Freelance sportswriter Rosenbaum offers a breezy look at possibly the least successful champions in team sports history. Despite being in a large media market with a baseball-mad fan base, the refuse-hauling and video-rental tyro Wayne Huizenga’s Miami-based Florida Marlins had trouble drawing and sustaining interest. Prior to the ’97 season, Huizenga bet the farm, spending $89 million in contracts to get the best team money could buy. Huizenga signed a manager, Jim Leyland, who led teams to three division titles in the early ’90s; some hefty bats, problem child Bobby Bonilla, and the quiet superstar, Moises Alou; and a couple of good arms, including Liv†n Hern†ndez and Alex Fern†ndez, to round out an already strong pitching staff. Standing in the way of the Marlins— success were a few obstacles: first, the Atlanta Braves, National League champions for four of the five previous years. The second, and to Huizenga the most formidable, was Pro Player stadium, a venue woefully ill-suited to the realities of baseball in the late ’90s. Simply put, the stadium was pitifully short of amenities such as deluxe concessionaires and luxury boxes that were deemed essential to garnering corporate support. Perhaps most damning of all, however, was the lack of a roof—a must for keeping southern Florida’s summer rains out. By building his team, he hoped to bring in fans, and in turn obtain financing for the new baseball stadium that could make the Marlins profitable (writes the author, “If they come, maybe they’ll build it”). During the season, the Marlins battled to a wildcard playoff spot, getting leadership from the unlikeliest places, notably from Bonilla. Despite finally vanquishing the Braves, winning the World Series, and being embraced by Miami’s diverse communities, the Marlins still finished millions of dollars in the red (and no closer to a new stadium), thus necessitating a fire sale to dump star player salaries. An unflinching primer of sports economics and its new definitions of success.
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-9653846-8-3
Page Count: 328
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
A close-up look at the championship season of a girls' high school basketball team that only the team's members and their families will find compelling. Adolescence is inherently hyperbolic, sportswriting is sometimes not far behind, and Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Blais (The Heart Is an Instrument, 1992) nearly outdistances both as she applies the celebrity biography touch to a subject that is diminished by being so inflated. This is unfortunate, because the Lady Hurricanes of Amherst, Mass., seem a likeable lot who worked hard to capture the 199293 state championship. Co-captains Jamila Wideman (who received several honors, including selection by USA Today as a ``first team all-American'') and Jen Pariseau (who also earned the attention of college sports recruiters) are particularly noteworthy, and each girl makes her own contribution. When Blais discusses actual games, she captures some of the excitement these players must have felt, but she is more interested in the girls as people—even when she cannot make them interesting. Many potentially illuminating anecdotes are related in only a gossipy manner: Jamila starting life in a hospital preemie ward, Sophie King nearly losing a leg to gangrene, and Jen offering her version of ``life's little instructions.'' We hear about not only Coach Ron Moyer but also about his mother. Settling for adoration without insight, Blais asks no questions about the impact of these experiences on the girls' development or their futures; she doesn't ask whether the goal of girls' teams should be to imitate boys' teams, with their unquestioning emphasis on winning, whatever the cost; in short, she ignores the issues that could have made this more than an inflated version of the New York Times Magazine article on which it is based. There might be an insightful book to be written on the subject of girls' basketball, but this isn't it. (First printing of 35,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-87113-572-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
An engaging and informative cultural history, on and off the gridiron.
A rich history of the rise of the National Football League from its virtual obscurity at its genesis in the 1920s to its position as an economic and cultural powerhouse today.
Former Baltimore Sun sportswriter Eisenberg (The Streak: Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken Jr., and Baseball's Most Historic Record, 2017, etc.) returns with the story of how five owners—George Halas, Bert Bell, George Preston Marshall, Art Rooney, and Tim Mara—refused to give up on the struggling league and lived to see (and cause) its current dominance. Thoroughly researched and gracefully told, the story begins with the background of each of the five, then moves chronologically through the early years of the league—struggles, controversies (among the most significant was the arrival of black players), adjustments (to radio and then TV)—to its full arrival in 1958, when 40 million people watched the Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the exciting championship game. As the author repeatedly points out, these five were fierce rivals, but they knew that to make the league survive and flourish, they could not destroy one another. So they compromised and changed rules to make the game more exciting; all would live to see the league’s vigorous health. (The final chapter deals with the deaths of each.) Although Eisenberg is admiring of the founders, he also recognizes—and highlights—their weaknesses. Marshall, for example, was a racist, the last to bring blacks onto his team, the Washington Redskins. Although the author provides some details about some key games (and iconic players like Red Grange, Marion Motley, and Sam Huff), the narrative is not a rehearsal of games but of the history of a game, a business, and five men who took a chance, lost money, and then found great success.
An engaging and informative cultural history, on and off the gridiron.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-465-04870-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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