Contains little that Pats fanatics don’t already know, but a solid addition to the growing shelf of books on a remarkable...
How an NFL team went from league doormat to model franchise in five fast years.
It’s not easy to remain at the pinnacle in the NFL, where one season’s contenders are often next year’s also-rans. Using Michael Lewis’s Moneyball (2003) as a vague template, sportswriter Price (Baseball by the Beach, 1998) explores how the New England Patriots were extricated from a vicious cycle of mediocrity to become the benchmark for teams not only throughout professional football, but in other sports as well. He chronicles the Patriots’ comically bumbling history prior to the mid-1990s: In one particularly unedifying episode, a half-drunk player previously released by the organization was pulled from the stands to rejoin the shorthanded team; he threw up on the sidelines after the opening kickoff. Not a happy story, until the near-simultaneous arrivals of legendary head coach Bill Parcells in 1993 and new owner Robert Kraft in 1994 changed the team’s fortunes. Parcells instilled a winning culture, and his efforts laid the groundwork for the talented tandem of coach Bill Belichick and personnel head Scott Pioli to take the team to the next level, winning three championships in four years and turning the Patriots into the toast of the sports world. Though filled with details, Price’s affable narrative offers only intermittent insights into Belichick and Pioli’s methods, which focus primarily on seeking out players who “fit” the team’s system and selecting less talented but highly motivated players over high-priced superstars. The book is most entertaining when Price is recounting tales from the team’s less-than-glory days or incidents previously known only to local fans, but the author occasionally overreaches in an effort to build the Patriots’ mystique. For example, his contention that the team’s signing of solid but unspectacular linebacker Mike Vrabel would ultimately change the face of professional football is sportswriter hyperbole at its most egregious.
Contains little that Pats fanatics don’t already know, but a solid addition to the growing shelf of books on a remarkable team.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-36838-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
A sunny, refreshing season of pro basketball in the Lega Pallenestro Italiano. Depressed, recently divorced, disillusioned, and fed up with the arrogance and cynicism of American sports, Oregon sportswriter Patton jumped at the chance to spend 1992 in Italy. Based in Bologna, the 32-team Lega Pallenestro plays a 30-game schedule. The lega champion goes on to play in the European Cup tournament, but there is also a complicated system of international tournaments and playoffs. Each team is allowed two stranieri, or foreigners. Many of these are former NBA players such as Darryl ``Chocolate Thunder'' Dawkins and former Detroit Piston ``bad boy'' Rick Mahorn. Cut by the Il Messagero team (ostensibly for a locker-room tantrum, though some claim he'd become ``fat and lazy'') just a few days before Patton arrived, Mahorn was proof that NBA fringe players ``don't automatically become stars in Italy.'' (Mahorn, however, finished 1994 with the New Jersey Nets and his old coach, Chuck Daly.) While the author spends a lot of time with the Americans, he also profiles Italian stars such as il monumento nationale, 69'' Dino Meneghin, who, at 43, was playing his 27th season at pivot, center. ``Italy's greatest player,'' Meneghin led Varese to seven championships in his first ten years in the league and then won five more with the Milan team. There's also C'e solo un (the one and only) Roberto Brunamonti, slick point guard for Knorr Bologna, and his suave coach, Ettore Messina, who, when talking basket, will blithely refer to Saint Sebastian and his favorite Greek mythological heroes. Patton's descriptions of the often ineptly played games (``You see shots there's no name for'') and the boisterous, lewdly chanting crowds are a delight. Well flavored with wonderful passages on the foods, the people, the travel from village to city, and the joys and frustrations of daily life in a foreign land. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-86849-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sharp, affectionate portrait—in words and stunning photographs—of prizefighters in their milieu. Photojournalist Schulman started shooting fighters in the early 1980s, when she covered the Kid Gloves at Madison Square Garden for ABC. She has since taken her camera to the famous, grimy gyms of the boxing world from New York to San Francisco, from the Dominican Republic to Ghana—large or small, decrepit or modern, ``the smell of ancient sweat is the same.'' Her visits include the Gramercy Gym on 14th Street, where Gus D'Amato trained Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres; the Kronk Gym in Detroit, home to Thomas Hearns and Evander Holyfield; Miami's Fifth Street Gym where Angelo Dundee worked Willie Pastrano and Muhammad Ali ``entertained'' Howard Cosell; and back to New York for peeks inside Stillman's and Gleason's, where names such as Joe Louis, Rocky Graziano, Kid Gavilan, Jake LaMotta, and Roberto Duran are more than mere legend. She takes a quick look at a few of the legendary matches: Jack Dempsey vs. Gene Tunney; Ali's battles with Joe Frazier; the Duran- Sugar Ray Leonard saga; and the feisty Alexis Arguello-Aaron Pryor matchups. She offers incisive comments and profiles of dozens of fighters, from long-retired light-heavyweight champ Archie Moore to the little guys, barely 10, who box wearing gloves too large for their hands; from the great to the near-great, to those who made a career of standing up long enough to give the contenders a workout. There are success stories: Larry Holmes, Azumah Nelson, Roberto Duran. And sad stories: Leon Spinks, Aaron Pryor. There's also a touching portrait of trainer Ray Arcel, whose 20 champions over 65 years ranged from Tony Zale to the still-fighting Holmes. Boxing may or may not be ``a sport where the rewards outweigh the risks,'' but Schulman goes a long way toward putting a human— if battered—face on a profession long in disrepute. (100 b&w photos)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-55821-309-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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