A lively, discursive account of American-style football as it expands its European fan base.
Anderson (co-author, Pickup Artists, 1998) spent the spring of 2000 with the Scottish Claymores, one of six teams in the NFL Europe league. He had access to the team’s practices in Glasgow and traveled to games in Berlin, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam, and Barcelona. A Sports Illustrated writer, he’s at his best when covering the origin and growth of the league. Developed by the NFL in the late 1980s as a response to the global growth of the NBA in the Magic/Bird/Jordan era, the World League of American Football had teams scattered over eight time zones. By 1995, the WLAF had evolved into NFL Europe, which succeeds today as a training ground for the domestic league. (Underused rookies, rehabilitating veterans, ambitious coaches, and even referees work in Europe, knowing that game videotape will be carefully analyzed in the US.) On the initial 2000 NFL rosters, 159 players were veterans of Europe, including Super Bowl Quarterback Kurt Warner. The author demonstrates the low-budget atmosphere of the league, e.g., the Glasgow hotel housing the team has small rooms, nasty food, and computer-incompatible phone lines. Anderson portrays so many people that none emerges as a compelling protagonist. Only Jim Criner, the unlikable head coach, receives extensive attention. Light-hearted moments are based on cultural differences, such as Ziggy, a German bus driver, mistaking the team for a wedding party and taking them to a Frankfurt reception instead of the Düsseldorf stadium. And Nachi Abe, one of two Japanese players on the team, rejoices in his one-member fan club. In his accounts of the Claymore’s ten regular season games and the concluding World Bowl, Anderson ably captures the excitement of the play.
An informative introduction to the NFL’s minor league. (20 b&w photos, throughout)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26975-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
Categories: SPORTS & RECREATION
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A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | HEALTH & FITNESS | SPORTS & RECREATION
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BOOK REVIEW
NBA legends Bird and Johnson, fierce rivals during their playing days, team up on a mutual career retrospective.
With megastars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and international superstars like China’s Yao Ming pushing it to ever-greater heights of popularity today, it’s difficult to imagine the NBA in 1979, when financial problems, drug scandals and racial issues threatened to destroy the fledgling league. Fortunately, that year marked the coming of two young saviors—one a flashy, charismatic African-American and the other a cocky, blond, self-described “hick.” Arriving fresh off a showdown in the NCAA championship game in which Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores—still the highest-rated college basketball game ever—the duo changed the course of history not just for the league, but the sport itself. While the pair’s on-court accomplishments have been exhaustively chronicled, the narrative hook here is unprecedented insight and commentary from the stars themselves on their unique relationship, a compelling mixture of bitter rivalry and mutual admiration. This snapshot of their respective careers delves with varying degrees of depth into the lives of each man and their on- and off-court achievements, including the historic championship games between Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics, their trailblazing endorsement deals and Johnson’s stunning announcement in 1991 that he had tested positive for HIV. Ironically, this nostalgic chronicle about the two men who, along with Michael Jordan, turned more fans onto NBA basketball than any other players, will likely appeal primarily to a narrow cross-section of readers: Bird/Magic fans and hardcore hoop-heads.
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-547-22547-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
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