Review: The Cruelest Game (2026)

By Matthew Futterman

This has been something of an unstable decade in the world of professional tennis - particularly compared to what happened before it.

For about 20 years starting in 2003 or so, it was easy to figure out what would happen in the major tournaments. Roger Federer was just about to start his run of greateness, taking Grand Slam #1 in 2003 at Wimbledon. Rafael Nadal became his biggest rival when he joined the Majors Club with a victory at the French Open in 2005. For a while there it seemed as if it wasn't a big tournament if Federer and Nadal didn't play each other - hopefully for a championship. 

Then came Novak Djokovic in 2008, who captured the Australian Open then. He became a regular threat in the majors starting around 2011. Suddenly the Dynamic Duo became the Terrific Trio. All three have an argument as the greatest men's player of all time, and Djokovic is still trying to add to his reputation in 2026. 

The women's players also had a couple of all-time greats on the scene, and they were even sisters. Venus Williams won the first of seven Slams in 2000 - a year behind sister Serena's first big trophy. We didn't know that the win by Venus at Wimbledon in 2008 would be her seventh and last major title. But Serena was just getting warmed up then. She picked up her 21st and last Slam win in 2017. 

Once those eras ended, we've had some scrambling. Matthew Futterman, a reporter for the Athletic who clearly knows the game and its people, takes a good-sized look at the participants who have been top players in recent years, and - in some cases, their struggles for consistency - in "The Cruelest Game."  The resulting book is one part tennis and one part psychology. Matches, it seems, are often won above the neck instead of below it. 

At least on the men's side, a big rivalry has developed. Carlos Alcaraz has seven Slams to his credit, and Jannik Sinner has six. They have won 10 of the last 12 titles, taking over the spotlight once Djokovic won three of four championships in 2023. It's a lot to ask for them to have the staying power of Federer and Nadal. On the women's side, no one has won more than six Grand Slam titles in a career in Serena Williams retired. The leader is Iga Świątek, who has four French Open crowns to go with a win at Wimbledon and Flushing Meadow.  

As Futterman discovers as he checks out the top players, their problems are unique in sports. Start with childhood, when the best players are usually identified and fast-tracked toward professional status. Care to move to a warm-weather academy and have your entire life ruled by a ball and racquet while leaving friends behind? Throw in the fact that families sometimes dedicate huge portions of their financial resources toward the goal of making tennis a nice livelihood for everyone involved. That's a lot of pressure on a kid. It's tough to make friends along the way, particularly if you aren't in the same country for more than a couple of weeks at a time. This is a sport where the various mental demands can become too much, forcing sabbaticals if not early retirements. This last part goes back at least as far as Bjorn Borg, who left the stage shortly after it seemed he was just starting to fall off the peak of the mountain. 

And speaking of pressure, Futterman makes a terrific point when he talks about personal finances. Yes, there's big money to be made in the sport, but only at the top. Players can get by if they crack the top 100 consistently, but the drain caused by travel, coaching, etc. doesn't let up through injuries and slumps. If you don't play, you don't cash checks. Do it enough and outside income drops off. The odds aren't too good. At least the men playing in pro basketball, football, basketball or hockey all can do fine simply by reaching the major leagues. Women don't have the same options available, and that merely adds to the pressure involved. 

Maybe that's why the last American male to win a Grand Slam title was Andy Roddick in 2003. The replacements for Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, who were fading away at that point, never quite arrived. The women have done a little better, but only Coco Gauff has two majors to her credit since the Williams sisters faded out of the title picture. From an American standpoint, the tennis scene is at least a little more interesting if some U.S. players are at least contenders. 

It doesn't take much for a tennis player's state of mind to change, as Futterman discovers. It can happen in a snap - an injury, a fight with a relative, a search for a new coach. Sometimes when a player thinks he or she has an answer, the question changes. 

The author has some opinions about what's going on here, and sometimes this reads a bit like a psychology book with tennis serving as a case study. It's a side of the game that might not be as popular with audiences who simply want to see good athletic competition. But "The Cruelest Game" should work nicely for those who want to take the next step into understanding it all, but need a smart guide to get there. 

Four stars

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Review: Certified Beauties (2025)

By James Duthie

It's story time again in Hockeyland. 

Canadian sports reporter James Duthie had some success in 2020 with a book about some of the backstage moments for hockey players. He called it "Beauties." It should be mentioned that calling something or someone a "beauty" in the world of hockey is high praise, especially north of the border. 

The book seems to have done quite well - well enough to earn a sequel. Therefore, "Certified Beauties" arrived in the bookstores in 2025. As you'd expect, this is no time to break up a winning formula. The approach is about the same: talk to a wide range of hockey personalities, and collect some of the best stories that come up. 

Duthie throws out a rather big net to catch the tales, which is a good idea. There's the time that a summer beer-league hockey game had a couple of ringers turn up one day in an attempt to get in a good workout - Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. The time that Mike Johnson received some bad directions to the airport shortly after he was called to the NHL for his first game. How about Sam Gagner scoring eight points in a game out of absolutely nowhere? Then there's the moment when Nick Foligno was convinced to pay tribute to his father Mike by jumping after a goal. And there's a story about the rise of Kenyan hockey - as in Kenya in Africa, and its one rink. 

Since this is a book about hockey and its players, a few other elements pop up too. Hockey players are rather legendary for their consumption of alcoholic beverages, and that can cause some problems. Jeff O'Neill had just been recalled from the minors when he decided to try out the legendary nightlife of Los Angeles ... which caused him to sleep in the next morning, prompting a mad drive through the crowded city streets in order to catch the bus to practice. Then there is the matter of practical jokes. Hockey players have left behind a trail of sawed-off sticks and scissored ties and stolen suits and moved cars behind over the years. That's not my favorite subject, but others will enjoy those accounts.   

Two members of the Buffalo Sabres turn up here. Marty Biron had just missed out on making Canada's World Junior Team in December 1995 when he was called up by the Sabres for his first look at the NHL. It's around Christmas, and Marty had trouble finding out what exactly was going on. But he flies to Pittsburgh, expecting to have a good seat on the bench ... only to discover he was starting. Against Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, and Company. The other Sabre is Zenon Konopka, who turned up for a half-season during the playoff drought to take faceoffs and get into fights. It was Team No. 19 in his personal hockey odyssey, starting in junior hockey in Ottawa. He broke his nose 14 times along the way. Ouch. 

Two of the stories here are a bit out of the norm from the rest of the book for all the right reasons. Duthie pays tribute to brothers John and Matty Gaudreau, who were killed in 2024 when while riding bikes were hit by a car. An excellent recollection is offered here. Later, the book recounts the last meeting between two old teammates, Darryl Sittler and Borje Salming. Grab a tissue.  

One little warning, courtesy of the author: Hockey players tend to speak in two languages: their native tongue and profanity. This comes uncensored - especially a speech by Bruce Boudreau. You can decide if that quality is a potential turn-off or a selling point.

"Certified Beauties" probably won't stay in the bookcase forever. It's an easy, fun read that will put some smiles on your face, even if you won't remember too much about it later on. If that, Mr. or Ms. Hockey Fan, sounds like it's in your sweet spot, by all means take a look at it.

Three stars

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Review: Mucking in the Corners (2026)

By Steve Currier

Many adjectives could be used to describe hockey in the 1970s. Stable is not one of them. 

No wonder Steve Currier found some areas for discussion in his book on the era, "Mucking in the Corners."

The sport grew up quite a bit in that decade. The National Hockey League was something of a small blip on the radar for about a quarter of a century. It had only six teams from 1942 to 1967, and two of those were in Canada. If it ever was going to become any sort of competitor with baseball and football in the United States, it needed a bigger footprint. That explains the expansion of 1967, when the NHL magically grew from six to 12 teams in one swoop. It wasn't a good move for the quality of play or competition for championships (the expansion teams figured to be poor for a while), but the move did come with a national television contract. 

Somewhat unexpectedly, though, the teams kept coming throughout the 1970s. Some were placed by the NHL in cities via expansion, while others became part of the action through an entirely new league - the World Hockey Association. Sports history teaches us that if an established league doesn't expand enough to fill a vacuum, a new league will come along to fill the void. That's more or less what happened here. The NHL also expanded in the 1970s, partly to bring in fresh money and partly to prevent the WHA from grabbing attractive cities first. Eventually we reached the natural conclusion two leagues need to merge in some form because the new league usually can't keep losing money indefinitely. The NHL grabbed four WHA teams in 1979 (Edmonton is the only one still in its original city, which says something), and the dynamic was changed forever. 

Still, it was fun in an odd way while it lasted. Anyone who could skate was a candidate to play pro hockey in that era, and the leagues and teams tried almost anything to attract attention and fans. The most obvious technique was to bring more fighting into the game in the hopes of bringing fans who like the rough stuff into buildings. It probably wasn't the best long-term strategy, since fighting probably turns off more fans than it turns on. But who cares about the long term when there are bills in that area that past due?

That's the "macro" picture of the era in a nutshell. Currier is more of a "micro" sort of writer here. He's found 41 subjects for essays about hockey in the Seventies - loosely grouped into seven different departments. They are snapshots of a particular subject - some of which go on for some time, others that are covered in a few pages. Practically any hockey fan will read about some events that are completely new to them here. For example, the NHL one preseason experimented with a way to prevent forced stoppages by freezing the puck by giving the opposing team a free shot on goal as a start to play. It turned out to e a great way to drive goalies to learn how to go into some safer line of work, like bomb defusing. 

Currier runs into some good-sized problems in his effort along the way. Some of the subjects are mere curiosities - such as a run of ties, or a hat trick in which a player never did put the puck directly into the net (bounces, etc.) Some of the stories have a great deal of play-by-play involved, and it's a very tough assignment to make a game from 50 years ago come to life that way. (Currier's book on the California Golden Seals had that problem as well, as I recall.) Do people want to read a full description of a game by the London Lions in international play? Seems like a tough sell from here. That approach is going to lead to some skipped sections. 

Along those lines, the book checks in at more than 300 pages. That's probably too long for a project like this. It would have been an easy task to make the writing more compact and send a few of the less-interesting chapters to the cutting room floor.  

The research also comes across as a little superficial in spots. The Buffalo Sabres have a few chapters devoted to them here, and I'm familiar with stories about them. Our conclusions don't exactly agree. The tales of the Intra-League Draft of 1971 is portrayed as a somewhat maddening quirk instead of as a smart move by Sabres' general manager Punch Imlach that built up his roster as it entered Year Two. I was also surprised to see the team described as underfunded; the Sabres sold out the building for almost the entire 1970s, which was the way success was defined in that era for the most part. At least Currier does tell the stories of Al Smith's departure from the team and the drafting of Taro Tsujimoto - a player who never existed. 

Then there's the obvious issue of age. The two leagues merged in 1979 - 47 years ago, at least from the time of this writing. That's ancient history by now. It's tough to say how many people care about that era now, especially the ones under, say 55 or 60 years old. That's a rather small slice of the market. 

No, "Mucking in the Corners" won't be on the best-seller list. Even so, there's something nice about the idea that Currier was a big fan of the oddities from this particular era of hockey history, and wrote a book that was published about it. Good for him; it's an accomplishment. I'm sure he has some company in his interest, and those readers will rekindle some memories here. 

Two stars

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Review: Crossroads (2026)

By Dusty Baker with Steve Kettmann

What was Dusty Baker's biggest, most unlikely accomplishment in baseball? 

In the early 2020s, Baker was managing the Houston Astros. As you might recall, the Astros were caught in a cheating scandal involving garbage can thrashing that tainted their World Series championship in 2018. The Houston team still isn't exactly warmly received around the baseball world, particularly in New York and Los Angeles. 

Baker was hired in 2020 to change the subject. He did that very nicely, softening the Astros' reputation to the point where many fans felt good that he finally won a long-awaited World Series championship in 2022 in Houston. His many friends and acquaintances were quick to point out how happy they felt that Baker could cap his career that way. 

And quite a career it was, and quite a life he's had. Dusty gets many of the highlights down on paper in his book, "Crossroads," and he keeps you turning the 400 pages (!) along the way. 

How far does Baker go back? Try 1967, when he was drafted out of a California high school at the age of 18. It was a long interesting ride until he finally retired from managing after the 2023 season about 55 years later. Baker missed a few years along the way when he was between managerial jobs (often working in broadcasting), but it was rare to see him out of uniform for more than a half-century.  

Baker was drafted by the Atlanta Braves, and had a couple of cups of coffee with that team in 1968 and 1969 before sticking. That's the time that Henry Aaron was his teammate, and Dusty couldn't have asked for a better man for advice on life in the big leagues. Aaron even warned Baker that no matter how good he was in Atlanta, a segment of the population wouldn't accept him. The Old South hadn't gone away by the early 1970s. ]

Baker put up some good numbers with the Braves, but eventually he became a little expensive for them ... so it was off to Los Angeles in a trade. The Dodgers proved a better fit, as the outfielder became an All-Star and even an MVP contender in 1980 (fourth place). He was a big reason why Los Angeles won the World Series in 1981. Baker stayed with the Dodgers through 1983, when he moved on to the Giants and Athletics for the end of his career. 

Baker tried his hand at business after retiring as a player, but he couldn't stay away from the game. A coaching job proved difficult to refuse, and it eventually led a position as manager of the San Francisco Giants in 1993. He won 103 games in his first year, and the National League pennant in his last. But the Giants opted for some reason to make a change. It was off to the Cubs for four years, which included the agony of a playoff loss to the Marlins in 2003. From there it was on to Reds for six years and the Nationals for two before he finally arrived in Houston at the age of 71. Think he paid his dues? Yeah, that's fair. 

There seemed to be two constants in those years, at least according to the book. One is fishing. Baker seems to have done a lot of it over the years, and at some good spots too. The other is friends. He knows everyone. He had the chance to talk to Barack Obama a couple of times - once in Chicago, and once in the White House. Dusty hung out with everyone from Bill Walton to Miles Davis. He checked in with Bill Walsh and Al Attles for advice on managing. But he's also befriended people who aren't well known; they are merely good people. The acknowledgments in the back consist more or less of four pages of people's names, and he's probably only scratched the surface there. 

Baker explains the title at the end of the book too. He said his father always told him, "Son, when you come to a crossroads, take the road to the right." That doesn't refer to direction; it references correctness - as in right and wrong. Dusty even mentions that the book represented something of a crossroads for him, since he had to look back at the decisions he made. Some of them didn't work out well, but no one bats 1.000 in life. There's very little that's negative in the book. Heck, Baker even has good things to say about Barry Bonds. (The steroid era, which he obviously witnessed, goes more or less untouched here.)

Practically everyone in baseball has said how much they like being around Dusty, and this is a chance to experience those feelings from up close. "Crossroads" certainly will be loved Baker's many fans, and enjoyed by others who appreciated him from a distance. 

Four stars

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Review: Touching All the Bases (2026)

By Dave Winfield with Alan Maimon

Here we go again.

Way back in 1988, Dave Winfield wrote an autobiography about his life called, naturally, "Winfield: A Player's Life.' I read it and even reviewed it for The Buffalo News, saying that it caused a few headlines because it talked about how George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees could be a difficult personality in his dealings with people. OK, maybe that's not breaking news, but it did fill the New York City tabloids with headlines for a few days. 

We're coming up on the 40th anniversary of that book, and Winfield is back with another autobiography. This time he more or less completes his life story with "Touching All the Bases." This one is an improvement over the first time around, although it's not the most dramatic book on the shelf. 

Winfield was by most standards an amazing athlete. He was big (6-foot-6), strong and fast, and drafted by three major sports. (Hockey somehow passed him, up although a large, quick guy on skates might have terrorized opponents.) Winfield chose baseball, and didn't play a single day in the minor leagues. He was one of the first stars in the history of the San Diego Padres' franchise.

But in 1981, Dave was ready for free agency. He signed a huge contract with the Yankees, after considerable wooing from Steinbrenner. George made a big mistake in that record deal - not noticing that Winfield had a cost-of-living elevator clause in the deal that turned out to be a heck of a yearly bonus. Steinbrenner seemed to take it out on Winfield in an odd way - attack the outfielder's charitable foundation. That first book was written in the middle of that dispute. 

So Book Number Two tells the rest of the story. The controversy eventually settled on the story of Howie Spira, who had tried and failed to work for Winfield and then offered to dig up dirt on the star for Steinbrenner. George accepted. That eventually led to a ban from baseball for Steinbrenner, although he was allowed to run the Yankees again a few years later. 

By that time, Winfield had left the Bronx Zoo. He eventually played for the Angels, Blue Jays, Twins and Indians - winning his only World Series ring with the Blue Jays. He finished his career with 3,110 hits and 465 homers - skating his way into the Baseball Hall of Fame without a problem. Since then, Dave has worked in a few different areas. He did some broadcasting, but seemed to have trouble fitting into a niche. Winfield spent considerable time with the Players Association.    

He comes off here as a great player and a good person, with his heart in the right place in several areas. It's hard to say if he completely knew what he was about to go through when he signed with the Yankees. Winfield might have been happier had he stayed in a place like San Diego or Minnesota for almost all of his career, where he could have felt at home and worried about hitting and catching baseballs. But the association lingers, in part because of the disagreements with Steinbrenner. No wonder he's wearing pinstripes in the cover photo. 

It might have been better if "Touching All the Bases" had been published a little earlier in his life. You'd have to be at least 40 to remember him in his prime, when he was one of the top all-around players in the game. But what we have is quite readable, and it offers some insight into a baseball life.  

Three stars

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