Shows great love for the underdog, but doesn’t make a great case for the game’s larger importance.
Baseball writer Reisler (Black Writers/Black Baseball, 2007, etc.) analyzes one of the greatest upsets in World Series history.
The 1960 World Series was not expected to be much of a contest. The Yankees had won six championships in the 1950s and boasted one of the most impressive lineups in baseball, including Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. Pittsburgh, while fielding greats Roberto Clemente and Bill Mazeroski, did not approach that star power. After six games, the Yankees had outscored the Pirates 46-16. Relying on timely hits and exemplary defense to make up for their lack of home-run power, the Pirates managed to extend the series to a seventh and deciding game, which they won. But the Yankees came back to nail the Series in 1961 and 1962, while the Pirates only won two more titles over the next 47 years (and counting)—so the 1960 upset didn’t prompt a paradigm shift in how teams were made or managed. Lacking any compelling evidence that this game was especially significant to baseball or beyond, Reisler bulks up his chronicle by adding information already familiar to most baseball fans: Talented hitter Roger Maris was a private person who disdained big-city pleasures; Mickey Mantle liked the night life; Roberto Clemente was treated poorly by fans and the press despite his tremendous skills because he was a dark-skinned Latino, etc. Reisler also takes the conventional path in depicting the Yankees as a corporate behemoth and the Pirates as a group of misfits and rebels who wrested the top prize from a team often compared to U.S. Steel. The story of the game itself reads like an expanded box score.
Shows great love for the underdog, but doesn’t make a great case for the game’s larger importance.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-78671-943-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A colorful history of the Univ. of Texas Longhorns football program by Austin sportswriters Maher and Bohls, who help explain the mentality behind the unofficial team slogan, ``Be number one, or be no one.'' The Longhorns won their last national championship in 1969, crowning the glory days of coach Darrell Royal, a legendary figure who led the team to ten Cotton Bowls and never had a losing season in 20 years. Opening the 1990 season under head coach David McWilliams, following a losing 1989 campaign and scandals involving steroids, gambling, and academic snafus, there was little reason for optimism. But a convincing win against Penn State and a close loss to tough Colorado showed promise of better things. Bookend tackles Stan Thomas, 6'6'', 300 lbs., and Chuck Johnson, 6'5'', 275 lbs., brought back memories of yesteryear, when grind-it-out trench warfare was the Longhorns' strong suit. Interspersed with descriptions of the 1990 season are glances back at the Royal years and after, with profiles of athletic director DeLoss Dodds, running back Earl Campbell, ``the perma-pressed [Coach Fred] Akers era,'' and powerful ``Czar'' Frank Erwin, who was chairman of the Board of Regents in the 60's and 70's. Maher and Bohls also examine—and only occasionally soft-pedal—the issues of racism (Royal ``didn't manage to recruit a black to his football team until'' 1969), NCAA recruiting violations, and drug use and other scandals that have plagued college football in recent years. As the Longhorns progress through the 10-1, 1990 season en route to an embarrassing loss to Miami in the Cotton Bowl, there are big wins against rival Oklahoma, Arkansas, TCU, and Houston, amply detailed and analyzed by the authors, who are both fans and critics of the ``whatever it takes'' football philosophy. As much fun as a Texas barbecue, but with its serious side. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1991
ISBN: 0-312-06305-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
A new convert to the game of football, Oppenheimer (Private Demons, 1988) decided to observe, record, and analyze the daily activity of her son's 1988 Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School team. Like the team's season, the results are mixed. Toby, senior offensive lineman in only his second year, didn't like the idea: ``What seventeen-year-old wants his mother hanging around a locker room?'' The BCC Barons and head coach Pete White, meanwhile, felt there was reason for optimism despite going 5-5 in 1987, their best record in years. ``Win 8 in '88 and go to state!'' was the battle cry. The talent at this ethnically diverse, affluent suburban school included a 300-lb. center, a 5'-6'' Korean linebacker, a swift Jamaican running back, and an assortment of blacks, Asians, and white kids more inclined toward soccer. It wasn't always a comfortable mix. As Oppenheimer follows their progress, she scrutinizes their attitudes toward one another and the coaches, toward winning and losing, their sex lives, and their use of drugs and alcohol. Fighting off her own anxieties—``Zen and the art of football parenting''—about her son, she rarely inserts herself in the picture but allows the boys to speak in their own, often inarticulate, tiresome way: But I'm, like, okay, so I go, and he goes.... There's a disappointing opening game; a racist coach (``black kids...were more arrogant, tougher, meaner''); a bitter, injury-rife, one-point loss to rival Einstein; the boys' cockiness following the homecoming victory; and, finally, the season-ending trouncing at the hands of ``mammoth, untouchable, abandon-all-hope'' Gaithersburg. The annual banquet, despite the 4-6 record, would toast individual achievements and look toward next year. At times self-conscious and shrill (the locker room, ``a place for the ancient rites of grabass'') and at other times perceptive, but Oppenheimer never quite puts it all together. Rather like missing the point after.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-68754-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991
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