Spring 2024 Book Reviews
(To make it easy for you to buy any of these books if you are interested, I made each image linked to buying the book right on amazon.com or bookshop.org. I do get a commission if you use the links in this post.)
By Terry Pluto
Simon and Schuster (1990)
The year was 1990, and the American Basketball Association was long-ago history, with its four strongest franchises (Denver, San Antonio, Indiana and New Jersey) having merged into the National Basketball Association 14 years earlier. The stories from the league’s near decade of existence (1967-76) were very much alive, though, and Terry Pluto was the perfect guy to put them together in a book.
Pluto was — and still is — a prolific sportswriter from Cleveland who gathered quotes, stats and anecdotes and turned them into 437 pages of fun and frolic for the reader.
I hadn’t spoken with Terry for many years — since I covered the Trail Blazers and he covered the Cavaliers — when I called him recently to ask him about “Loose Balls.” Turns out the book wasn’t his idea.
“It was from Jeff Newman, my editor at Simon and Schuster,” says Pluto, now 68. “He had grown up on Long Island watching the Nets play. The format was his idea, too. He really helped shape the book. A lot of the credit has to go to him.”
The ABA was an inventive, somewhat eccentric, very much financially troubled league that gave us the red, white and blue basketball, the 3-point shot, the Slam Dunk contest and some very good basketball that went largely unseen by the public because of a basically nonexistent national TV contract.
Pluto had never seen an ABA game and was too young to cover one as a journalist.
“But I loved the red, white and blue basketball,” he says. “My mom would buy me one every year during my childhood.”
Pluto interviewed 80 players, coaches, general managers, owners, broadcasters, sportswriters, team personnel, league executives and referees and came up with an array of juicy tales.
“I was covering the Cavs, so I had contacts, and it was pretty easy to find sources,” Pluto says. “People were thrilled to talk about the league. It was like, open the faucet and let them talk.”
The format is mainly quote after quote after quote, delivered through many different sources with many different stories to tell.
“I just put the characters together with what they said, bouncing back and forth,” Pluto says. “Some of the accounts were contradictory. Bob Costas called it ‘a bunch of Wild West tales,’ and given the fact that you had no idea what was true half the time, who knows?”
Readers get the word on the likes of Julius “Dr. J” Erving, George “Iceman” Gervin, Connie Hawkins, Spencer Haywood, Moses Malone, Artis Gilmore, George McGinnis, Larry Brown, Wilt Chamberlain (who coached in the ABA one season), George Mikan, Billy Cunningham, Rick Barry and Dan Issel. You’ll get insight from Costas (once the kid announcer for the Spirits of St. Louis), Pat Boone (once part owner of the Oakland Oaks), Hubie Brown (the ex-coach still calling NBA games at age 90) and Lenny Wilkens (Hall of Fame coach and player, though never in the ABA).
An anecdote provided by Costas about landing a job with the Spirits:
“One of the things they did during my interview was take me to meet (legendary broadcaster) Jack Buck. He was getting a haircut at the time. When I walked in, he was in the chair, his white mane being trimmed, and I was standing behind him. He was looking at me in the mirror and I was talking to the back of his head.
“ ‘Kid, how old are you?’ I said I was 22. He said, ‘I have ties older than you, kid.’
“That was the end of that encouraging exchange, in which I learned that the guy I had listened to from my father’s driveway in Long Island had some very old ties.”
You’ll read about characters and free spirits like Marvin Barnes and Fly Williams and Wendell Ladner, the latter who died in a plane crash at age 26 in 1975. Costas relates a fabled tale about Barnes:
“Once, he got the itinerary for a trip and noticed the flight was exactly one hour. Because of the change in time zones, our return flight would leave Louisville at 8 a.m. and arrive in St. Louis at 7:59.
“Marvin looked at that and announced, ‘I ain’t going on no Time Machine. I ain’t taking no flight that takes me back in time.’ ”
You’ll read about ball girls in bikinis working for the Miami Floridians (with a photo). You’ll get to know ABA legends such as Mel Daniels, Roger Brown, Louie Dampier, Larry Jones, Jimmy Jones, Byron Beck, Ralph Simpson, Johnny Neumann, Freddie Lewis, Mack Calvin, John Brisker and Charlie Williams, players who never made names for themselves in the NBA. Ever heard of Willis “Lefty” Thomas? He scored 39 points on 19-of-31 shooting to lead the Denver Larks to victory in their first ABA game. Ben Warley? He made 16 straight field goals and scored 43 points in a game for the Anaheim Amigos the first season. Stew Johnson? In 1970-71 he set the league scoring record with 62 points for Pittsburgh.
Two of Pluto’s best sources were former Trail Blazer guards Steve Jones and Dave Twardzik, who conveyed information and stories that helped give the book meat and merriment.
In the end, the ABA stole enough of the NBA’s good players that it forced a merger. It’s too bad. Competition beats a monopoly any day.
Pluto, who has written more than 30 books, says “Loose Balls” still sells about 2,000 copies a year. He estimates it has sold more than 70,000 copies in its lifetime.
“I knew the basketball hardcore might like it, but I had no idea it would have legs like it has,” he says. “It’s gratifying to see people still care about it. I’m glad any book I wrote is around for more than five minutes.”
The author says “Loose Balls” has gone through “at least five options to be made into something — a documentary, a movie, a mini-series. It has never gone beyond that. Maybe one day.”
The book is story-telling at its best. I enjoyed reading it today as much as I did shortly after it was published. I recommend it highly. It deserves its place on any bookshelf.
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It’s Hard for Me to Live With Me
By Rex Chapman with Seth Davis
Simon & Schuster (2024)
This autobiographical look at former NBA guard and current “X” influencer Rex Chapman is short and to the point. If it’s not a tell-all look at his mercurial life, it’s a tell-a-lot. It’s a confessional, and Chapman has a lot to confess.
For those too young to remember, Chapman, now 56, was a high-flying, athletic-as-heck 6-4 shooting guard, mostly for the Hornets, Bullets and Suns, from 1988-2000. He was an excellent scorer, 3-point shooter and dunker who was fun to watch, but it seemed like he was always injured.
Through his NBA career, his addictions included gambling and opioids, the latter of which certainly contributed to his retirement at age 32. He also dealt with depression, ADD and a not-great relationship with his father, Wayne, who played professionally in the ABA and coached Kentucky Wesleyan to the NCAA Division II championships in 1990.
Chapman, who is white, experienced racism growing up in Kentucky. His girlfriend for several years was black, and people around him — including his parents — weren’t accepting. Some of the book focuses on his disdain for racism, including those who compared his basketball abilities to those of white players, when more apt comparisons would be to those of blacks. (He is correct about that.)
Rex confesses to receiving under-the-table payments from boosters at the University of Kentucky, where his coach, Eddie Sutton, is a “serious” alcoholic. (One night while working out at the school’s arena, he and a teammate found Sutton passed out on the floor outside his office.) Rex played two seasons with the Wildcats, then was off to the NBA, where temptations were as plentiful as the money he was making.
Through his injuries, Chapman developed a dependency to OxyContin and Vicodin. His time at the racetrack and off-track betting sites began to impact time spent with his wife and four young children.
Once retired from playing, Rex’s life spiraled downward. He blew through millions of dollars, gambling and buying drugs, forcing him to live for a while out of his car. A shoplifting conviction — he was stealing computers from Apple — landed him a mug shot that went viral, though he avoided prison time by going through detox.
Quibbles: No photos, Rex? Just a few would have been nice. The entire story is told in first person/present tense, which makes for a conversational tone but is confusing at times. And your dissing of books with the “Book Club” gag on your podcast — but you want people to read yours?
I have followed Chapman on X (formerly Twitter) for several years, discovering him through his “block or charge” postings of humorous videos. It has given him a second “career” with streaming shows, which has at least helped him make it through life, paycheck to paycheck.
Rex’s story is compelling but wearying to read; can’t imagine how taxing it has been to live. Good for him for throwing all of his transgressions onto the table. Medical marijuana, he writes, helps him get through life these days. It has been about survival, and this reader is left wishing him the best as he negotiates his future.
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The Occasionally Accurate Annals of Football
By Dan Patrick and Joel Cohen
BenBella Books (2023)
I was given this book by my nephew for Christmas. A quick look told me I probably wouldn’t be interested in it. A more lengthy read told me I was wrong.
Patrick, the nationally acclaimed sportswriter with a quick wit and tongue, takes a whimsical, satirical look at football’s history. Will Ferrell pens a blurb; Adam Sandler writes the foreword, the latter having nothing to do with the book itself. That tells you something about the seriousness of this enterprise.
Actually, Patrick turns Conan O’Brien on us, calling on 10 writers (credited at book’s end as “contributors”) to deliver funny lines used all throughout the book. Maybe “Dirty Dan” isn’t the true genius behind this madness. Maybe it is Cohen, a screenwriter who has worked on projects such as “Toy Story” and “Garfield: The Movie.”
A lot of it is clever, and funny.
An example: The sub-title for the introduction, “ ‘Baseball can suck it.’ — Maya Angelou (we think).”
An example of the book’s prose, citing the worst game ever:
“Internet consensus points to November 4, 1979, when the Seahawks lost to the Rams 24-0, with Seattle totaling minus-7 yards for the game. That’s negative yards, the golf equivalent of hitting your tee shot off your golf cart and killing your caddy.
“On top of the low quality play on the field, the concessions guys had mistakenly switched the ketchup and mustard in the pump containers, every beer vendor had what doctors call ‘chemical warfare body odor,’ and a grizzly bear was loose in section RR, mistaking red-faced, embarrassed Seattle fans for salmon. It was, by all accounts, a bad game.”
Another example, on former Chiefs great Tony Gonzalez: “He played 270 games and lost only two fumbles in 1,327 touches. He wasn’t as sure-handed in his personal life, though, and has, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, misplaced his car keys 36 times in just 831 touches. They’re usually on his dresser but have also been in his pockets, leading to them going into the washing machine, requiring new batteries in the fob.”
There are charts and drawings and pokes at some of football’s mostly ill-fated pro leagues (USFL, WFL, UFL, AAF, XFL) and even lots of pokes at the unpokable Tom Brady. Lions fans may not appreciate the many, many jabs at the franchise’s horrendous record of success through the years (the book was published in 2023, not quite in time for Detroit’s near-run for the roses this season).
I got some chuckles, and a parcel of knowledge, from this book. If you like football, and witty humor, it might be for you.
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Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe
By David Maraniss
Simon and Schuster (2022)
I have two of Maraniss’ previous books: “Rome 1960,” about the Summer Olympic Games that year, and “When Pride Still Mattered,” the Vince Lombardi story. Like the other two, this one is a gem.
There were at least two biographies written previously about Jim Thorpe, the Native American voted America’s greatest all-around athlete of the first half-century of the 1900s. I can’t imagine any were more complete, well-documented, well-researched and well-written as Maraniss’ masterpiece.
The book is long — 574 pages — and detailed almost to a fault. The reader probably doesn’t need to know as much about Richard Henry Pratt, founder and superintendent at Carlisle Indian School, as the author lays out. Or about all of the distant relatives and teachers and friends and colleagues who gain more than mention. But Maraniss isn’t going to leave a stone unturned as he goes about dispelling myths about the life of the legendary athlete, or exposing racist acts that befell not just Thorpe but Native Americans in general in the years before and during Thorpe’s life.
The Oklahoma native emerged from the Sac and Fox Nation as double gold track and field medalist at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics in both the pentathlon (seven events) and decathlon (10 events). Thorpe’s brilliance as a two-way back thrust Carlisle into the limelight as a national power in college football from 1908-12. He later played six years of Major League Baseball and eight years as the first star of the NFL.
In 1913, however, Thorpe was stripped of his gold medals — and trophies awarded to him by the king of Sweden — by the International Olympic Committee for playing two summers of minor league professional baseball while at Carlisle.
There is plenty of information about Thorpe’s private life, which included three wives, seven children and problems with alcohol and finances as the years went on. He did some coaching and had bit parts in movies and snuck in all the hunting and fishing that life would allow.
The author reveals Pop Warner, Thorpe’s football coach at Carlisle considered through history as one of the sport’s most important pioneers, as a fraud. Maraniss proves that Warner, who claimed he knew nothing of Thorpe’s participation in minor league baseball while at Carlisle, was a liar. And that Avery Brundage, Thorpe’s U.S. pentathlon/decathlon teammate at Stockholm and for 20 years the IOC president, was the major impediment in the movement to get Thorpe’s gold medals reinstated. (And, by the way, that Brundage was in effect pro-Nazi, in cahoots with Hitler as Germany played host to the 1936 Olympics and the U.S. declined to boycott.)
For years, every bid — many of them by Thorpe’s descendants — failed. In July of 2022, shortly after this book was published, the IOC announced it would reinstate Thorpe’s gold medals.
R.I.P, big Jim. Well-done, Mr. Maraniss.
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Readers: what are your thoughts? I would love to hear them in the comments below. On the comments entry screen, only your name is required, your email address and website are optional, and may be left blank.
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