The game is professional basketball, as represented by the Portland Trail Blazers' 1979-80 season—a microcosm, in Halberstam's wide-angle rendering, of the commercialization of all that was once genuine in American life. . . at the cost, often, of human lives. (In pro basketball, of some of the best and brightest black lives.) The book has a problem with sprawl—not only because the central chapter, "The Season," goes on for 300 pages. Halberstam has contrived a narrative as seamless and fluid and intermeshed as basketball itself—with the result, in the first half at least, that lines of development don't stand out (and much has to be reiterated). But in time all the interesting things Halberstam learned about new-breed-millionaire owner Larry Weinberg, personnel manager Stu Inman ("Are you really telling me"—to Weinberg—"that you know more than us?"), coach Jack Ramsay ("the system came first"—and the blacks craved more freedom), about Blazer superstars and comers and might-have-beens, do add up—intellectually and emotionally. And what appear first as insights—the shifting of franchises from blue-collar basketball cities to white-collar market-places, the physically-punishing, career-shortening longer seasons, the frequent shuffling of players (college basketball, now, has more continuity), their overnight rise from ghetto or shack to (dissatisfied) superstardom—become episodes in an ongoing, unfinished drama. Among the highlights: maverick great Bill Walton has defected to San Diego, charging medical maltreatment—on the part of two of his closest associates, the Blazer doctor and trainer. (The issue is painkillers: he had compromised his principles so that, like his teammates, he could "play hurt"—and like others, injured himself further.) To compensate the Blazers for his loss, NBA commissioner O'Brien assigns Kermit Washington to Portland—despite Washington's handwritten plea to be allowed to stay in San Diego. (It would be his fourth city in three years—worse, it would mean, after a freak fistfight, "proving myself again.") Maurice "Luke" Lucas, the Blazers' remaining star and most intimidating presence, wants to be traded—with a no-cut contract, he'll sit out most of the season. "Unabashed square" and unexceptional player Larry Steele is going into a ninth, record Blazer season—before it's over, he'll have six knee operations to try to hold onto his job. Billy Ray Bates—"a child of the feudal South," now a Maine Lumberjacks guard (one of the great personal stories)—will join the Blazers and become NBA Player of the Week. And ABC's Roone Arledge, stung by the NBA switch to CBS into building up rival attractions, will have his revenge: the last championship playoff game will be shown on TV at midnight. Says Luke: "Can you imagine Kareem and Magic and Julius, and we're still second-class citizens?" No, you don't need to be a fan to start with—but you might be before you finish.
Pub Date: Nov. 16, 1981
ISBN: 1401309720
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1981
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.
The latest collection of interrelated essays by the veteran fishing writer.
As in his previous books—from The View From Rat Lake through All Fishermen Are Liars—Gierach hones in on the ups and downs of fishing, and those looking for how-to tips will find plenty here on rods, flies, guides, streams, and pretty much everything else that informs the fishing life. It is the everything else that has earned Gierach the following of fellow writers and legions of readers who may not even fish but are drawn to his musings on community, culture, the natural world, and the seasons of life. In one representatively poetic passage, he writes, “it was a chilly fall afternoon with the leaves changing, the current whispering, and a pale moon in a daytime sky. The river seemed inscrutable, but alive with possibility.” Gierach writes about both patience and process, and he describes the long spells between catches as the fisherman’s equivalent of writer’s block. Even when catching fish is the point, it almost seems beside the point (anglers will understand that sentiment): At the end of one essay, he writes, “I was cold, bored, hungry, and fishless, but there was still nowhere else I’d have rather been—something anyone who fishes will understand.” Most readers will be profoundly moved by the meditation on mortality within the blandly titled “Up in Michigan,” a character study of a man dying of cancer. Though the author had known and been fishing with him for three decades, his reticence kept anyone from knowing him too well. Still, writes Gierach, “I came to think of [his] glancing pronouncements as Michigan haiku: brief, no more than obliquely revealing, and oddly beautiful.” Ultimately, the man was focused on settling accounts, getting in one last fishing trip, and then planning to “sit in the sun and think things over until it’s time for hospice.”
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6858-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
A thoughtful and compelling book following the members of a single recruiting class at Penn State's distinguished football program through their college gridiron careers. By the end of their four (and in some cases five) years of college football, the group of 28 young men who had entered the school in August 1988 were reduced to a near-handful by injuries, academic shortcomings, transfers, and graduation. They had come to the small town of State College to play for one of the sport's fabled coaches, Joe Paterno, a man with a reputation for combining coaching excellence with a commitment to academic and ethical integrity. Denlinger, a Penn State alumnus who covers college football for the Washington Post, found that reputation for the most part merited. However, this is neither a bronzing of Paterno nor a whitewash of college sports. Given the trajectories of the young men he covered, that would be impossible. As Denlinger proves, college football is a bruisingly brutal sport, and several of the students he followed found their careers ended abruptly by torn-up knees, battered backs, and a variety of fractures large and small. About midway through the book, Denlinger observes, ``All college football players fall into two categories: The haves and the have-nots.'' To his credit, much of his book focuses on the latter group—from a student manager who improbably became the team's long snapper to the kids who never got much playing time. Finally, he closes by suggesting two major changes in college football: the elimination of artificial playing surfaces and a severe cutback in scholarships. Denlinger captures in equal parts the frustrating pain and the adrenaline-pumping thrill of playing college football at the highest level.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11436-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
