoilers here) in the bottom of the 16th.

There's never been a baseball game quite like it. Considering the way pitch counts are closely monitored now, there won't be another game like it in the future.

Naturally, a book about two pitchers' retiring the side in order almost constantly wouldn't fill a short story too well, let alone a book. So Kaplan gives mini-biographies of the two pitchers along the way.

Spahn was one of the great left-handed pitchers in history, and might well be the best in history after the age of 35. He won 363 games in his career, with 23 of them coming in 1963. That was his 13th and last 20-win season. Kaplan does a little investigative work along the way, clearing up a couple of myths about Spahn's background.

Marichal wasn't as good as Spahn in terms of his career -- who was? -- but he had more wins than any other pitcher in the 1960's, just as Spahn did in the 1950's. Marichal's problem might be that he only won one pennant (1962), and that he was a bit overshadowed by the greatness of Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson at times during his career. Therefore, he probably isn't remembered as well as he should be -- except in his native Dominican Republic, where he's still a legend.

Kaplan scores some points for adding a few sidebar stories about other great pitching battles, such as the one when Koufax and Bob Hendley allowed only one hit between them. He even has some details on a famous college game between Yale (Ron Darling) and St. John's (Frank Viola) that was the subject of a Roger Angell article in The New Yorker. Good move.

Kaplan is obviously an extremely bright, well-rounded man. You don't see many quotes from "King Lear" in a baseball book. But the man can put together a sentence, and he knows his baseball. This story moves right along in a smart fashion.

One bit of full disclosure: I did point Kaplan in a direction during his research into Spahn's days in Buffalo, and he was nice enough to mention me a couple of times in the book. So I've been looking forward to seeing the finished product since that time. But, I think I'd like this book a lot even if my name weren't in the index. Most baseball fans will have the same reaction, I trust.

Four stars

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Review: King of the Court (2010)

2011-02-25T14:32:00.003-05:00

By Aram Goudsouzian

A complicated, interesting man, that Bill Russell.

That's makes it a daunting task for a biographer to sort everything out. So kudos to Aram Goudsouzian for taking such a project on.

Goudsouzian has written a full, almost academic-style biography of the former basketball great. "King of the Court" features exhaustive (and probably exhausting, based on the number of footnotes) research into the life of Russell, someone who could keep a team of psychologists busy for quite a while. We know a lot about Russell's accomplishments, but it's been difficult to put the other parts of his life into focus. That's in spite of the fact that Russell himself has written four books during the various stages of his life. Therefore, it's a good idea to sort out the information on Russell.

The Basketball Hall of Famer's basketball life is pretty well known. He came out of a San Francisco high school and virtually reinvented aspects of the game of basketball, partly with intelligence and partly with his athletic skills. He led the University of San Francisco to two straight NCAA championships, captured an Olympic gold medal, and took his talents to Boston to play for the Celtics.

There Russell and a cast of talented, equally unselfish teammates focused only on winning, and they didn't care how it happened. The Celtics ran off 11 championships in 13 seasons with Russell at center. Russell might not be the greatest player in basketball history, but he might be the greatest winner in professional sports. If you had your pick of any athlete to represent you in a Game Seven with your life at stake, Russell would be a good choice. After all, he never lost a Game Seven.

The rest of the story doesn't fit neatly into records and categories. Russell lost his mother to illness at a young age. He then came to prominence in the late 1950's, just as the civil rights struggle was gearing up in earnest. When Russell got to Boston, he embraced the only part of society that was color-blind to him -- the portion on the basketball court.

Respect for an African American off the court back then was a little harder to find -- OK, a lot harder. Russell would hear cheers at Boston Garden, and then go home and find racial insults painted on the walls of his suburban house. He wanted respect, but only on his terms, and it sounds as if he didn't give many clues as to what those terms might be at a given moment.

Goudsouzian spends almost all of the book covering the years of Russell's playing career, which ended in 1969. The major theme might be the relationship with Wilt Chamberlain -- speaking of complicated fellows -- which had its ups and downs but stayed up, perhaps, when both men realized there was a lot more bringing them together than separating them.

Post-basketball, Russell certainly has been his own man, wandering from topic to topic depending on what interested in him. Interestingly, it's only been in the last decade that Russell seems a little more comfortable accepting praise for his achievements. For example, the most valuable player award in the NBA Finals is now named after Russell.

It's pretty clear that Goudsouzian has a great deal of admiration for Russell, personally and professionally. Still, the author isn't afraid to point out stories about Russell's flaws. Heroes generally don't come in neat packages.

It's hard to say if anyone will completely put together the pieces of Bill Russell's life. But Goudsouzian puts those pieces out on the table in "King of the Court." It's probably the best one-stop of account of the life of one of sport's true individuals.

Four stars

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Review: The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History (2010)

2011-02-18T00:48:00.005-05:00

Presented by Freedarko

Here's the best example of why "The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History" has an undisputed place as a unique book in the sports world.

On pages 63 and 64, there is a discussion of the offensive explosion in the National Basketball Association that took place in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Just how is it explained?

By bringing up the Enclosure Acts of 1755 in England. If you knew about the Enclosure Acts, stop reading this review and apply for status as a "Jeopardy" contestant.

Somehow it works, and so does this book. It's great fun.

The authors are from the Freedarko blog, which has achieved some fame for good writing from a different perspective -- in short, it does exactly what a blog should do. The group came up with a pro basketball almanac a while back, and this is an historical version of it. It comes with the same sort of unique graphics that made the first book unusual, although they don't overwhelm here.

This is essentially a series of essays on basketball over the years, hitting a variety of topics. Some are logical, such as Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, the Celtic dynasty, and a foreign invasion. But some are not, such as hair, fights, and the careers of Maurice Stokes and Connie Hawkins.

The opinions are quite fresh and thoughtful overall. What's more I only noticed a couple of factual mistakes along the way -- Julius Erving wasn't drafted because he left UMass early to join the ABA, and David Thompson's departure year is off by a year. While there probably are others in a book like this, it reads quite cleanly.

I wouldn't have minded this being a bit longer; based on the text it's easy to wonder if a few chapters died when Bill Simmons' book on basketball history made the bookstores. More than a little background information on the game's background probably wouldn't be a bad idea for the reader to have either.

Get past those obstacles, though, and you should realize that "The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History" is a winner.

Four stars

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Review: Remembering Fenway Park (2011)

2011-02-14T19:10:00.003-05:00

By Harvey Frommer

We're coming up on a big baseball celebration in Boston, as we come up on the 100th anniversary of the first game ever played there. The facility opened in April, 1912, right around the time the Titanic sunk.

Author Harvey Frommer apparently wants to get into the party spirit a little early.

That's why he's written a book called "Remembering Fenway Park." It's a typical coffee table book about the team and its major occupant, the Boston Red Sox, and it's perhaps most noteworthy for its approach to the subject.

Frommer calls this an oral and narrative history of Fenway. As for the oral part, he sought out everyone he could find to give stories about the place. That includes players, coaches, front office staffers, media and fans. There are some stars represented here, but not a ton of them -- especially from the last 15 years or so. In other words, no Martinez, Ramirez, Ortiz, Schilling, Boggs, Rice, Yastrzemski, Clemens, etc. in direct quotations.

Still, there are some good stories here. That includes some memories from fans, which usually don't work particularly well in books because everyone, it seems, has a story about going to a game but it's rarely unusual in nature. Here, though, it adds a little flavor to the tale. Plus, it's fun to hear from those who come to work in a cathedral regularly.

Plus, the pictures are nice as you'd expect. There are good shots of the stars, but ticket stubs and baseball cards and unusual photos of the park's history are also used, sometimes nice and big. It's a pretty book.

The odd part comes in that Frommer essentially writes something of a history of the Red Sox here, but almost exclusively sticks to events that happened in home games. Yes, baseball teams play half their games on the road, and some of Boston's big events certainly happened away from Fenway (the last two clinching games of the World Series, Game Seven against the Yankees in 2004, Game Six against the Mets in 1986, and so on). Plus, some of the home moments get ignored. How about Game Seven against the Indians in 2007, which was a thrilling game and capped a memorable comeback?

As a result, the text does seem to be a little choppy along the way. Games are dropped in for historical significance, but it's really difficult for the author to get in some flow.

I'm not sure how to avoid this problem, and maybe there was no way around it if the Red Sox story in Fenway was to be told. It's possible that a full-fledged history of the ballpark might have been even more useful, including its days of hosting the Boston Patriots in the American Football League or other special events -- but perhaps that's best left for a centennial project.

"Remembering Fenway Park" will bring back some good memories and has some fine stories that date back to 1912. It's just more interesting than compelling as it goes along.

Three stars

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Review: Far Afield (2007)

2011-02-09T10:16:00.003-05:00

By S.L. Price

"Far Afield" never should have worked as well as it does.

Way back in 2003, S.L. Price was looking for something of a new challenge, a little adventure in his life. He was a top writer for Sports Illustrated, and sought a little freshness. Living in the Washington, D.C. area around 9/11 will do that.

When SI asked what he wanted at that point in his life, he seemed to surprise himself a bit with the answer, "Send me to Europe for a year or so."

That's what he did. He packed up the wife and kids, plus some belongings, and moved to Southern France for about a year. That certainly qualified as an adventure.

"Far Afield" is a journal of that trip. It's consistently interesting, even today.

The book has a variety of different elements. Price gives something of a reporter's notebook about his impressions of covering the Olympics in Athens, the French Open in Paris, a cricket series between India and Pakistan, the Tour de France in, well, France, and some other events. We were fussing about Lance Armstrong and his alleged doping then, and we still are today.

Price also takes plenty of time to discuss his personal life. It's not easy to move to a new country with a different language. The author probably had it easier in some ways than his wife because he was doing some traveling, while Mrs. Price stayed home and navigated three children through the transition. (She did have the advantage of speaking more French, at least.)

And finally, Price reviews his own life and career on a somewhat limited basis -- his search for a writing voice, job jumps in his career, etc. One of the most interesting parts concerns Michael Jordan; the two both attended North Carolina at roughly the same time. At one point Jordan says he was never happier than he was at college ... and then he left a year early for pro basketball. Sounds like he still misses those days.

This book is still seven years old at this point, and the Europeans' opinion of George W. Bush and of the 2004 election seem almost quaint at this point. But it's always interesting to hear unfiltered opinions from the other side of the pond about Americans.

And Price is such a good, thoughtful writer that he really makes everything come alive, even today. It's easy to wonder why it took until 2007 for him to get this published, because it's certainly worthwhile.

"Far Afield" can be picked up now at used bookstores and the like quite cheaply, and it's very much worth that small investment. When you're done, Price just might move up on your list of favorite writers of sports.

Four stars

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Review: Scorecasting (2011)

2011-01-31T00:08:00.002-05:00

By Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim

You had to think that the success of the book, "Freakonomics," would inspire imitations in other fields.

"Scorecasting" is the first book out there that tries to take such out-of-the-box techniques to analyze sports.

It comes with a cover endorsement from Steven Levitt, who was co-author of "Freakonomics." What's more, "Scorecasting" has some new research that comes up with surprising conclusions that will move the sports discussion along in new ways.

Authors Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim are well-suited to the job here. Moskowitz is a finance professor at the University of Chicago, where Levitt was right around the corner more or less. Wertheim has written some good books and done nice work for Sports Illustrated.

The book is divided into a long group of chapters, some much longer than others. Some try to attack, if that's the right work, generally accepted conventions about sports. A big field goal or free throw coming up in the final moments? A coach isn't doing his job unless he "ices" the kicker or shooter, right. Is there such a thing as momentum, or do players and teams go on "hot streaks?"

The authors crunch the numbers, and then crunch them again, and come up with the surprising figures. Take home court/field advantage in sports. The home team universally wins more games than it loses, no matter what the sport. We've come up with all sorts of good reasons for that, such as sleeping at home, familiar playing conditions, backing from the crowds, etc.

Moskowitz and Wertheim do a fine job convincing the reader that most of the edge is due to bias from officials -- not on all calls, but enough of the close ones to provide a potential margin for victory. The exceptions to the rule comes in scheduling; either teams are whipped by playing their second game in a second city in two nights (think NBA/NHL), or road teams are brought in a sacrificial lambs to provide easy wins for the home team and big paydays for the visitors (college football/college basketball). It sure looks like umpires give the home team the edge on close calls in key situations, or referees call more either-way penalties on the visitors in close games.

By the way, Leonard Koppett wrote in one of his books decades ago that he thought home field advantages were mostly due to the effect of fans on officials, and this book backs that up with real-life proof.

This book's authors concluded that icing shooters and kickers has absolutely no effect on success, that football teams often are too conservative on fourth-down plays, and that the popular chart assigning value to NFL draft choices needs to be updated.

It's a sign of how well this book works that I really found myself disagreeing with its conclusions on only one chapter. The authors say the Chicago Cubs have gone without a championship for more than 100 years because they've had less economic incentive than other teams to do so. No matter what happens, Wrigley Field is usually close to full, and winning doesn't do much for the bottom line.

That might take some of the pressure off, but the Cubs haven't been trendy forever. They have a history of making bad decisions. One of them that may have cost them 20 years of good chances, according to analyst Bill James, was a less-than-aggressive approach when African Americans entered the sport in 1947. Plus, the Cubs as a brand become more valuable in terms of television ratings/revenues when they are doing well. That's the reason why the Yankees and Red Sox have gone out and signed some free agents over this past winter, even though they both sell a lot of tickets.

But for the most part I shake my head in agreement. For example, the authors do a pretty good job of disproving the concept of momentum, that wins in the past four games are not the best indication of a team's chances of winning the fifth. (That applies to how a game might come out as well.) A Wall Street Journal reviewer, in a generally positive review, says former Florida coach Urban Meyer believes in momentum, and that was good enough for him. Well, what's Meyer going to tell teams to fire them up in tough situations -- "We've got to grab the momentum back right here, guys" or "We're bound to have the breaks even out in the long term because we've shown we're the better team in that span"?

The book is a little choppy in spots -- chapter-size really is from very short to quite long -- and the subject matter can go from very useful to a little frivolous (why are there no .299 hitters?). But almost all of it is interesting in some manner. Reading "Scorecasting: will make anyone a smarter and better fan.

Four stars

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Review: The Ones Who Hit the Hardest (2010)

2011-01-27T12:04:00.002-05:00

By Chad Millman and Shawn Coyne

This is definitely the right time to take a look at this book.

The Pittsburgh Steelers are back in the Super Bowl; they will play the Green Bay Packers in less than two weeks for the NFL championship. The Steelers' appearance continues a run of excellence that extends back to the early 1970's, when Pittsburgh went from doormats to nearly-constant contenders.

The start of the dynasty is profiled in "The Ones Who Hit the Hardest," by Chad Millman and Shawn Coyne. It's an informative look at the team, and to a lesser extent, its town and one of its rivals.

Once upon a time, the Steelers were awful, and awful with depressing regularity. They never could win anything, and had played a few decades without taking home a championship trophy. Part of the problem was a lack of patience, as some of the coaches always traded draft choices for mediocre veterans in a frantic effort to win a few more games right away.

The Steelers finally got it right when they picked Chuck Noll to coach the team in 1969. Noll came in and changed the culture of the Steelers' organization, preaching patience and teaching. The Steelers' scouts went to work and came up with a boatload of great players in that time, including such names as Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann, Franco Harris and Jack Lambert. You might see them if you visit the Hall of Fame in Canton.

The authors do a nice job of putting together the story of those Steelers' teams in the 70s, which won three Super Bowls (getting another at the start of 1980, which isn't covered here for whatever reason). They draw on some interviews of those involved as well as a variety of other reference sources. The story moves along crisply, and turning points in seasons as well as club history are well described.

The authors also bring a good analytical eye to the scene, making valid points about the team along the way. It helps the story move along.

Millman and Coyne do go off on a couple of subthemes or tangents, depending on how you want to describe them. One involves the Dallas Cowboys, which also was one of the standout teams of the era. While the Steelers were something of a throwback to the era when raw strength determined games, the Cowboys under coach Tom Landry took more of a cerebral approach. They tended to think and react rather than just crush. Both teams were effective, but the authors imply that the Steelers' style certainly was a better match for their fanbase.

Pittsburgh was still a blue-collar town in the 1970's, although it was going through changes. The steel industry was changing and shrinking at that time, leaving some severe worker dislocation along the way.

I came away with the feeling that this might have been a better book had it just stuck to the Steelers' dynasty. The subtitle ("The Steelers, the Cowboys, the '70s, and the Fight for America's Soul") is somewhat misleading, in that the Cowboys are a rather small part of the story here. And since the two teams only played in one Super Bowl, it's not as if they were constant rivals. The Steelers-Raiders games might have been more interesting.

(One exception to that: Tony Dorsett played his high school and college football in the Pittsburgh area, and went to the Cowboys to start his pro career. His is an interesting story and works very well here.)

I'm also not sure if the portions on the steel industry, which are interesting in a different way, were a good fit here. There are some passing connections between the "real world" developments and the team, but that story does come off as coming from a different book. Sticking to football might have made this book work a bit better.

And, some critics say a postscript would have been nice, and it's hard to disagree that an epilogue on what happened to the Steelers and the steel industry in the 1980's would have been useful.

"The Ones Who Hit the Hardest," then, has a few flaws for the general audience's taste. Still, it's a thorough read on one of the great teams in football history, which makes it more than worthwhile. And if there's a Steeler fan in your life, he or she should go get this, and soon.

Four stars

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Review: Cardboard Gods (2011)

2011-01-13T00:04:00.003-05:00

By Josh Wilker

"Cardboard Gods" certainly is unique. That's what makes it a very difficult book to review.

Others didn't have much of a problem rating it. It's gotten all sorts of great reviews. Sports Illustrated last month named it one of the best books of 2010 (the trade paperback version is coming out this spring; cover shown here). So let's start with a description of this childhood memoir.

Josh Wilker was a child of two children of the Sixties, particularly when it comes to his mom. One time his mother went off to a peace rally in the late 1960's, and came back with a new boyfriend ... which was a shock to his father. Mom, Dad, boyfriend Tom and two sons lived in one house for a while, before Tom and Mom took off to find some place to live in in somewhat rural Vermont. Naturally.

No matter where you live, children of the counter-culture were going to have some trouble becoming a smooth fit among the their peers. Conformity is strictly enforced in the pre-teen and teen years. Josh had older brother Ian at least. And if you are wonder where the "sports" comes in for this book, he had baseball.

Josh wasn't much of a player, but he could admire the best in the business by buying baseball cards. They became a constant companion for him in the pre-high school years, from 1975 or so to 1980. Hence the title, "Cardboard Gods."

Here Wilker uses the image of a particular baseball card as the launching point for a discussion of some part of his life, going in chronological order (his life, not the cards). I did say it was unique, right? This actually works better than it has any right to work, partly because Wilker is a vivid, descriptive writer. The observations on the players are on target and frequently funny.

A book like this comes down to a simple question: Do you care? I'm still not sure. The effect of an alternative lifestyle on children is a classic post-Sixties story, and it's easy to see why Josh was something of a loner. But the last chapter, about his high school days and drifter-like existence in the so-called real world, struck me as hard to follow and less interesting. It may be because I'm not a big fan of books on memories of childhood unless they are clues as to the future behavior of interesting people.

Wilker turns out to be a happy story despite a frequently downbeat personal childhood. He wrote a blog with comments about the players and his life, and it turned into this book. Suddenly, he's in demand. Good for him.

As for the book itself, if the description attracts you, odds are pretty good that you'll like it (20 of 29 Amazon.com reviewers gave it five stars). It's just not for every fan, though, so don't immediately pick it up just because you're still mad your mom threw out your baseball cards.

Three stars

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Review: Jacobs Beach (2010)

2011-01-06T13:38:00.001-05:00

By Kevin Mitchell

My late co-worker Bob Summers used to have a pet phrase when something went wrong or shady in the sport of boxing, which happens with frequency. He'd sit back and sigh, "It's another black eye for boxing."

The joke was that boxing has been getting black eyes for decades. One particular 10-year period probably was as bad as any of them. British writer Kevin Mitchell takes a look at the 1950's, and organized crime's influence on the sport, in his book, "Jacobs Beach."

The title refers to the area around the old Madison Square Garden in New York, which was replaced by a newer model around 1967. Mike Jacobs was in charge of boxing at the Garden in the Thirties and Forties, and the area around it has some gyms and bars to keep the fight crowd relatively compact.

For those around now, it's almost difficult to believe how big boxing was in the middle of the century, and New York was the hub. Fights took place throughout the Metropolitan N.Y. area, and boxers tried their luck in advancing to the big-time -- which was a date at the Garden.

The problem with boxing is that it rarely attracts the best and brightest of society, at least in terms of participation. In other words, most fighters have had few other options besides climbing in the ring and getting their brains knocked around for a price. What's more, boxing has always had a steady supply of people who are more than willing to grab more than their fair share of the pie.

Taking money unlawfully or unethically has been around for years in boxing. There have been some fixes over the years, most notably a Jack Sharkey heavyweight title bout in the Thirties. But it's more likely that so many fingers are in the pot that the fighter himself was left with virtually nothing. Exhibit A: Joe Louis.

By the end of the Forties, organized crime had moved into the picture. The International Boxing Club was run by James Norris, who owned a hockey team in Detroit and had control over ones in Chicago and New York. He certainly helped the mob move into boxing, making such people as Frankie Carbo and Blinky Palermo as huge behind-the-scenes operators, particularly in New York. As Mitchell points out, there was money to be made, and the syndicate was happy to scoop it up. So the IBC took care of its own, arranging results on a rare occasion but doing most of its dirty work through advancing the careers of certain boxers over those who weren't, um, so cooperative.

Boxing was never the same after the Fifties. While many argue that television killed the "farm system" by showing good bouts for free that competed against lesser bouts at a club, Mitchell argues that the shenanigans of the era didn't do the sport much good. He writes about those occasions when shady decisions left fans yelling "fix."

After going through the era in a punchy and readable style, Mitchell catches up with some of the figures who are alive today and still remember those times -- people like trainer Lou Duva, writer Budd Schulberg. and boxer/manager Al Certo.

Mitchell jumps around a bit in his story, going off on the odd tangent every now and again. It's also interesting that such an American story be written by a writer from London. As a critic on Amazon.com notes, it's quite interesting that Mitchell seems to be more angry about what happened back then than the participants themselves.

"Jacobs Beach" has a black-and-white photo of the old Garden on its cover, with the spotlight shining on a boxing match with a full house watching. It's appropriate, because it was a era that seemed to spring from a gray era with plenty of shadows. Those looking for a relatively quick course in an odd chapter in our boxing history will find satisfaction here.

Four stars

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Review: Playing Piano in a Brother (2010)

2010-12-25T23:46:00.005-05:00

By Terry Frei

The phrase "location, location, location" is usually applied to real estate. It can work for books too.

Take Terry Frei's "Playing Piano in a Brothel," for instance.

The veteran sports journalist has spent much of his career in the Denver area, although he's written four other books and done of work for such outlets as The Sporting News and espn.com. The question becomes, then, is living in Denver a prerequisite for reading this book?

The answer would be a qualified no, although it wouldn't hurt.

Frei starts off with two very strong paragraphs on the state of journalism, particularly the sports side of it. He shows himself to be smart, opinionated, and generally on target within the first several pages, always a good sign. Those in the business could benefit from giving those sections a read or two.

From there, Frei essentially empties his notebook and his memory bank to write about some of the events of his career. These are not reprints of columns or articles, but rather something along the lines of "here's the story behind the story." So we tag along with Frei while on the job, concentrating on the personalities and locations.

Care to see what it's like when an earthquake strikes the World Series, as it did in 1989? Game day at the University of Nebraska? A description of the situation surrounding the "attack" on Colorado Avalanche forward Steve Moore? Sitting ringside for Leonard-Hearns? Here's the place.

From a long distance perspective, this can be a little hit and miss. Frei caught Nick Saban early and Muhammad Ali late. The story about football players from Colorado and Colorado A&M (later Colorado State) in 1942 and how they did in World War II and beyond feels a bit like it's from a different book, although Frei has a strong and heartfelt interest in the subject that comes through.

As for the purely Colorado stories, reading about Dave Logan (football player turned announcer) or Doug Moe or Haven Moses has some value from 1,500 miles away, but certainly Denver-area readers will identify with the subjects much better than those of us dialing long distance.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, here's Frei's explanation for the title, which comes off a joke told about lawyers: "I'm a sportswriter but don't tell my mother. She still thinks I play piano in a brothel."

Frei can obviously make that joke because he is a pro at his job. It's easy to wonder if the author would have been better off reprinting his work, although rights clearances might have made that difficult. What we have isn't bad, though, and probably worth an extra star for this blog's many readers in Colorado.

Three stars

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Review: The Only Game in Town (2010)

2010-12-12T22:49:00.004-05:00

Edited by David Remnick

This is a pretty much foolproof anthology.

Most people know about The New Yorker's rich history of publishing great writing over the decades. The writers are a who's who of American literature. To take some of the best sports stories and put them in a book called "The Only Game in Town" is a natural.

David Remnick has done that. The editor of the New Yorker showed his own sports writing chops with a fabulous book on Muhammad Ali, so it's nice that he didn't bother to delegate this assignment of putting together the anthology together.

So a book like this is going to be really, really good. But how good? How is the typical sports fan going to enjoy it? That's a little tougher question.

When I look at other anthologies, my usual standard is to see what the batting average is for interesting articles. Let's apply that here.

There are some absolute, well-known classics here. Roger Angell's story on a college baseball game between St. John's and Yale retains its glory almost 30 years after it was written. John McPhee's profile of college basketball star Bill Bradley, "A Sense of Where You Are," fascinates to this day. And anyone could have guessed that John Updike's tale of Ted Williams' last game, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," would be in here.

The best parts here might be the lesser known stories that therefore rank as surprises. Adam Gopnik has a terrific story on coaching kids' football, even if that hardly does the rich subject matter justice. Who expected an art history lesson in such a story, not to mention a touching personal tale? It might be my favorite story in the book, at least of those I hadn't read elsewhere. Charles Sprawson opens up obscure areas of sport with his story on long distance swimming, Arctic version. Nancy Franklin rekindled my interest on a pastime of my youth, ping-pong; she made me want to grab my racket out of the basement.

There are some good profiles here too. One on Tiger Woods almost is more revealing now than it was then, considering what's happened to Mr. Woods in the decade since it was written. A quote from father Earl is particularly haunting now: "Tiger was not created to be a golfer. Tiger was made to be a good person." Whoops. Stories about Michael Jordan, Yao Ming and Lance Armstrong are well done as well.

This being The New Yorker, there have to be some odd subjects. That's certainly the case here. My reaction to those stories were more mixed. Martin Ames has a short, pointed essay about "tennis personalities" that works well. Nick Paumgarten sucked me in on extreme skiing, Calvin Trillin taught me about the world of snowmobiling.

But there were other stories whose charms proved easier to resist. Alec Wilkinson's look at "parkour" seemed a bit out of place. Herbert Warren Wind, one of the best golf writers ever, takes a tour of Irish golf courses that seems a little too highbrow for some. Can't say I made through John Cheever's essay on baseball or Don DeLillo's story on football strategy or Alva Johnston's story on a boxing promoter from a century ago.

Oh, right, the cartoons are terrific, as you'd expect.

"The Only Game in Town," then, is a lot like the magazine. There's a certain style that comes with the pages. Most sports readers are certainly to enjoy a good portion of this book and make it worthwhile. And for passionate readers of the magazine who also like their fun and games, I have no doubt that this will be read and re-read for years to come.

Four stars

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Review: The Final Call (2010)

2010-11-27T17:24:00.003-05:00

By Kerry Fraser

I'm starting to get the impression that books by referees and officials in major sports are a better idea in theory than they are in concept. There's been several of them written in a variety of sports over the years, and it's difficult to think of one that is particularly memorable.

They usually have a collection of stories about on-ice encounters from the great to the not-so-great. Such books are a chance to put a personality to the man behind the mask or whistle.

Such is the case with "The Final Call," an offering from just retired referee Kerry Fraser. It's an easy enough offering that has some mostly pleasant tales about his career on the ice.

It should be noted that Fraser was one of the best referees in NHL history, a future Hall of Famer. He officiated more games than anyone in history, just retiring last spring. While you might argue with a particular call or two -- and Fraser admits here that he missed a few (he even admitted at the time, to his credit) -- fans generally could always count on Fraser doing a professional job whenever he put on the striped shirt.

For the most part, this is organized as something of a review of his last year of the league. Many of the chapters are devoted to a particular team as Fraser pays his last visit to such sites as Montreal, Toronto, New York, Detroit, etc. They serve as the launching point for some stories about his career.

There are a few surprises here. Fraser has a lot of respect for the superstars of the league, perhaps because he used to be a hockey player before a bad knee injury hurt his chances of moving up the ladder (he made the right decision to be a ref, by the way.) There are examples of trading autographs and other small favors here that are a little surprising, but they are signs that referees are human too and willing to help others ... and that's kind of nice. Some of the gestures are from the last time around the league, but not always.

Fraser was known as the ref who never had a hair out of place. He even includes pictures of his hair style over the years ... but there's never a back story to it. You'd think he want to say how this "tradition" happened, Nope.

Oh, and the younger kiddies might learn some new words here. Then again, the 11-year-olds usually don't grow up wanting to be a referee.

Fraser deserves some credit for writing this one on his own -- no sign of a ghost writer. There's a little redundancy along the way, just as the same details in references to the late John McCauley serving as a mentor and helper in important times in his life. (Personal note: I met John a few times, and he really was one of the good guys.)

"The Final Call" has some insight into how Fraser took control of games, and how he acted logically and professionally while on the job. After reading this, it's easy to thank him for his service and wish him well in a long and happy retirement. It's not a great book, but it serves its purpose well.

Three stars.

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Review: The Making of Slap Shot (2010)

2010-11-21T20:01:00.004-05:00

By Jonathon Jackson

Some people say that "Slap Shot" is the best hockey movie ever made.

Pffft.

Hockey fans will tell you that "Slap Shot" is the greatest movie of all time. And then will recite lines and lines of dialogue about the movie without prompting.

It's taken more than 30 years, but Jonathon Jackson has come up with the full story about this classic in "The Making of Slap Shot." About time.

"Slap Shot" was made in 1976 and released witin the next year. It's the story of a minor league hockey team that's ready to go under, and turns into the toughest team in the Federal League in an effort to intimidate opponents. It works. The Charlestown Chiefs go on a memorable winning streak.

The cast of the movie is topped by Paul Newman -- yes, that Paul Newman -- in one of his favorite film roles. He's the player-coach who knows he's close to the end of the road as a player and as a coach with this group. Reggie Dunlop isn't exactly a hero here, but he hits the right notes in bringing the character to life nicely as the center of the film. The supporting cast worked well under the direction of George Roy Hill.

The script is the key to the movie, written by Nancy Dowd who had her brother tape-record the style of conversation on his hockey team. She gets the tone exactly right, as anyone who has been around a hockey team will tell you, and gets laughs everywhere. The book's author makes a great point that while toning down the vile language might have helped the box office quite a bit -- and we weren't used to such talk back then in our movies -- it did make it a better movie.

Jackson talked to everyone he could find who was still around for this book -- he even exchanged e-mails and faxes with Newman before the actor's death. The list also does seem to include practically every living member of the cast and crew, the residents of Johnstown, Pa., where the movie was filmed, behind-the-scenes executives, and so on. It's certainly the complete version of how the movie came to be.

There are a couple of drawbacks here, and one is obvious. You really have to like the movie, a lot, as the author does and as the participants of the movie do. Naturally, those who are less enthusiastic about "Slap Shot" probably would never pick up a book about this movie to begin with, so that's not much of an issue.

In addition, many of the actors are linked to their character's names in interviews. It's difficult to tell everyone apart at times, particularly when it comes to obscure members of the team that might not even be called by name in the story. A reviewer on Amazon.com made a great point when suggesting that pictures would been a great idea, although just a full list of the cast would have helped too.

"The Making of Slap Shot" ought to satisfy anyone's curiosity about this movie, especially if you ever brought a copy of it to play on a bus ride with a hockey team from Hartford to Buffalo. As I did. Every one on the bus knew every line, too.

Four stars.

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Review: I Am Not Making This Up (2010)

2010-11-10T14:33:00.005-05:00

By Al Strachan

Al Strachan was one of those guys who was feisty for a living. He was a sports writer and columnist for a variety of newspapers in Canada, mostly specializing in hockey. He appeared on such television shows as "Hockey Night in Canada," and has been around the game for more than 30 years.

If you want to know what the ride was like for Strachan, "I Am Not Making This Up" is a good place to find it out in an anecdotal way.

You expect some laughs in a book like this, and there certainly are some along the way. There are also stories which often have a point, but aren't funny. They're "merely" interesting.

So far, so good. Strachan was usually someone who let you know where you stood. Now that he seems to be free of daily journalistic responsibilities, he's even freer to expression his opinions in such matters. His favorites and not-so-favorites come through loud and clear.

For example, Wayne Gretzky and Scotty Bowman come across very well here. Ken Dryden and John Ziegler do not. Clearly, Strachan developed a good relationship with the first two, and had his problems with the last two. It's hard to say if access has clouded his opinions; Strachan pretty clearly knows Gretzky and Bowman. Dryden may never had a chance with Strachan since politically they are like Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin (that's Strachan in the Palin role, by the way). As for Ziegler, well, what self-respecting hockey journalist hasn't picked on him over the years?

There's some score-settling here. I don't think Strachan has forgetten a slight in his career, and he sounds happy to give his side of the story here. Strachan makes some good points, too.

On the minus side, if there's much organization to this book, I must have missed it. Chapter headings sometimes give a clue for a few pages, but before we know it we're headed in an entirely new direction. Meanwhile, you also won't find a quicker read in the book store. It checks in at 224 pages, and you can get through it in an evening.

Hockey offers a unique blend of the American and Canadian culture, and those who have visited that world and know Strachan's work will feel pretty comfortable here. "I Am Not Making This Up" might be worth your time if you fit that description. I just wouldn't call it a "best buy" at $19.95 (American).

Three stars

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Review: Long May You Run (2010)

2010-11-03T16:09:00.005-04:00

By Chris Cooper

If you are relative serious runner, you probably have at least glanced at a copy of one of the top top running magazines, "Runner's World" and "Running Times." Both fill a niche nicely; the former is designed for a general audience, while the latter is written for a more elite audience.

"Runner's World" covers a rather wide range of topics in the course of an issue, featuring a variety of "departments" and then some feature-length stories. Those long-form articles have frequently been honored as some of the best sports writing out there. (If this sounds like a suggestion to buy a subscription if you have the slightest interest in running, you are right.)

That brings us to "Long May You Run," by Chris Cooper. If you can picture "Runners' World" without the long-form articles, you'll get the idea of what this book is like.

Cooper has gotten together a group of all-stars in the area of running to contribute short essays on the various aspects of running. The list includes Colleen De Reuck, Jeff Galloway, Suzy Favor Hamilton, Greg Meyer, Pete Pfitzinger, Pam Reed, Kathrine Switzer, Craig Virgin and Bart Yasso. None of the essays are signed, for what it's worth.

Then the book is off in a very breezy style, as the subjects go flying by. Running clubs. Beach running. Movies. Traffic. Interval training. Nutrition. Travel. Races, Avoiding dog bits. Sunscreen. Massages. Burnout. Volunteering.

It's a rather comprehensive list, as you can imagine. Not many of the subjects get more than a few paragraphs, though. Some of the pages might be a quote or five, or a one-paragraph tribute to some of the greatest runners of all time.

It's tough to quarrel with most of the advice. But here's the catch. Going back to "Runner's World," most people don't read every word. There are stories that may not interest a specific runner.

And that's the way it works here. I might skip over the article on getting a good baby carriage designed for a runner to push. You might skip over the article on running a race on New Year's Eve, since there are no races in your area on December 31, or you aren't going to be in Philadelphia in the near future so running the "Rocky" steps isn't exactly an option.

It took no time at all to get through "Long May You Run" under that circumstances. It had its enjoyable parts, but it's a little too fast of a read to justify a $24 purchase for most people. Still, it is the holiday season, and this might just work for someone who has started running and needs a broad overview of the subject.

Three stars

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Review: Something in the Air (2009)

2010-11-02T11:12:00.003-04:00

By Richard Hoffer
The year 1968 has been rather thoroughly scrutinized by authors over the year. After a buildup throughout the Sixties, we entered 1968 as if we were entering some sort of funhouse, not knowing what would happen as we passed through and got to the exit.

The tensions of the time were very apparent in sports, with the civil rights and women's movements gained velocity by the second, it seemed. Take a changing society, and mix it with an amateur athletic bureaucracy that didn't accept change easily, and you have the makings for fascinating confrontation.

That was the case for the 1968, particularly when it came to the Summer Olympics in Mexico City. And that's the backdrop for Richard Hoffer's frequently fascinating book, "Something in the Air."

The American Olympic team goes under the microscope here, and Hoffer must have been filled with glee as he went through the cast of characters that converged south of border that fall. A book like this relies on the athletes and the stories, and Hoffer found a bunch of good ones.

The author focuses on the United States track and field team. We had sprinters like Tommie Smith and John Carlos, forever remembered for their wordless protest about conditions back home while on the podium during the National Anthem at the medal ceremony. Gloved fists in the air and heads down, it became a remarkable moment almost instantly. The two sprinters had been involved in talk of a boycott of the Games beforehand; their attendance, performance and action proved much more effective as support for their cause. Smith and Carlos were great stories in their own right, overcoming much to rank as the world's best.

The other stories on the track team are good too. Dick Fosbury invented a whole new way of jumping over a bar in the high jump. Jim Ryun ran the race of his life in the 1,500 meters, only to be remember for losing to Kip Keino. The women's track team, which basically consisted of the Tennesee State squad, cleaned up at the podium despite oldfashioned beliefs that women shouldn't run very far.

The other sports come up as well, although they have a secondary role. The most interesting story there might belong to George Foreman, who first burst onto the national scene in Mexico City. Foreman became something of an establishment hero for waving an American flag after winning a gold medal. While most thought it was a counterpoint to the Smith/Carlos protest, Foreman says today that his action was his own protest toward prejudice against American boxers by Olympic judges. And I particularly liked the portions on the Harvard crew team, filled with bright, questioning intellects who were determined to have a good time along the way.

Hoffer covers all of this with a sharp, intelligent eye. His observations on the times and on the Games are always on target; I particularly liked his description of the Olympics as something of a mortuary for old sports (equestrian events? Greco-Roman wrestling?).

The book's only flaw is that there are a few small factual errors that pop up along the way. Some high jumpers become long jumpers and vice verse, and a few lessons about geography and distance conversion (centimeters to inches, for example) would have been useful.

While those slip-ups prevented a five-star rating, this is the type of book that almost forces the reader to gulp down in big swallows. "Something in the Air" fills in the gaps of an already-fascinating event, and makes it more compelling in hindsight. That's about all you can ask from any book.

Four stars

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Review: The Greatest Game (2010)

2010-10-22T14:11:00.007-04:00

By Todd Denault

The New Year's Eve 1975 game between the Montreal Canadiens and Central Red Army has taken on something of a mythical status over the years. Mention the contest to many people in the game, and the answer almost comes back as cliche -- the greatest game ever played.

A reason why it's become mythical is in part because of the timing. The game was played just before the video recording age. It might be on one-inch tapes somewhere, but it's usually not found in the public domain.

That all makes it good fodder for a book. If anything, it's a surprise more hasn't been written about it, especially directly. Author Todd Denault scores some good points for using as the subject of his new book, "The Greatest Game."

It's difficult to explain the circumstances of the game to the under-30 crowd of today. The Soviet Union was a strange, unknown place back then. Their hockey teams won many Olympic championships in the Fifties and Sixties, but that was tempered by the fact that the National Hockey League's players and teams were participating. Just how good were these Soviets?

We found out in a hurry in 1972 -- plenty good. The Soviets played Team Canada to a near draw in an eight-game series, losing on a goal in the final moments of the final game. That curiosity was still around when a series between two Soviet teams and some NHL clubs in 1975-76 was set up. This was circled as the centerpiece game, as the Canadiens had become the class of the NHL that year while Red Army almost always dominated the Soviet league.

Most of Canada and the Soviet Union seemed to be watching that New Year's Eve, and they saw a classic. The Canadiens played a terrific game, finding weaknesses in the Soviet system and exploiting them. Yet Vladislav Tretiak, the Red Army goalie, had the night of his life. The game was a 3-3 draw that was, according to all accounts, astonishing in its skill and speed.

Denault spends relatively little time on the game itself, perhaps a bit surprising in a book about the game. But it turns into a good decision. He gives plenty of background on both the Canadiens' history and the rise of Soviet hockey. There are plenty of good stories told along the way.

The subplot to the story is the style of play in the game. On that night in 1975, the Philadelphia Flyers were the defending Stanley Cup champions. They used a violent style to slow the opposition, and then relied on stars like Bobby Clarke and Bernie Parent to do the rest. It worked, twice, but aesthetically speaking it was ugly to watch and drove many away the sport.

It's Denault's belief that the Canadiens' skill turned the game away from the Flyers' brawn in terms of style, setting a standard for years to come. While Denault pounds that point home at times, and there was certainly more to the story than just that, the author's basic point has plenty of validity.

Denault is coming off a biography of Jacques Plante which came off a little distantly due to frequent quotes from newspaper and magazine descriptions. This book uses similiar research techniques, but it seems as if the author changes his style slightly to get a more personal approach to the story. He also talked with some of the participants, including Montreal coach Scotty Bowman. While it might have been interesting to hear from some of the Soviet players about it, this still reads quite well and is a noticeable improvement from the Plante book in terms of readability.

"The Greatest Game" will stand up well as a good treatment of a unique set of circumstances that led to a game for the ages. After reading it, many will want to run out and find a recording of the game. That's pretty high praise.

Four stars

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Review: Usain Bolt : 9.58 (2010)

2010-10-10T00:47:00.005-04:00

By Usain Bolt

It didn't take long for the track world, and then the world in general to figure it out. Usain Bolt was a great name for a sprinter.

It's fun to say. Bolt just sounds fast. Usain can be turned into insane, as in insanely fast, rather easily. That's Bolt.

The Jamaican has the world record in the 100 meters and 200 meters. His 6-foot-5 frame combines strength and speed in almost mythical proportions. If that weren't enough, Bolt seems like a fun guy, almost kid-like.

An autobiography of sorts is a natural as Bolt continues his plan for world domination ... or at least to be able to afford more sports cars. This is his. It's a little tough to list the list, though. Amazon.com has it as "Usain Bolt : 9.58 : My Story : Being the World's Fastest Man." What's the world record for subtitles, anyway? He almost had 9.58 of them.

Bolt rips through his life in a quick and easy fashion. You can almost predict what's coming in the story of the mid-20's star -- growing up in Jamaica, training methods, early recognition, the run-up to the Olympics, winning three gold medals, the acclaim afterwards, more world records, future plans, credits.

The book smartly has lots of photos along the way. There are plenty of good ones, although some captions would have been nice for a few more of them. Bolt also has some friends and family members write short essays, none of which are particularly memorable.

When reading a book like this, a realistic touch is needed. No one expects John Steinbeck here. It's designed to give his fans a bit of a look inside his life, and it delivers that. Bolt is just as funny and goofy here as you hoped he might be. It's easy to like a guy who said he essentially ate chicken nuggets from McDonald's for three meals a day during the Olympics, and one who says it's tough to make training sessions after hitting the clubs until almost sunrise.

I'm fond of saying that twenty-somethings probably shouldn't write too many autobiographies, mostly because they haven't had time to develop much perspective on their lives. Still, it's tough not to like Bolt, and his personality comes through here. Fans will like "Usain Bolt..." and it might even make him a few new supporters.

Three stars

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Review: All Rise (2010)

2010-10-07T00:19:00.004-04:00

By Bill McGrane

The role model for NFL Alumni used to be Jack Kemp. The ex-quarterback retired from football to run for Congress, and he had a second career in the public eye -- including time in the Cabinet and an unsuccessful run for Vice President.

Now, it might be Alan Page.

The former defensive tackle was a Hall of Famer, good enough to be the NFL's Most Valuable Player -- no small accomplishment for a lineman. Since retiring in the early 1980's, Page went on to a career as a lawyer and now a judge on Minnesota's highest court.

From a distance, Page sounds like someone worth learning about, and thus worth reading about it. Too bad "All Rise" isn't worth the time to read it.

Author Bill McGrane has known Page for about 40 years, dating back to his days of working in public relations in the NFL. He's obviously impressed by Page as a man and as a professional. As we all are.

But, I'm not sure even Page's wife and family would want to read this much about what a great person he is. That's the biggest problem with the book -- we get the idea pretty quickly, and McGrane piles it on from there.

The structure of the book is rather unusual in that sense. The basic stops of Page's career are covered -- growing up in Canton, Ohio; going to Notre Dame for college; stops in Minnesota and Chicago; on to a career as a lawyer; his work with education for young people; and finally his time as a judge.

Now there are some interesting moments along that timeline. For example, Page played in one of the five most famous college football games ever played, the Notre Dame-Michigan State 10-10 in 1966. It gets a brief mention. Page played in four Super Bowls; his team lost them all. Details about any specific game are nowhere to be found.

Instead, McGrane uses the career arc to have associates at the time tell about Page's good qualities. There are some odd tangents along the way into areas that don't have much to do with anything, but at least they serve as a change of pace. McGrane does get a little credit for quoting people from Page's past saying that he could be a bit of a jerk at certain times of his life, but it's generally a very positive picture.

In addition, there are some anecdotes that are repeated. In a book that's on the brief side anyway, it makes the book feel a little more padded.

Page says many times in the text that he prefers to look ahead instead of back at all times, and this book reflects that. Perhaps he was a less than enthusiastic subject for the book, although he must have given permission for family members to be extensively interviewed. (That doesn't include his first wife, who gets a passing mention.)

"All Rise" certainly is a fine tool on the political trail; it can't hurt to have such a flattering portrait in the bookstores in time for a reelection campaign. Those seeking a slightly more balanced approach, however, won't find this too satisfying.

Two stars

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Review: Hockey Prospectus 2010-11

2010-10-04T00:34:00.003-04:00

Andrew Rothstein and Timo Seppa, Editors

Sometimes a book carries a very unexpected treat in it. Like this one, for me.

It's the first book I've ever bought as a computer file. I wasn't sure how big or good it would be, and a $10 savings is always welcome. When I downloaded it and locked through it, and I noticed a chapter called "A Brief History of Statistical Analysis in Hockey." I turned to it quickly.

There, I was rather surprised to see my own name mentioned. I had worked with an editor of Baseball Prospectus about 11 years ago about the possibility of coming out with a hockey book along those lines. I struck out, in part because I couldn't find a team of writers to help. My Web site, the Hockey Abstract, remains alive these days, although not my top priority.

It's nice to be remember. And it's nice to see they kept at it, until a book was created. "Hockey Prospectus 2010-11" is that book. I'm much less of a hockey follower than I was back then, so it's a little more difficult to judge its merits. But, the people in this book are on the right track. There's more data available now than there was 11 years ago (ice time, hits, etc.), and it helps. Each player in the league, then, receives a paragraph, and each team receives a few pages.

Like the Baseball Prospectus, there are plenty of numbers. Some are easily followed, some will need some more time to digest. But most of the fantasy projections seem more or less on target. I used to do that sort of thing, and the predictions fit into what I found to be a rational range -- which is all you can expect.

The team comments are less satisfying. Many of the teams simply get a review of last season. How did the offense do? Defense? Goaltending? Special teams? And what's the outlook. The comments often mirror what is in the player comments' section. There are exceptions. The Tampa Bay team section has a nice breakdown on what the Lightning has done in the offseason. It's a very positive piece of writing, but definitely in the right direction. On the other hand, the Maple Leafs' section was a little too "one note" when it came to Toronto's love of tough guys, at least in terms of writing. Iain Fyffe at least had some fun with that one, though, and the book could use a little more of that.

There are a few essays at the back, like the baseball counterpart. I liked the one about the non-release of injury information; this "upper body" stuff has become something of a joke. I'm sure the prospect list will pan out down the road too.

"Hockey Prospectus" has a couple of other issues. It's written as if this wasn't the first book, referring rather to articles on the Web site. ("We got criticized when we wrote last year that...") I think a better approach would have been to start fresh, as if it were a much larger audience. Plus, there are references to leaders in certain unique categories used in the book. It would have been nice to see the complete list of all-time leaders; it might help to see if the figures were generally on target and/or had surprises.

All in all, I'm happy to see "Hockey Prospectus" reach the light of print. I see good things ahead, and I'll be picking up future editions to see how they are coming along.

Three stars

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Review: Perfect (2010)

2010-09-25T11:15:00.004-04:00

By Lew Paper

You can't tell a book by its title.

That might be the lesson of "Perfect," written by Lew Paper.

The full title of this book includes "Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game and the Men Who Made It Happen." Except, that it has very little about that particular famous game, relatively speaking.

This was obviously a labor of love for Paper, who is a Washington lawyer who has written a few serious books over the years. The list includes biographies of Louis Brandeis and William Paley. Paper grew up in New Jersey and was obviously quite taken by the baseball teams of New York City in the 1950's.

The announced plan of this book is to review Larsen's perfect game in 1956. But that's not how this book is written.

Paper picks out a player for each chapter (labeled a half-inning most of the time), and writes a mini-biography of that player. It's an interesting group, including such people as Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin and Pee Wee Reese. Then, as something of a postscript, a particular half-inning of the game is reviewed. The player is assigned to a chapter because he participated, one way or another.

The game obviously is more than 50 years old, and many of the participants have died. Paper talked to as many people as he could, and went through a long, long range of reference sources. (How did he find out that Mickey Mantle wet his bed until the age of 16?) The biographies are interesting and worthwhile on their own.

But ... but ... but ... they don't really have a lot to do with the game. It's almost as if they are from another book. They are ways to work the individuals' life stories within the context of a particular game; John Feinstein has made a career out of it. But Paper doesn't even try.

Part of the problem, of course, is that the game has so little action. A perfect game features no baserunners, so half of the game is out after out. A couple of good fielding plays come up but that's about it. What's more, Sal Maglie of the Dodgers was almost as good as Larsen that day. So it was difficult to supply much insight into out after out.

I'm sure this book will find plenty of interest of fans from that era; indeed, it's no surprise that Doris Kearns Goodwin gives a glowing blurb on the front cover of the paperback edition -- she must have loved it. As for the rest of us, "Perfect" comes up short in its effort to recreate that most perfect of World Series games.

Three stars

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Review: The Best American Sports Writing 2010

2010-09-13T00:37:00.003-04:00

Edited by Peter Gammons

It's year 20 for the Best American Sports Writing series, quite a milestone as these things go. It's a relative of the series that came out after World War II, even if the editors wouldn't recognize some of the source material that helps to fill the current series. ("Internet? What the heck is an Internet?")

The driving force of the series remains Glenn Stout, who has taken the idea of the year's best sports writing, some of which has only a little to do with sports, and maintained it nicely. As I've explained before in reviews of the series, he picks out a large group of material from a much larger collection of material, and mails them to the guest editor. That person, in turn, makes the final picks for the book. It's tough to know how much of the picks reflect the editor's viewpoint and how much reflect Stout's -- probably some of both. (One aside -- we've had 20 male guest editors so far; easy to wonder if a woman's perspective would change anything.)

The editor of the 2010 book is Peter Gammons. He's certainly qualified to join the elite company. Gammons is the most influential baseball writer of his time and is most worthy of his Hall of Fame induction. It's easy to see Gammons' fingerprints on some of the selections here, which are as usual up to the series' high standards.

That means baseball gets a good shake here. It would be easy to guess that Gammons would like Bill Plaschke's story on an aging baseball scout, or Eric Nusbaum's piece called "The Death of a Pitcher." You can even picture Gammons laughing at Pat Jordan's attempt to do an interview with Jose Canseco, written for deadspin.com.

And as a former Boston Globe writer, it figures he'd be interested in a story on Bobby Orr or a column by his former coworker, Bob Ryan.

There are plenty of other good tales here:

* "The Way It Should Be" by Thomas Lake is a heartwarming tale about the effect of a gesture of sportsmanship (or should I say, sportswomanship.

* "(Still) Life" by Skip Hollandsworth has plenty to do with life, and only a little to do with football. It's how a devastating injury affected a family and a town. The research was fabulous.

* Interestingly, there are three stories on the effects of playing football on the brain. They are all good if a little redundant at times, but "This is Your Brain on Football" by Jeanne Marie Laskas was my favorite.

* There are also a few "whatever happened to ..." stories about former top athletes. The one with the biggest twist was "Life Throws Bernie Kosar for a Loss" by Dan Le Betard. If there was ever a football player who should have had a smooth transition into life after playing, it was Kosar. Wrong.

These books are always difficult to rate, usually falling between very good and great. In 2010's case, I didn't skip over any articles after starting them (it happens sometimes). There might not have been that single great story this year that I'll tell people to go read, but that may have been because my favorites seemed to come from Sports Illustrated (four articles) and thus had read and enjoyed already.

So it doesn't get five stars. Big deal. Go get it, and you might just rank it as one of your favorites of the year, As usual.

Four stars

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Review: Birds, Dogs and Kangaroos (2008)

2010-08-31T23:57:00.011-04:00

By Rich Zvosec

This site prides itself on reviewing all sorts of sports books. "Birds, Dogs & Kangaroos" may cause the blog reader to ask, "Where did this one come from?"

One day I was looking in Ollie's, a discount store, and this book was in the sports section for less than half-price. I glanced at the subtitle, "Life on the Back Roads of College Basketball," an underreported subject if there ever was one. The Kangaroos jumped out at me, because my brother-in-law works at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He spends more time rooting for Kansas than UMKC in basketball -- can't imagine why -- but he does follow the 'Roos. Sold.

Zvovec did coach the Kangaroos for several years, the crowing point of his coaching career. But there were a lot of stops on the way, and Zvosec outlines them here. While there are some laughs along the way, this really becomes a course in the realities of what it's like to be a college basketball coach.

Moral: it ain't easy. Particularly if you are an assistant coach, and particularly if you work at one of the smaller schools. I'm sure Roy Williams and Bill Self have problems, but driving hours to see and hours to return home because there was nothing in the budget about a hotel isn't one of them.

Zvosec got the chance to see what his dream was like, and it was a lot of work. He bounced from city to city in search of jobs, and wound up in all sorts of odd places. He encountered good kids, bad kids, good administrators, bad administrators, etc. Coaches like this really have to love the game, because there are few other rewards (except the occasional win). I've always believed that there isn't much difference between coaches like this and the top ones in terms of X's and O's; the big shots might be better in some area like dealing with the public or recruiting, but basketball is still basketball.

Books like this usually have to have a sense of humor, and Zvosec does have a pretty good sense of perspective on events. But it's rarely laugh out loud; it's more of a headshaking experience.

The book has a couple of drawbacks. The dates, players and games do tend to blend together after a while. An index with his schools might have been a nice touch. Plus, Zvosec sort of just fades out from the UMKC job. After explaining what happened at every other stop, this comes off as rather mysterious. Perhaps it's due to some legal reason, but the lack of full disclosure makes for a confusing ending.

Zvosec made the move to broadcasting and public speaking, and seems to be doing well with the switch. Good for him. It's easy to root for Zvosec after reading "Birds, Dogs & Kangaroos." Those who seek an inside look at the non-glamour side of the sport will find plenty of insight here.

Three stars

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Review: Arnie and Jack (2008)

2010-08-28T18:28:00.004-04:00

By Ian O'Connor

If you can't identify the "Arnie and Jack" and the title of Ian O'Connor's book, you probably aren't going to like it too much.

Arnie is Arnold Palmer, and Jack is Jack Nicklaus, as every golf fan knows. They've had an interesting relationship over the years, and it's all well chronicled in O'Connor's "Arnie and Jack."

A little history is important to know here. Palmer was and is the most popular golfer in history. He opened up the game to the masses, and never met an autograph request he didn't like. Palmer may not have won all the time, but his slashing style and go-for-broke attitude always made his tournaments fascinating to watch.

But his reign as golf's best player was stopped by Nicklaus, who came along around 1960 -- 11 years younger than Palmer. It didn't take Nicklaus to prove he was the Next Big Thing in golf, and he quickly went flying past Palmer to become by acclimation as probably the best player in golf history.

The catch came that Palmer's side (Arnie and his fans) wasn't too happy about being userped. Palmer was the King when it came to popularity, and it was tough for him to watch Nicklaus go past him in terms of victories. It took a long time for Nicklaus to gain even grudging respect from Palmer's fans, and the two men took their highly competitive nature to a rivalry that included events on and off the course. That nature was what drove both of them to greatness, of course, but it did create some tension between the two sides.

O'Connor talked to just about everyone possible for this book, and that shows -- the two golfers themselves, family members, personal friends, fellow golfers, etc. It's probably a little unfair to say this in hindsight but both men probably come off as a little petty when it comes to the relationship. After all, they had more in common than they did in areas that separated them, but they both had trouble letting everything go. Palmer, in particular, comes off as a little petty quite often. Considering his spotless image, it was something of a surprise to read such stories.

The heroes of the story might be the two wives, Winnie Palmer and Barbara Nicklaus. They got along almost famously from day one, and kept the situation from devolving into something along the lines of the grudging relationship of Woods and Mickelson.

Basketball's Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain had quite a rivalry, and it's easy to contrast the two men with Palmer and Nicklaus. Russell was satisfied to win titles while Chamberlain was happy to win individual accomplishments. In this case, Palmer had the popularity while Nicklaus had the better game -- and both men were a little jealous of what the other had.

O'Connor probably reminds of that last fact a little too often in the story. It also takes him a little while to find his stride, as he sticks to the battles the two men had in major championships for the early portion of the book. But the author starts weaving in a more well-rounded portrait at that point, giving a pretty good indication of the ups and downs of their relationship. In fact, it would be interesting to know if the two men have continued to draw closer since the book's publication.

This book goes by quite quickly and smoothly, and often feels like a peek behind the curtain of these two public figures, and that's why "Arnie and Jack" will be enjoyed by those who have followed their careers.

Four stars.

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Review: The Rocket That Fell to Earth (2009)

2010-08-04T15:51:00.005-04:00

By Jeff Pearlman

It's easy to wonder if Jeff Pearlman gets tired about writing about bad actors in sports. So far, he's done books on Barry Bonds, the 1986 Mets and the early 1990's Cowboys. His last book was one on Roger Clemens.

Think he's busy writing a book on Tiger Woods right now? Well, possibly.

The Clemens book remains his last one as of this writing. Pearlman brings his usual good research and writing to "The Rocket That Fell to Earth."

Clemens, you might remember, has had a unique baseball career. After starring at the University of Texas, Clemens arrived as a full-blown star for the Boston Red Sox in the mid-1980's and almost led them to a title in 1986. After more than a decade in Boston, Clemens had shown signs of age and decline, adding weight and losing velocity.

The Red Sox didn't pursue him in free agency, and Clemens wound up signing with Toronto. Apparently angry over events, Pearlman writes that Clemens took on an "I'll show them" personality, and that he'd do anything to get back to the top of the pitching mount. That meant steroids and human growth hormone. It also meant several more years of success, extending his career into the middle of the 2000's.

Clemens was really good at retiring, having done it several times over the years and then changing his mind. He bounced to the Yankees, Astros and Yankees before steroid allegations essentially made him a non-person in baseball circles. You might remember his testimony before Congress on the subject; he still may face perjury charges for that performance.

Pearlman attacks the subject with his usual thorough manner, going through his difficult early life (father dying early, poverty, older brother with substance abuse problems). The author supposedly talked to about 500 people, with some of them causing some serious head-scratching as Pearlman gets quotes from all sorts of obscure Clemens teammates. (In other words, I hadn't thought of Ken Ryan of the Red Sox in years.)

Clemens comes off as a simple and not particularly introspective person. He's capable of some bizarre, emotional moments, while at other times can be downright caring. It's a complex package, and Pearlman does a nice job of revealing all sides.

There is some assuming here -- assuming that Clemens has been lying as he has denied allegations, assuming that the pieces fall into place the way Pearlman says they do.
That's always a little risky, and I'd bet that the Clemens camp would pick out some details that don't add up in order to debunk the book.

Still, the story line makes sense. "The Rocket That Fell to Earth" makes a good case that Clemens would do almost anything to win and cement his legacy in baseball history. The fact that he's now living his life in close to hiding is a sad and surprising ending to a tale that started out in such storybook fashion.

Four stars

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Review: Rickwood Field (2010)

2010-07-28T12:38:00.003-04:00

By Allen Barra

It's not often that a writer gets to compose a love letter to his favorite place in his old home town.

That's more or less what Allen Barra has done here. Barra, the fine writer for the Wall Street Journal and Village Voice and the author of some books, Barra grew up in the Birmingham, Alabama, area, and apparently got his early education in baseball there.

The setting was Rickwood Field, which is still open for business for amateur games even if the place is no longer used for professional play. Barra uses the fact that it's been 100 years since Rickwood Field open to launch a history of Birmingham baseball called "Rickwood Field." It was opened in 1910, based on the design of Shibe Park -- the home of the Philadelphia Athletics for several years. If you saw the movie "Cobb," you might remember the scene where Roger Clemens, playing pitcher Ed Walsh, goes up against Tommy Lee Jones, playing Ty Cobb. It was filled here.

Every town should have someone like Barra doing a history like this. The first 200 pages or so stick mostly to the actual playing of the game. Birmingham had many great players pass through, either for the home team or visitors, despite so-called minor league statue. The list includes Willie Mays, Satchel Paige, Dizzy Dean, Ty Cobb and Reggie Jackson.

The highs and the lows mirror society, naturally. Birmingham had a team in the Negro Leagues, and segregation is part of the story. Heck, the legendary "Bull Conner," a name closely association with the civil rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties, was the team's radio announcer. Some years the place is packed, others baseball has withered to the point of disappearing for a few years.

After the history is told, Barra spends more than 100 pages on other, related areas. Appendix 1 reviews how Rickwood Field stayed alive. Appendix 2 has a good-sized bit of memory from Lorenzo "Piper" Davis, one of the great names in Negro League baseball. Appendix 3 has shorter interviews with some of the other people who have memories of baseball in Birmingham. Appendix 4 has tributes to other old ballparks around the country.

This all goes pretty quickly, thanks in part to some good pictures and a bunch of footnotes in the main section. So we know this is well done and all, but one big question still remains.

"Will I care if I'm not from Birmingham?"

That's a tough one. Most people probably will have trouble generating enthusiasm for the subject. Barra doesn't spend a great deal of time in the main story on the ballpark itself, which is a bit surprising.

"Rickwood Field" is nicely done, enough to give it an "all right" rating. If you love baseball history on a deep basis or have been to games in Rickwood Field (which sounds like it would be worth a trip if you are in the area), give it at least another star.

Three stars

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Review: The Yankee Years (2009)

2010-07-20T23:38:00.004-04:00

By Joe Torre and Tom Verducci

It's easy to pick out this book. "The Yankee Years" is the one that was by far the biggest-selling baseball book in 2009.

Let's take a look at the reasons why.

Joe Torre was the popular manager of the Yankees from 1996 to 2007. He won four World Series and never missed the playoffs during his tenure there. Some of those teams had no business making the postseason, in hindsight, but Torre got them there somehow.

What's more, he always seemed to act with integrity and dignity. In other words, when there was talk in the fall of 2003 that he might become available to manage elsewhere, even Red Sox fans would have taken him in a, ahem, New York minute. (Note: the Red Sox picked Terry Francona, who by almost any standard has been the best Boston manager in at least 90 years.)

Torre finally left after the 2007 season when he was only offered a one-year contract. Thanks for everything, and good luck. He landed on his feet with the Dodgers, where he manages to this day.

Therefore, purchases of this book probably were expecting something of a tell-all about Torre's run. The biggest surprise in the book involves how the story is told.

This is not written in Torre's voice. Torre contributes quotes and, no doubt, background information about his years with the Yankees. As you might expect, he usually comes off pretty well along the way.

Even so, Verducci obviously contacted a great many other sources to fill out the narrative. That includes such ex-players as David Cone and Mike Mussina. It also touches on such sources as the bullpen catcher, which while useful is at the least a little unusual.

Speaking of unusual, it's odd to read this book during the week that Yankees owner George Steinbrenner died, and thus had his life reviewed. Steinbrenner was the subject of some massive books about his days as owner in the 70's and 80's, but the number slowed later on. (There is a new Bill Madden biography just out, which is said to be quite good.)

There were plenty of quotes about how Steinbrenner mellowed in the final years that he operated the team, a span that effectively ended a few years ago. Based on this description from Torre and Co., it sure doesn't sound like Steinbrenner got any easier on his employees. He just didn't hire someone like Billy Martin every other week at the end of his term. Torre may have been happy to work as the manager of a team with almost unlimited resources, but it's impressive that he lasted 12 years under that sort of grinding oversight from those in the organization.

There is plenty of good information here. Yankee fans no doubt will love the insight on what happened during these years. For instance, in Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS, Torre tells Aaron Boone that he should just try to hit a single to right off knuckleballer Tim Wakefield of Boston, and if he does maybe he'll hit a homer to left. Sure enough, Boone ended the series with a walk-off homer.

And then there are the personalities. Torre's remarks on Alex Rodriguez received the most publicity when the book came out, as the skipper notes that A-Rod had some trouble fitting into the Yankee clubhouse. While the stars get their time in the pages, it's fun to read about someone like Kenny Lofton -- a Yankee at the end of his career who went into a rage when he wasn't chosen to be on the All-Star ballot.

At about 480 pages, this is a little lengthy and could have used a little editing. Even so, this works pretty well. The Yankees had a ton of interesting people and events during Torre's time there, and it's nice to get some insight on them all in "The Yankee Years."

Four stars

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Review: The Machine (2009)

2010-07-08T23:59:00.004-04:00

By Joe Posnanski

Joe Posnanski might be one of the most underrated writers on sports that we have, although that's changing for the better.

Posnanski is a columnist for the Kansas City Star, where he usually is nominated as one of the best in the business by his peers. He also does some work now for Sports Illustrated, which can only help him receive national acclaim.

Posnanski now has written two books on baseball, and they are both very much worthwhile. The earlier one was "The Soul of Baseball," in which he spent portions of a year with legendary baseball player and personality Buck O'Neil. Here he fulfills a childhood fantasy of sort by taking a look back at his favorite team from his youth, the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. It's called "The Machine," short for the nickname of the team, "The Big Red Machine."

That was an appropriate name for that team, which was very good and proved in almost every day in the final two-thirds of the season. It had four Hall of Fame-caliber players (Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez and Pete Rose, who ran into problems of course much later), and a supporting cast that was superb. The Reds could beat you with power, speed, hitting, smarts, etc. The pitching was merely good, particularly in the bullpen, and it's easy to see in hindsight why those Reds ran away with the 1975 National League West pennant.

The cast of characters is fairly well known to baseball fans, so Posnanski makes a good decision. He tries to tell the reader anecdotes about that team that he or she might not know. That takes it out of the realm of tales about long forgotten baseball games, for the most part (the World Series is different, naturally, and deservedly so). Posnanski instead concentrates on the personalities.

Sometimes it's almost like sitting the Reds' locker room, being a discreet eyewitness. There's the good-natured kidding that went on between all of the players, and the approach of the "role players," and the methods used by manager Sparky Anderson to keep everything working correctly. It's almost as if Posnanski collected stories, and then fit them to the overall picture. It's a great technique, one that makes that team's stories seem fresh. What's more, the writing is quite descriptive and nearly poetic in spots. Yeah, he's good.

There is a little repetition here, and it obviously helps to be a fan of that team and era to enjoy it. But most baseball fans will learn quite a bit as they zip through "The Machine," and Reds fans will give it an extra star.

Four stars

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Review: Are You Kidding Me? (2009)

2010-07-04T11:28:00.003-04:00

By Rocco Mediate and John Feinstein

If you are a golf fan, you certainly remember the 2008 United States Open.

There Tiger Woods, limping on an injured leg, survived four regulation rounds and 19 holes of playoff golf to capture the title in the San Diego area. It might have been the greatest triumph of a career filled with them.

But it was the guy who finished second who might have gained the most.

Rocco Mediate was the runner-up, a mid-40's player known as a very good but hardly great player with perhaps his best shot at a major title. Mediate lost, but his play, his story and his good humor impressed the country.

Mediate received some offers to do books after the Open was over, and he decided the route to go was to speak with John Feinstein, a longtime writer who has several very good golf books to his credit. Feinstein usually does longer books, but he had been friendly with Mediate and obviously thought it would be fun to work with him.

The result is "Are You Kidding Me?" -- a pleasant enough read but one that never jumps to compelling.

The first half of the book is devoted to Mediate's life. He grew up in Western Pennsylvania, spent a brief amount of time in college and made it to the PGA Tour. Mediate won a few tournaments and made some money, but he wasn't quite good enough to make a Ryder Cup team or come oh-so-close to a major.

Part of the problem was a pesky back. Every serious golfer is bound to have back issues for at least a portion of his or her life, and Mediate had surgery there at one point. But a therapist gave him some help, and some minor swing changes allowed him to compete again. But that didn't make his play at Torrey Pines any less surprising.

The week of the Open gets the second half of the book. This book was written in the third person, allowing Feinstein to do a typically thorough job of giving the details of the competition and not having Mediate do all the talking. Rocco's friends were more than willing to discuss the events of the week, and some pro golfers -- including Woods -- check in as well.

There are a couple of problems along the way. The first is the obvious one -- we do know how the story ends, because it was so discussed at the time. That takes away a little of the suspense. Feinstein is really good at writing mini-biographies during the course of his regular books, but this book -- devoted to one person -- feels a little padded in spots.

Then there's the issue of Mediate's personal life. He was married with children, and was struggling with his game and his family (the two go hand-in-hand sometimes on the tour) a bit when he met the woman therapist. All of a sudden, the family disappears from the story, and the therapist moves on to Mediate's center stage. Later in the story, during the chapters on the Open, Feinstein mentions in passing that Mediate was divorcing.

This is obviously a very awkward situation for all concerned. Feinstein probably agonized on how best to handle it in the story, but it does feel like there's a bit of a hole in the tale.

"Are You Kidding Me?" doesn't take very long to read, and those who want to know more about this popular golfer will come away fairly satisfied. But it does feel a bit like "Feinstein Lite."

Three stars

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Review: 1941 - The Greatest Year in Sports (2008)

2010-06-29T14:30:00.004-04:00

By Mike Vaccaro

It's a little difficult to pick out the greatest year in sports history. It all depends on your priorities, of course, as some might value achievements in a particular area more than others.

There's no denying, though, that 1941 was quite a year. It might have been a candidate for "most dramatic," coming as it did for the most part on the eve of World War II. Mike Vaccaro, the talented writer for the New York Post, has come up with a chronicle of the year in "1941 - The Greatest Year in Sports."

For the most part, Vaccaro reviews four big stories from that particular 12-month period -- Whirlaway's Triple Crown, Joe Louis' epic knockout win over Billy Conn, Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, and Ted Williams' climb to a .406 season batting average. It's interesting that a couple of those achievements look better in hindsight, perhaps, than they did then. Triple Crowns were fairly common before Whirlaway, but we've only had three since Citation did it in 1948. While Williams was the first hitter to reach .400 in about a decade, we didn't know that no one was hit that number after him ... at least as of this writing.

But there's no doubting that there was plenty of drama involved with all of them. Vaccaro says he spent a bunch of time looking at microfilm of old newspapers as a primary source for the book, and his effort shows. The various stories move right along, as Vaccaro is more than talented enough to bring the tales to life. You'll probably learn a few things about all four events, even if you are familiar with them, thanks to Vaccaro's research.

The good words about the book do come with a couple of drawbacks. It's obviously difficult to get fresh information in a book like this, as many of the first-person sources have passed on. Using newspaper sources from the time doesn't supply the perspective of time, and that's always useful when talking about events that happened more than 60 years ago.

In addition, Vaccaro takes some detours to talk about what was happening in the world during the course of 1941. It's difficult to balance the fact that on one side, fun and games were going on in America, while on the other side, the world was descending into hell. There might be a little too much material on the news side here, as the jumps from Ted Williams' hits to Charles Lindbergh's speeches are rather jarring.

Vaccaro showed some growth in his book writing when he wrote "The First Fall Classic" on the 1912 World Series. Still, "1941" ought to be satisfactory to those who want a nice, quick look at some of the big events of an historic sports year.

Three stars

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Review: Giants Among Men (2008)

2010-06-11T15:35:00.005-04:00

By Jack Cavanaugh

The New York Giants had some very good, if not great, teams in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Oddly enough, they might be remembered more for what they did off the field than on it.

That's something of the premise behind "Giants Among Men," as author Jack Cavanaugh takes a look back at that era in the team's history.

The Giants came of age quite quickly in 1956. They were coming off a couple of mediocre season, just above .500, when the pieces fit together nicely. New York won the Eastern Division and then clobbered the Bears to take the '56 championship.

That team might be best remembered for its coordinators, oddly enough. Jim Lee Howell was the head coach, a man who isn't well remembered today outside of New York. His offensive coordinator was Vince Lombardi, while his defensive coordinator was Tom Landry. Both went on to great success as head coaches in Green Bay and Dallas respectively.

The Giants had plenty of talent, too. Such players as Frank Gifford, Charlie Conerly, Roosevelt Brown, Em Tunnell, Sam Huff and Andy Robustelli were either Hall of Famers or close to it.

From there, the Giants were really good for quite a while. By the end of the 1963 season, they had won their division six out of eight seasons -- although another championship would have to wait until the 1980's.

The significance of the team was "right place, right time." New York was the media capital of the world, in a sense, and the good play of the Giants got the attention of a variety of movers and shakers. By the end of the Giants' run, the National Football League was a good-sized attraction for television networks and advertisers.

Cavanaugh mixes game details of those seasons with personal interviews with those with connections to the team (mostly players, but a few others including relatives of the deceased). The author spend a great deal of time setting the stage for the 1956 championship, as almost half of the book is spent reviewing that particular season. The other seven years get short-changed in comparison.

While the members of the team are portrayed nicely, what with stories about what the league and the Giants were like then, it's a difficult task to make games that were played 50-plus years ago particularly exciting through play-by-play details. In addition, it's tough to say that Cavanaugh really gets the point across about the off-field commotion caused by the team. A few facts or interviews about this particular area really would have helped sell the premise of the book.

However, Cavanaugh does do a good job about outlining what eventually went wrong with the team. The Giants kept plugging gaps when they could, but tried rebuilding in 1964, make several mistakes in talent judgment and saw the franchise fell apart. And coach Allie Sherman, who took over in 1961, wasn't up to the job of keeping all of the balls in the air.

Since this book came out in 2008, it's easy to guess that it was written to capitalize on the 50th anniversary on the 1958 overtime championship game between the Giants and Colts ... and that Gifford's book on that game probably sold more (just on his name). "Giants Among Men" will be of interest to those who want to know more about those New York teams, but it will be difficult for it to find a bigger audience.

Three stars

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Review: Title Town USA (2010)

2010-06-07T12:54:00.003-04:00

By Mark Allen Baker

It's tough to review love letters.

That's what "Title Town USA" is, in a sense -- a tribute to the village of Canastota, New York. Visitors without a knowledge of history might wonder what the Boxing Hall of Fame is doing there; this book will fill in those gaps well.

Canastota is the home of two world champions over the years. Carmen Basilio and Bill Backus both won titles. In the 1980's, the village decided to honor their two favorite native sons. Along the way, someone must have noticed that there was no Hall of Fame for boxers, and Canastota was as good a place as any to start one. And off they went, opening in 1989.

"Title Town USA" examines Canastota's relationship with boxing. It checks in at 160 pages, so it's easy to get through it quickly. Author Mark Allen Baker has a history of the town and the Hall, and biographies of the two local fighters -- plus a nice picture section of some of the honored fighters over the years.

Baker does make a couple of odd decisions along the way here. He opted to include some information on boxing throughout upstate New York -- Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Utica, Binghamton, etc. There's no doubt that Baker did plenty of homework, coming up with the names of many top fighters from the now-distant past.

Somewhat curiously, though, the not-so-distant past is barely mentioned. For example, Buffalo's Joe Mesi barely gets mentioned. You might remember he was a heavyweight contender who saw a brain bleed effectively end his career. Plus, upstate has hosted some big name fighters in the past 30-plus years -- George Foreman in Utica, Ray Leonard in Syracuse, Ray Mancini in Buffalo. If Baker was going to go down that route, all that probably should have received some attention.

In addition, Baker's chapters on Basilio and Backus take us right to the end of their best moments -- Basilio's win over Sugar Ray Robinson, Backus' victory over Jose Napoles. So what happened after that? The reader is left in the dark. It also would have been nice to have all of their fights listed in some sort of appendix.

For those interested in the subject, though, that probably won't matter much. "Title Town USA" is a good reference source of information about Canastota and New York State boxing. It ought to be sold in Central New York for years to come. Take a look at it the next time you are visiting this cute little village that comes alive once a year for the Hall induction ceremony.

Three stars

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Review: Tip-Off (2007)

2010-05-13T16:25:00.003-04:00

By Filip Bondy

"Tip-Off" is rather easy to boil down into one question:

What the heck were the Portland Trailblazers thinking in 1984?

Filip Bondy's book deals with other matters, of course, but that's the big one. A little review is helpful, 26 years later, to talk about the situation.

The National Basketball Association's 1984 draft turned out to be a great one in terms of top-flight talent. Several Hall of Famers arrived on the scene at once. Decisions made surrounding that draft determined their fate.

The Houston Rockets had the first pick, and opted to go with a top center in Hakeem Olajuwon. It's tough to argue too much with that pick, as Olajuwon turned out to be a great player for well over a decade. He eventually helped the Rockets win two titles. Besides, according to conventional wisdom, a good big man was better than a good "little" man.

That brought us to the second pick, by the Blazers. Still sitting there was Michael Jordan, now acclaimed by many as the greatest player ever. Jordan had had a very good college career, but no one was too sure how good he'd become. Portland already had a player along Jordan's lines in Clyde Drexler, but it didn't have a center.

So ... the Blazers went big in pick two and took Sam Bowie of Kentucky. He was a decent enough center but no Hall of Famer in the making, and he had fought leg injuries throughout his career at Kentucky. Picking third was Chicago; the Bulls thanked their lucky stars, took Jordan, and eventually won six championships.

The Portland pick is the centerpiece of the book. Blazers' officials were interviewed about their choice. Yeah, they say now, if we knew then what we know now, we would have made some trades and made room for Jordan. No fooling?

Bondy sticks to the starts for the most part here, except for Bowie. He gives a chapter before the draft to such players as Charles Barkley, John Stockton and Sam Perkins as well as Olajuwon and Jordan. Then after going over some interesting "what ifs?" about the draft, the author takes us through how everything turned out.

There's some good reporting by Bondy along the way, stories from college days and what players and executives were thinking leading up to the draft. The sections on Barkley are particularly interesting, as everyone in basketball wasn't sure what to do with a 6-5, fat power forward who didn't fit into anyone's preconceived slots but who sure could play basketball.

The biggest problem with a book like this is that most basketball fans know the beginning and ending pretty well. There's not much drama, then, as we go along. There also is little told about the thought that went into the first five picks plus Stockton. It would be interesting for a book to go back over a first round, pick by pick, and review what went right and what went wrong.

But that's not the book Bondy wrote, and it's hard to criticize him too much for sticking to the stars and avoiding Leon Wood's story for much of the time. The author has to make a living too. You buy a book with Jordan on the cover, you want to read about Jordan and not Vern Fleming.

It's easy to plow through "Tip-Off" in no time. The book is a pleasant, easy read that doesn't date at all. Basketball fans of that era ought to enjoy it.

Three stars

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Review: Going Long (2010)

2010-05-12T17:47:00.004-04:00

Edited by David Willey

When people ask about what it's like to write a running column for a newspaper, I tell them that running usually has little to do with what my subjects are. I write about friendship, good causes, personal esteem, stress, and on and on.

From now on, maybe I should just give them a copy of "Going Long." It's a much better illustration of the point I'm trying to make. There are a lot of great stories out there, and running only has a little to do with it.

"Going Long" is an anthology of articles from Runner's World. As you'd expect, the magazine has plenty of articles on how to run better or eat better. In that sense, it's a bit like Golf Digest, which in one month tells you how to cure your slice, and in the next tells you how to cure your hook.

But at least once an issue, and sometimes more, Runner's World steps up its literary game. It's feature-length article are almost always good, and quite often memorable. The magazine has been popping up in the Best American Sports Writing series in the past few years, and deservedly so.

Someone has been paying attention, it seems, and came up with the idea to do an anthology. It's long overdue.

Three of the articles were the basis of a couple of my favorite books on running -- one on Bill Bowerman, one on "The Duel in the Sun" on the 1982 Boston Marathon, and the third on the legendary Mexican tribe of long-distance athletes. The original articles are here in shortened form, and remain fascinating.

But there are plenty of other great stories here. I missed some of them, since I haven't been subscribing forever, and remember the others. They all hold up quite well. Some of the particularly good stories for me were:

* "Dogged," Steve Friedman's account about how a dog saved a runner's life.

* "Life and Limb," Bruce Barcott's unique story about a man who decided to have part of his leg cut off so he could run pain-free again.

* "The Return of Boston Billy," by Steve Rushin, displaying Bill Rodgers in full-blown querkiness.

* "A Six-Minute Difference," by Cynthia Gorney, which explores the question, what happens when a runner changes genders?

* "Following Terry Fox," by John Brant, exploring just why a runner means so much to Canada.

And on the list goes, essentially through all 30 articles. Runners who are soldiers in Iraq. Searching for the original marathon route in Marathon, Greece. What it's like to win the Boston Marathon.

While runners of all shapes and sizes no doubt will thoroughly enjoy this book, people who wouldn't run across the street as a stoplight changed will like it as well. Treat yourself to "Going Long" in the near future.

Five stars

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