Shaking a fist at the sports establishment may work online, but Leitch’s frequently tedious, only periodically amusing...
Sports Rants 101, from the founder of the snarky blog Deadspin.com.
Freelance writer Leitch brings his Deadspin vibe offline in a collection of essays breathlessly spewing vitriol about everything that bothers him regarding the games he ostensibly loves. Former big-league pitcher/racist John Rocker is a jerk! The sports media is annoying! Owners are money-grubbing a-holes! Sure, once every few chapters he has something nice to say—he has a soft spot for Washington Wizards goofball Gilbert Arenas, for instance—but for the most part he barrages the reader with anger and negativity. Approximately 90 percent of the book is a tongue-not-quite-far-enough-in-cheek dissection of everything that’s broken in big-time sports, but Leitch isn’t particularly eloquent when it comes to talking about what he likes. If the players are such prima donnas, and the owners are so greedy, and the media constantly gets on his nerves, why does he even pay attention? Leitch’s disdain for ESPN is especially tiresome. It’s quite all right to discuss how much he hates practically all of the network’s talking heads—he’s entitled to his opinion—but whether this merits 50-plus pages is seriously questionable. The entire book reads like a blog, and blogs are time-sensitive to the point of being disposable within days. So what does that tell you?
Shaking a fist at the sports establishment may work online, but Leitch’s frequently tedious, only periodically amusing manifesto loses something in its translation to the page.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-135178-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A close-up look at the championship season of a girls' high school basketball team that only the team's members and their families will find compelling. Adolescence is inherently hyperbolic, sportswriting is sometimes not far behind, and Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Blais (The Heart Is an Instrument, 1992) nearly outdistances both as she applies the celebrity biography touch to a subject that is diminished by being so inflated. This is unfortunate, because the Lady Hurricanes of Amherst, Mass., seem a likeable lot who worked hard to capture the 199293 state championship. Co-captains Jamila Wideman (who received several honors, including selection by USA Today as a ``first team all-American'') and Jen Pariseau (who also earned the attention of college sports recruiters) are particularly noteworthy, and each girl makes her own contribution. When Blais discusses actual games, she captures some of the excitement these players must have felt, but she is more interested in the girls as people—even when she cannot make them interesting. Many potentially illuminating anecdotes are related in only a gossipy manner: Jamila starting life in a hospital preemie ward, Sophie King nearly losing a leg to gangrene, and Jen offering her version of ``life's little instructions.'' We hear about not only Coach Ron Moyer but also about his mother. Settling for adoration without insight, Blais asks no questions about the impact of these experiences on the girls' development or their futures; she doesn't ask whether the goal of girls' teams should be to imitate boys' teams, with their unquestioning emphasis on winning, whatever the cost; in short, she ignores the issues that could have made this more than an inflated version of the New York Times Magazine article on which it is based. There might be an insightful book to be written on the subject of girls' basketball, but this isn't it. (First printing of 35,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-87113-572-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
An engaging and informative cultural history, on and off the gridiron.
A rich history of the rise of the National Football League from its virtual obscurity at its genesis in the 1920s to its position as an economic and cultural powerhouse today.
Former Baltimore Sun sportswriter Eisenberg (The Streak: Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken Jr., and Baseball's Most Historic Record, 2017, etc.) returns with the story of how five owners—George Halas, Bert Bell, George Preston Marshall, Art Rooney, and Tim Mara—refused to give up on the struggling league and lived to see (and cause) its current dominance. Thoroughly researched and gracefully told, the story begins with the background of each of the five, then moves chronologically through the early years of the league—struggles, controversies (among the most significant was the arrival of black players), adjustments (to radio and then TV)—to its full arrival in 1958, when 40 million people watched the Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the exciting championship game. As the author repeatedly points out, these five were fierce rivals, but they knew that to make the league survive and flourish, they could not destroy one another. So they compromised and changed rules to make the game more exciting; all would live to see the league’s vigorous health. (The final chapter deals with the deaths of each.) Although Eisenberg is admiring of the founders, he also recognizes—and highlights—their weaknesses. Marshall, for example, was a racist, the last to bring blacks onto his team, the Washington Redskins. Although the author provides some details about some key games (and iconic players like Red Grange, Marion Motley, and Sam Huff), the narrative is not a rehearsal of games but of the history of a game, a business, and five men who took a chance, lost money, and then found great success.
An engaging and informative cultural history, on and off the gridiron.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-465-04870-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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