Sportswriter Pluto (Falling from Grace, 1995, etc.) movingly reveals the substance of a mythic bond between men and a game, a team and a city—and thus lays bare how present-day pro football has surrendered its soul. During the late 1940s and early '50s, the Cleveland Browns were the class of pro football. Coached by the brilliant martinet Paul Brown (for whom the team is named), the Browns streaked to several AAFC and NFL championships. By the dawn of the 1960s, however, some felt that the game had passed Brown by, among them the brash young man from Brooklyn named Art Modell who, in 1961, bought the team. After the '62 season, Modell ``retired'' Brown and hired one of his protÇgÇs, Blanton Collier. It was a move Pluto calls ``the best football decision Art Modell ever made.'' He worked with essentially the same raw material Brown had: quarterback-cum-math-Ph.D.-candidate Frank Ryan; aged legend Lou ``the Toe'' Groza; and running back Jim Brown, reckoned by many to be the greatest player ever; as well as several prominent rookies. Collier urged, cajoled, and otherwise motivated the Browns to a stunning season-capping 270 rout of the Baltimore Colts in the NFL Championship Game. Pluto recounts the giddy joys of training camp, the easy camaraderie among players and between the players and their fast-living owner. Pluto also notes that football was at the time not the lucrative profession it is today (at least not for the players) and reveals the subtle racism that was, and continues to be, a problem hounding the teams of the NFL. Today, the Browns play in another city (ironically, Baltimore), and as a result, Modell has gone from civic hero to pariah. Still, for Clevelanders, the 1964 championship will remain one of their most cherished memories. Thanks to Pluto, that moment has been lovingly preserved.
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-82246-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
The athletes and their story deserve better.
An American doctor covers the trials of the men who bioengineered East Germany’s champion swim teams.
Ungerleider, a sports doctor and consultant who obviously knows his way around international athletics, sets out to document the prosecution of the East German officials responsible for plying hundreds of teenage athletes with steroids during the cold war. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, the East German state developed a program of “supportive measures”—a euphemism for drug and doping treatments—that were used to turn promising teenagers into überathletes who dominated Olympic and international competitions. In addition to broad backs and low swim times, however, the drugs also led to exaggerated male sexual characteristics in women, devastating psychological traumas, serious long-term health problems, and a rash of birth defects. Now, led by Professor Werner Franke, a crusading scientist, and Brigitte Berendonk, a former swimmer, many of the doped athletes are bringing civil and criminal suits against the doctors and trainers who gave them the little blue pills in the first place. Ungerleider has a great story: a tragedy with ties to the Holocaust, communism, nationalism, science, justice, feminism, and the other epic themes of the 20th century. Unfortunately he botches it terribly, and the end result is little more than an overblown, repetitive magazine article with no apparent organizational principle and writing so bad one wonders if it was just shoddily translated from German. The legal context of the trials is never explained, the narrative is nearly impossible to follow, and even the medical science dissolves into static. It makes things only worse that the babble is interspersed with snippets that strive for the heroic and fall miserably short.
The athletes and their story deserve better.Pub Date: July 20, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26977-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
Football star Joe Don Looney—an All-American running back in the early 1960's—had, according to Oklahoma attorney Clark, ``the tools to be the next Jim Brown.'' But as Clark shows in this smoothly written, riveting biography, Looney's brand of nonconformity and manic temperament was not readily accommodated 30 years ago. An early advocate of weightlifting and steroids for football training, Looney was also ahead of his time in his devotion to yoga and meditation. Even so, he indulged in drinking and brawling that, despite his prowess as a runner and punter, got him dismissed from several secondary schools. Arriving in 1962 at the University of Oklahoma, Looney—a ``fun-loving reckless hell-raiser'' who was also a ``melancholy existentialist''—clashed with Coach Bud Wilkinson, whose football program still ``had a distinctive military air to it.'' Looney's penchant for guns and fighting, his petulant refusals to practice, and his bridling against becoming ``a mindless grunt'' led to his dismissal from the team—but his extraordinary potential and on-field record convinced the New York Giants to draft him. Looney balked at the pro regimen, however, and was soon traded to the Baltimore Colts, where his ``performances were awesome.'' But after a series of disturbing incidents— including his arrest for kicking in a neighbor's door—he was traded again. Nagging injuries, lack of interest in playing, and further off-the-field difficulties pushed Looney out of football by 1967. A brief stint in Vietnam renewed his interest in Buddhism but also led him to marijuana and psychedelic drugs, and his life became one of messy relationships and marital problems, of drifting to India, Peru, and back to Texas—although, before his death in 1988 in a motorcycle accident, he found some peace as a disciple of the mystic Muktananda. A well-researched, in-depth study of a most unusual athlete: one of the best—and most fascinating—sports bios in years. (Sixteen-page photo insert—not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-07870-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993
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