Not quite on par with Bringing the Heat (1994), among the best football books ever, but surely a delight for anyone...
Bowden (Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam, 2006, etc.) takes a sharp look at the 1958 National Football League championship game, which featured “the greatest concentration of football talent ever assembled for a single game.”
The classic Baltimore Colts/New York Giants title tilt had all the elements of a memorable game: spectacular plays and miscues, controversial calls by the officials, lead changes and, notably, the first sudden-death overtime in NFL history. Still, there were before, and have been since, dozens of NFL games every bit as thrilling. What set the 1958 contest apart to make it the best ever? Although Bowden offers a serviceable play-by-play account, he wisely focuses on a few individuals—Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, Weeb Ewbank, Art Donovan of the Colts; Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, Vince Lombardi, and Tom Landry of the Giants—to explain the game’s singular link to the NFL’s past and future. The author deftly examines the larger historical context shaping this coming-of-age moment, which propelled professional football to its current position as America’s favorite sport. First, the country itself—transitioning from the Old Soldier Eisenhower to the New Frontier Kennedy, from U.S. Steel to IBM, from blue-collar to white-collar, from segregation to integration—was ready for a sport embodying the ethos of the new age. For years a poor stepchild to the college game, pro football had only recently begun to adopt the scientific principles of analysis and preparation pioneered by Cleveland’s Paul Brown, advancements showcased here by some of the game’s greatest coaches and players. Second, as the overtime contest bled into prime time, millions of television sets picked up the broadcast, riveted the audience and cemented the perfect marriage between football’s electric tempo and the cool medium of television. Soon black-and-white would turn to color, the small-town feel of the sport—embodied nicely by Baltimore’s Colts—would turn big time and the NFL would transform itself into the multibillion dollar enterprise whose Super Bowl has become an unofficial national holiday.
Not quite on par with Bringing the Heat (1994), among the best football books ever, but surely a delight for anyone interested in the history of the NFL.Pub Date: June 3, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-87113-988-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2008
A runner’s chronicle of adventures in the Grand Canyon and other desert locales. Annerino, the author of several books about the Southwest, recounts his years of recovery from a mid-1970s climbing accident, after which doctors doubted he would walk freely again. His recovery and ’spiritual and mental renewal— came from running, first short distances, then, inspired by tales of southwestern Indian runners who covered a hundred miles in a single day, longer and longer stretches of ground. Eventually he was able to cross such places as the Gran Desierto of northwestern Mexico, —the largest sand sea in North America,— and even to run a complicated and dangerous 250-mile-long course along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. On a technical level, his memoir will be of interest to runners planning large-scale adventures of their own; Annerino excels at detailing the logistical difficulties of maintaining communication and establishing points of resupply, and he writes tellingly of the less tangible difficulties, among them loneliness, fear, cold, and, of course, heat. (The appendix, which describes a series of difficult desert runs, is especially useful.) His book will also be of interest to those working to overcome injury, as the author has so successfully done. Annerino is least successful when he strives to be poetic (—My feet continue padding softly across the desert floor, sending up powdery wisps of dust with each footfall. I suck wind in, I blow air out—). He also refers rather too often, and rather too bathetically, to a failed marriage, the unhappy details of which we did not need to know. Of small interest outside the sports and adventure-travel market, this is a generally well-written and even inspirational vade mecum.
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-56025-175-1
Page Count: 338
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
A prominent sports-law professor (Rutgers Univ.) and baseball-salary arbitrator explains the obvious and not-so-obvious reasons why baseball players and team owners seem to spend more time arguing before judges than before field umpires. Abrams asserts that —if baseball is the heart of America, the legal process provides the sinews that hold it in place.— Coming from a sports-law practitioner and educator, such a pronouncement might seem both simplistic and self-serving. However, going over the game’s history, from its inception in the mid-19th century to the present, Abrams convincingly illustrates why the business of baseball has supplanted the game itself in the American limelight. To explain the relationship between law and baseball, the author focuses on nine men and one woman who had pivotal roles in the game’s history—a group of players, owners, and litigators Abrams calls the “All-Star Baseball Law Team.” Using these individuals’ actions and related events, he discusses several major themes: John Montgomery Ward’s clashes with National League team owners over the formation of a players— union at the end of the 19th century; the Curt Flood case against baseball’s reserve clause and its exemption from federal anti-trust regulations in the 1970s; Pete Rose and the issues of jurisdiction; baseball executives— struggles with the commissioner’s office over a vague yet binding mandate to act on behalf of “the best interests of baseball.” Abrams is astute and unflinching in his judgments, yet shows admirable balance (although he doesn’t shy away from depicting how management’s arrogance and inability to organize in any but a collusive manner has contributed to their poor public image and unsuccessful litigative record). Also, he obligingly explains many terms often used but seldom understood (in relation to baseball), and makes clear many subtle distinctions, such as that between arbitration and mediation. Interesting and illustrative, this is a book every thinking sports fan should read. (10 b&w illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: April 20, 1998
ISBN: 1-56639-599-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Temple Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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