A winning story of how the right owners, players and die-hard fans can create a championship team.
Wisnia (Fenway Park: The Centennial: 100 Years of Red Sox Baseball, 2011, etc.) proves that celebratory baseball writing need not be maudlin in his comprehensive account of the Boston Red Sox’s 2004 championship season, their first since the Woodrow Wilson administration.
The author explores the team’s early history and tradition of losing big games; in a chapter titled "Kings of Pain," we see how the front office’s bungles and tightfistedness have traditionally harmed the team. A chapter on the multiyear plan to revamp historic Fenway Park beginning in 2002 illustrates how management understood how a stadium's layout and design create memories and a game experience as indelible as the players on the field, as demonstrated by interviews with old-time fans from the 1950s and various "super fans" who explain the importance of sacrificing yourself "for the good of the team.” These stories are relatable and warm but not treacly, and chapters on the two years preceding the championship provide necessary background and context. After the "bitter and very crushing" end to the 2003 season, when their hated rivals, the New York Yankees, beat Boston to advance to the World Series, 31-year-old General Manager Theo Epstein created the new-era Red Sox, who were about "teamwork, respect for the game, and a burning desire to win.” He boldly shook up the roster by placing brilliant but maddening outfielder Manny Ramirez on waivers and trading the immensely popular shortstop Nomar Garciaparra in midseason. "Change didn't happen overnight,” writes Wisnia, “but when it came it came quick." The author goes on to raise some tantalizing what-if questions: Would the Sox have won the championship—or perhaps, how many would they have won?—if the proposed Manny-Ramirez–for–Alex-Rodriguez trade had gone through? And what if Nomar "Mr. Boston" Garciaparra had remained in Boston?
A winning story of how the right owners, players and die-hard fans can create a championship team.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-03163-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
Timed to come out just as he breaks the fabled Gehrig streak of 2,130 consecutive games played, this is the first adult bio of Cal Ripken Jr., written by freelancer Rosenfeld (Roger Maris: A Title to Fame, not reviewed). By and large, Baltimore Orioles shortstop Ripken is an all- American boy/man. Son of a major-league coach and manager, Ripken is a superb performer, an excellent defensive shortstop who is built (and hits) like a third baseman. A two-time American League MVP and multiple Gold Glove winner, he is also quiet, modest, likeable, and a good husband, son, and father. In short, Rip is the kind of guy you'd want your son to be or your daughter to marry. Unfortunately, people like that don't necessarily make for interesting biography, and so Rosenfeld is at something of a disadvantage. An authorized biography written with the cooperation of the family (but, significantly, without interviewing Cal Jr.), this is surprisingly honest in facing the negative side of Ripken's career, which mainly consists of questions about the Streak's effect on his hitting, the struggles that accompanied his last contract negotiation with the Orioles, and his reaction to his father's firing as the Orioles' manager in 1988. But the Streak is obviously the raison d'àtre for this book, and although he has done considerably more homework than such a volume would require, Rosenfeld's tome reads like a quickie cut-and-paste bio. The high- and lowlights of Ripken's career are here in numbing detail, filled out with quotes from teammates, opponents, and family members. The result is like reading 13 seasons' worth of old game stories from the Baltimore area papers. Too bad an Iron Man inspired such leaden prose.
Pub Date: Sept. 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13524-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
Who’d have thought it was possible to make professional football boring?
A self-congratulatory commercial for the NFL and the NFL Network disguised as an insider examination of America’s most popular sport.
Best known as a former ESPN SportsCenter stalwart, Eisen has been the face of the NFL Network since it launched in 2003. The first channel to focus on a single sport 24/7/365, the Network isn’t included in your typical basic cable package, thus it’s not included in your typical football fan’s life. This wouldn’t matter if it were an inherently interesting entity or if Eisen were more of an investigative reporter. But here he comes off as another wide-eyed fan. Only Eisen, for example, would tag as “classic” a meandering blab-fest featuring the CBS studio crew of Jim Nantz, Deion Sanders and Dan Marino. It’s one of many direct transcriptions of TV interviews that fail to translate to the page. The book’s best section is a collection of reprinted emails that Eisen received from players answering the question, “Do you have a ritual or superstition before every game?” Indianapolis Colts receiver Reggie Wayne waxes poetic about his unshakeable desire for pregame soup, while Cleveland Browns defensive back Gary Baxter craves Lay’s potato chips. If Eisen had followed this route throughout and focused more on the players as people—and less on the Network and mind-numbing NFL minutia—he might have had something special. As it’s presented, though, the book is a self-indulgent, mildly informative trip through the bowels of the NFL and cable television.
Who’d have thought it was possible to make professional football boring?Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-36978-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
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