A shocking, funny, and detailed record exposing the excessive market value of collectibles. Paisner (Horizontal Hold:The Making and Breaking of a Network Television Pilot,1992), who has pinch-hit for the likes of Ed Koch, George Pataki, Geraldo, Montel, and Whoopi, here depicts how Mark McGwire’s historic 70th home run ball was manufactured for about five bucks and ultimately sold for over three million. Paisner follows research scientist Phil Ozersky, who caught “the ball,” nearly gave it up (as some kids did with other valuable balls), and nervously held on while a string of agents, auction houses, and bidders led a financial feeding frenzy. Although a fan who understands sports collectibles, Paisner sees the absurdity of throwing around dollars “as if they—d been printed by Milton Bradley, when the market capitalization of fledgling Internet companies rivals the gross national product of, say, Belgium.” We are prepared for Ozersky’s ordeal and triumph when reading of the $93,500 for the Bill Buckner ball (1968 World Series) and the fates of other McGwire and Sosa balls in 1998. Paisner also reveals proposed product tie-ins, including a line of clothes, a credit card hologram of “the ball” and slugger Beanie Babies. It’s madness from the moment Ozersky catches “the ball” and is hustled to an office by Busch Stadium cops past beer-dousing fans. “He’s clutching so tight to the ball, it might hold a secret formula for world peace.” It might hold fortune, as Sotheby’s sold Tyrannosaurus rex bones for $8.6 million, and “stupid money” went for Princess Diana’s wedding gown. An auction at Madison Square Garden gets “the ball” to comic book czar Todd McFarlane. Ozersky gets his million clear, “but his life was no longer his own.” At least Ozersky finally gets to meet McGwire, the hero whose priceless trophy he has sold. A powerful metaphor of how our materialistic greed turns cowhide into a mutimillion-dollar holy grail.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-88776-5
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
Categories: SPORTS & RECREATION
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A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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BOOK REVIEW
A maddening, well-constructed tale of medical discovery and corporate coverup, set in morgues, laboratories, courtrooms, and football fields.
Nigeria-born Bennet Omalu is perhaps an unlikely hero, a medical doctor board-certified in four areas of pathology, “anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology,” and a well-rounded specialist in death. When his boss, celebrity examiner Cyril Wecht (“in the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star”), got into trouble for various specimens of publicity-hound overreach, Omalu was there to offer patient, stoical support. The student did not surpass the teacher in flashiness, but Omalu was a rock star all his own in studying the brain to determine a cause of death. Laskas’ (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Hidden America, 2012, etc.) main topic is the horrific injuries wrought to the brains and bodies of football players on the field. Omalu’s study of the unfortunate brain of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at 50 of a supposed heart attack, brought new attention to the trauma of concussion. Laskas trades in sportwriter-ese, all staccato delivery full of tough guy–isms and sports clichés: “He had played for fifteen seasons, a warrior’s warrior; he played in more games—two hundred twenty—than any other player in Steelers history. Undersized, tough, a big, burly white guy—a Pittsburgh kind of guy—the heart of the best team in history.” A little of that goes a long way, but Laskas, a Pittsburgher who first wrote of Omalu and his studies in a story in GQ, does sturdy work in keeping up with a grim story that the NFL most definitely did not want to see aired—not in Omalu’s professional publications in medical journals, nor, reportedly, on the big screen in the Will Smith vehicle based on this book.
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading it.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8757-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Categories: SPORTS & RECREATION
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