Books, books and more books …
Some of you may remember the sports book review columns I wrote periodically for the Portland Tribune. I’d like to bring back that feature occasionally on the “Kerry Eggers” website.
Mind you, I’m not recommending all of these books to read. Some of them I didn’t enjoy. Some are new books; others I discovered well after they were written.
Here goes …
“Belichick”
By Ian O’Connor
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
I’ve never done one, but writing an unauthorized biography must be difficult in one way, yet easy in another.
Getting potential sources to talk can be problematic, especially if the book subject has told them not to cooperate. On the other hand, you’re not bound by any guidelines set down by the subject. And you don’t need permission to get anything into the book that you want to.
Ian O’Connor does a marvelous job working within the parameters in this thorough tome about New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. O’Connor pulls no punches in describing the various layers of the man who many believe to be the greatest coach in NFL history, and one of the most polarizing.
Using both anonymous and on-the-record sources, O’Connor describes the humble beginnings of the son of a career assistant coach — Steve Belichick worked 34 seasons at Navy — to his run to becoming one of the most powerful men in pro football. As he rose to power, Bill decided he didn’t like the media attention that goes with the job and acted accordingly.
Writes O’Connor: “He could be brutally robotic, or robotically brutal, in his (press conferences) ... Belichick created this character, and every time he stepped to the podium, he was an actor stepping on stage in his costume. Belichick as Quasimodo, his hunchback cloaked by a hoodie. This is why people were sometimes surprised when they encountered Belichick ... and found the normal, somewhat engaging human being his friends knew.”
The public doesn’t see that side often, but O’Connor offers a fair, balanced look at both sides of the man’s behavioral patterns along with strong evidence that he approaches genius status as a coach. There is plenty of Bill Parcells, a bucket load of Tom Brady and a remarkable amount of depth of information on Belichick, though he chose not to cooperate with the author’s endeavor.
One chapter late in the book begins with this: “Is Belichick really as big a prick as he seems?”
The readers may draw their own conclusions. I have mine, and nothing I read over O’Connor’s 450 pages changes my mind. I’ll go along with the opinion of Syracuse professor Robert Thompson, who is quoted in the book this way: “My guess is if we’re going to wait for people to say what a great guy Bill Belichick is, what a warm human being he is, we might have to wait for people to write his eulogy.”
Belichick, it seems, would have it no other way.
•
“Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player”
By Jeremy Beer
University of Nebraska Press
I very much enjoyed this look at a great player who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976 — yet few people today know his name. I do. I’m a bit of an aficionado of the Negro Leagues (Cool Papa Bell is my man), so I’d heard of Charleston, but knew nothing about his story.
The book is extremely well-researched, which is important given that Charleston’s long playing career ended in 1940 and there’s nobody around today who can talk about him. The author takes the reader back to Charleston’s beginnings as a young boy growing up in Indianapolis after the turn of the 20th century. Through 340 pages, we learn about the career of one of the greatest black players prior to major league baseball’s desegregation in 1947.
“Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Tris Speaker rolled into one,” said the legendary Buck O’Neil about Charleston, who could hit and run like Cobb, hit for power like Ruth and play center field like Speaker. Charleston fared well in exhibition games played against white major leaguers through his career and was well-respected by some of the MLB’s greatest stars of that era.
Beer won me over with an even-keel approach to Charleston, who had personal issues and, as a young player, an affinity for fisticuffs on the diamond. Most of his peers (Cobb, Ruth for two) had their foibles as well. Charleston never qualified for sainthood, but he made immeasurable contributions as a player and, in his later years, as a manager before dying in 1954 at age 57.
The book also is an inside look at what the Negro Leagues were about, what indignities the players suffered, but also what great joy they experienced playing the game they loved. Beer’s attention to detail leaves the reader well-served.
•
“The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created”
By Jane Leavy
HarperCollins
Nearly two dozen books have been written about “The Great Bambino.” No need for another.
Leavy’s treatise about baseball’s most hallowed slugger, 70 years after his death from cancer at age 53, is fulfilling in every way. The author explores every nook and cranny of Ruth’s controversial life, unearthing sources that provide an extra glimpse of a somehow simple, yet complicated sports hero.
The barnstorming tour with Lou Gehrig after Ruth’s remarkable 1927 season (the “Bustin’ Babes vs. the Larrupin’ Lous”) provides the book’s framework, but the author also takes the reader through Ruth’s life, from birth to death. We learn, among many other things, of the divorce of Ruth’s parents when he was 11, his childhood days at St. Mary’s Industrial School, his party-hearty lifestyle (before, during and after his two marriages), his love of children (authentic), his “Called Shot” in the 1932 World Series (questionable) and the truth about the Baby Ruth candy bar (scandalous, sort of). Also, all you want to know, and more, about his manager, Christy Walsh, considered the first-ever sports agent.
A bonus: Leavy is a wordsmith who turns a phrase nicely.
On the sometimes out-of-control idolation of fans during exhibition games on a barnstorming tour: “The stampede began in the middle of the ninth. In the mayhem, bats, balls, certainty and safety disappeared.”
Of a 29-inch Babe Ruth doll that was marketed in the late ‘20s: “(It was) from the Sterling Doll Company that resembled a demented Howdy Doody with blue eyes, plucked eyebrows, dimples and a serious overbite.”
This book took me the better part of three weeks to finish; it was well worth the time.
•
“Overtime: Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines at the Crossroads of College Football”
By John Bacon
William Morrow
John Bacon is the authority on Michigan football, with four previous books on Wolverine and Big Ten football, including one with legendary coach Bo Schembechler. He wrote this one because of his unprecedented access to Harbaugh and his coaching family, which includes father Jack and brother John, the latter head coach of the Baltimore Ravens.
Jim Harbaugh is a compelling figure, and the segments regarding him and his family are interesting and at times revealing. Harbaugh also is a complex character — polarizing to those who resent his arrogance, endearing to those rooting for him and his team, especially those who regard him as the messiah for “Big Blue.” Bacon presents both sides but accentuates the side of the man who believes in fair play and places a strong emphasis on academics.
The other part of the book is a synopsis of Michigan’s 2018 season, delivered (mostly) in alternating chapters. Bacon entered the writing process hoping Michigan would rebound from a disappointing 8-5 campaign in 2017. The Wolverines cooperated with a 10-1 start before getting flogged by nemesis Ohio State 62-39 in their final regular-season game, followed by a 41-15 loss to Florida in the Peach Bowl.
I appreciated the insight to Harbaugh and the historical perspective into one of college football’s storied programs. I had little interest, however, in the week-by-week game reports through the 2018 season, nor in Bacon’s rationalization of the unseemly side of the coach’s personality. He sacrificed accuracy for access, which is too bad.
•
“The League: How Five Rivals Created the NFL and Launched a Sports Empire”
By John Eisenberg
Basic Books
Eisenberg bases his story arounds the five central figures in the NFL’s beginning a century ago — George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, Bert Bell and Art Rooney. All were owners and key figures in the difficult embryonic stages of what has become the most successful sports league in America.
The author profiles each of the five owners who were the guiding lights of the early years of the NFL, when college football reigned supreme and fans considered pro football second rate. Eisenberg takes us through all the difficult years from the beginning in 1920 and effectively ends with the epic 1958 NFL championship game, won by the Baltimore Colts over the New York Giants in overtime.
There were times when it didn’t look like the league would make it, all the way up through the late 1940s, when the All-America Football Conference gave the NFL all it could handle before folding after a four-year run. Three of the AAFC teams were incorporated into the NFL — the Colts, Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers.
The five rivals had different goals and their teams achieved different levels of success on the field, but together they set the tone for everything that happened through the NFL’s first 30-some years.
“They were the most unique set of men in American sports history,” Bell’s son, Upton, is quoted as saying. “They argued and fought like crazy, but the air was always cleared the next day. Through it all, they developed respect for each other and became the closest of friends."
Eisenberg dug up stories from the early years that make you laugh. In 1938, Pittsburgh Pirates player-head coach Johnny Blood forgot to show up for a game. Why was he coach? He was good company at the racetrack for owner Rooney.
In 1941, Rooney hired Aldo “Buff” Donelli as head coach. Donelli continued to coach at Duquesne, too, through that season, until both Pittsburgh — by then known as the Steelers — and the college team had games on the same day. Donelli chose to coach Duquesne, which served as his resignation from the Steelers.
In 1939, Marshall had a conversation with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover about the commissioner’s job. Then Halas tried to hire Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward for the job. Ward turned Halas down, saying he “could not overlook the splendid opportunities in my position with the Chicago Tribune.”
Times have changed a little, folks. The NFL hasn’t come to me with any job offers of late.
I noted, too, that Eisenberg quotes World War II naval commander Thomas Hamilton as saying football was “the nearest thing to actual war.” Try telling that to Scott Barnes and Rob Mullens.
Another amazing fact from the book: Halas enlisted in the Navy in 1942 and joined the Seventh Fleet supporting General Douglas MacArthur in the South Pacific — at age 47!
Eisenberg’s book is a treasure trove of such things. I enjoyed it much more than I expected to.
•
“Warren Spahn: A Biography of the Legendary Lefty”
By Lew Freedman
Sports Publishing
I read this because Spahn was my first boyhood sports hero. He died in 2003, and the author did little in the way of interviews with remaining members of Spahn’s family, friends, teammates or opponents.
Freedman pieced together the information of the legendary Boston and Milwaukee Braves pitcher — the winningest left-handed pitcher ever with 363 victories from 1946-65 — using quotes and information from newspaper articles and books.
Given that there were three previous biographies written on Spahn, this one seemed redundant, and unnecessary.
Readers: what have you been reading during the pandemic? Share what you have been reading in the comments below.
Reach out to Kerry Eggers here.
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