#35– We Would Have Played for Nothing (various)

The count for 50 continues, although regular posting has not. Anyway, the good news is that I have several books to list. This book is a second installment in the “Baseball Oral History Project”. I read and reviewed the first, which was called “The Only Game In Town”. In this volume, baseball players from the ’50s and ’60s discuss their game, life and times.

I didn’t find this volume as interesting. As with the first book, the interviewers talked with a handful of stars and minor stars. However, with the ’50s and ’60s, there’s not the same distance from the past. The title of this book aside, baseball players were starting to make insane money by the time of the last players in the book. Once baseball was integrated, which was before these players, it was integrated. Once baseball spread to California, it ceased to be a northeastern game as it had before. Frankly, 1950s and 1960s baseball isn’t THAT horribly different from today. And accordingly, it’s not all that interesting.

I’d much rather read stories about guys who sharpened their spikes to kick people, fought with fans and umpires, couldn’t write their own names, and generally were one step above hit men in the social hierarchy. Unfortunately, most of those guys are dead, but that book was already written… it’s called “The Glory of Their Times”, and I need to read it.

Joe

#32 Rich Tradition by Tom Leach

I picked this book up at Kroger, which is something of an oddity for me. Leach, the play-by-play voice of the Wildcats, chronicles the uptick in the fortunes of UK football, as led by Rich Brooks. The book was an interesting review of the last six years (wow, this really is his 7th year) of the life and (usually) hard times of UK football. While Brooks seems destined like Moses to not journey to the promised land of football greatness, he has done a fair job of setting the table for those to follow.

Extra props to Leach for a game-by-game review of all six seasons, including the first three, which I generally spent trying to forget that there was UK football, much less that I cared about it. The book is enjoyable, if a bit expensive for a paperback.

Joe

#31- Meat Market by Bruce Feldman

Not a chronicle of slaughterhouses or pornography, this book is about college football recruiting.

Feldman spent a year following Ed Orgeron, then coach of the Ole Miss Rebels, through the gamut of recruiting experiences. We go from Orgeron challenging his players to a fight, to him watching illegal rooster fights, to him recruiting some of the guys who have made Ole Miss a great team over the last two years. Of course, Orgeron didn’t survive to see that happen. Not literally. He’s alive, he’s just a defensive line coach at Tennessee. When his players didn’t deliver overnight, Coach O got canned. Probably best for everybody, as he certainly was not a master strategist or tactitian. That said, Orgeron is/was a tireless recruiter, and a guy who seems to love the thrill of the hunt as much as the victory of the catch.

This was a very interesting book. It chronicled the insane inner working of a college football program, the immaturity of young athletes, and the pressure cooker of SEC football. It told all about a Cajun wildman and his quest for glory, and the bedraggled assistant coaches, who sounded about as confused as I am on a normal day in my work. I liked it, and would recommend this one. It’s a quick read and is rather educational.

Joe

Book #28- The Only Game in Town

The Only Game in Town is an oral history of 1930s-1940s baseball, edited by former commissioner Fay Vincent. The book talks with around a dozen players– some great, the other good, about their reminiscences of major league baseball. The high point of the book is unquestionably the chapter about Buck O’Neil. O’Neil, who sadly passed away recently, was a great American. An African-American, deprived of the chance to ever play major league baseball, Buck O’Neil instead spent his life as the great ambassador of the Negro Leagues. He was, as they say, strong enough not to hate. Instead, he was a delight– funny, poignant, always worth listening to, whether on Ken Burns’s excellent “Baseball” series or in this book.

The other players have some good stories as well. Bob Feller talks about his World War II experiences, Dom DiMaggio speaks about living in the shadow of his brother, Joe, and generally, everybody has a Ted Williams story or three.

If you’re a baseball fan, it’s a nice read. If you’re not, search of Buck O’Neil’s autobiography or Joe Posnanski’s “The Soul of Baseball”, a story of his year traveling with and chronicling an aging O’Neil. Those are worth reading for anybody and everybody. It’s beecause they are stories about adversity and life, and baseball sometimes just happens to pop up. On the other hand, this book is mostly about baseball.

Book 26- Bragging Rights by Richard Ernsberger

Who would read a nine year old book chronicling a season of SEC football? Well, I would.

Ernsberger, who wrote for Newsweek, decided to chronicle the 1999 SEC football season. He has good stories of gameday atmosphere, recruiting chicanery, boosters manipulating whole universities to try to win another football game or two, and coaches eating, sleeping and drinking football.

Ernsberger’s book does a nice job of chronicling the energy that goes in to making SEC football the best college football in the nation, year in and year out. The 1999 season ended with Alabama winning the SEC championship. After the next season, Mike Dubose, their coach, was fired. It’s up and down and back up again, and it’s a game played by serious players, coaches, and boosters.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to find this book, but if you stumble on it for a couple dollars like I did, you might get some cheap entertainment.

Book #22- God Save the Fan by Will Leitch

To summarize– Irreverant discussion of sports and life. Leitch begins with the epic story of how Michael Vick was busy infecting some woman with STDs and meanwhile seeking treatment and testing under the worst pseudonym ever, Ron Mexico. It’s all uphill from there. Leitch hates ESPN, and writes a wonderfully brain numbing column about watching 24 consecutive hours of ESPN programing. Like the documentary filmmaker in “Super Size Me”, the results he elicits are horrifying.

Most instruing to me, Leitch had an incredibly thoughtful chapter about the knee-jerk reaction against athletes who invoke God or Jesus Christ after some sporting triumph. I was never totally comfortable with this myself, but Leitch articulates the issue more clearly than anyone else I’ve read or heard from.

I enjoyed this book, and I like Leitch’s underlying purpose of proving that covering sports shouldn’t be reserved for the deigned credentialled few. And obviously, I dig blogs, so we’re coming from kind of the same place, in that not at all way. The writing was a bit uneven here, but it was consistently funny and amusing. Nice book, and I hope to continue reading Will’s musings.

Joe

Book 18- Hello Everybody, This is Cawood Ledford by Cawood Ledford

Sports on the radio is one of those concepts that people either get or they don’t get. I get it. Love it. One of the best things about XM radio is being able to be out on a work trip on a summer afternoon and to dial in baseball from Chicago or New York or L.A. or wherever, and for an inning or two or three, just be able to drink it in. I like radio sports so much I amazed myself by listening to an entire round of golf at The Masters last year. And I don’t even PLAY golf.

Anyway, if there were a Mount Rushmore of radio, and maybe just of people in Kentucky, Cawood Leford would be on it. Cawood managed to be true to his Eastern Kentucky roots, but still exuded class and dignity in his radio work. He spent 39 years calling Kentucky basketball and football, and also took great pleasure in announcing numerous Kentucky Derbies.

His book is a very quick read, thin on his personal life and thick with remembrances of coaches and athletes of days past. There are some interesting moments, such as learning that Louisville tried to steal Cawood away in the early 1970s, or that after an argument with Charlie Bradshaw, Cawood feared that he would be fired from UK radio. Mostly, the book is Cawood’s attempt at putting his years behind the microphone into some sort of overall perspective. Unfortunately, there is little about announcing here. Like the craftsman he was, Cawood gave away few secrets.

An interesting supplement to the book are a couple of notes which Tom Leach, current UK broadcaster, has posted on his web page. These notes are critiques that Cawood sent Leach after he retired, on Leach’s request. The writing is direct and honest, and for every bit of wisdom he provided, it’s funny to note that both Cawood and Leach do exactly what he says to do. This is what is missing in Cawood’s book- a little bit of hints on the technique that made Cawood so fluid.

Anyway, I also should reveal that I met Cawood Ledford in 1998, six years after he retired, and a few years before he died. I was at the Harlan National Guard Armory to hear football coach Hal Mumme speak, and I walked in the door, and there, standing by the hospitality table covered with name tags was Cawood Ledford. I picked up a tag and filled my name in. “This guy,” I said to the lady at the table, “probably doesn’t need a tag.” Cawood smiled at that.

Joe

#15 Run It And Let’s Get the Hell Out of Here- Jonathan Rand

Subtitled, the comment of the Doctor who performed my colonoscopy.

Alright, alright. I’ll let it die.

Actual subtitle is “The 100 Best Plays in Pro Football History”

I bought this book because it was cheap and looked easy to read. It was. Jonathan Rand does 2-3 page chapters on his 100 most memorable pro football plays. Out of the 100, I remembered maybe 20 of them. I’m not a giant NFL fan. But it was a fun way to remember the ones I do recall, and to learn about some of the other ones. It also was a good antidote to the other two books I’m working on now, about the Bible and U.S. Presidential speechwriters.

There is plenty more to come. I got a memoir from a Southern man who talks about nearly being killed trying to reclaim the 2 1/2 acres which his father was schemed out of, and which made up his entire inheritance. I got a newish book on Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin, who is a wonderful writer, and Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation.” There’s another Springsteen book, and a biography of Cawood Ledford, king of basketball radio announcers. I will get to 50 new books in 2009. Maybe.

Joe

#14 Basketball Pitino Style by Chris Cameron

This was a nice find in a used book store. It’s the story of a down on its luck dynastic basketball program hiring a well regarded Italian outsider head coach, who used a blend of charisma (his) and heart (his players) to turn one of the least talented teams in the history of Kentucky basketball into one of the most entertaining.

Kentucky’s 2010 season may end up looking a lot like its 1990 season, which is the subject of this book. John Calipari might be THE ANSWER in the way that Rick Pitino was THE ANSWER. But one thing is sure. The 1990 bunch was a special one. Kentucky had eight scholarship players, none over 6′7″, and none of particular athletic talent. But they had a coaching staff with Messrs Pitino, Smith and Donovan, and a style of play built on three-point shooting and the “mother-in-law” full court press. 14-14 is not a record which generally inspires the UK faithful, but those were different times.

And moving forward, they remain different times. I certainly hope Calipari brings in a better than 14-14 record. But more than that, I hope that he imprints his stamp on Kentucky basketball, and brings back excitement to a program for which it has long since been missing.

This book was very fun, and did make me hope that the bringing Pitino back to Lexington rumors that were circulating as I read it might be true. So they weren’t. Onward and upward, and hopefully next year I can review Basketball Calipari Style.

Joe

Book #10 of the 50 for 2009

10. Portrait of the Writer as a Young Fan by Brian Weinberg

This was a pure impulse buy on a recent book buying spree (far better than a book burning spree… unless you’re cold).
Weinberg was 23 or so in 1996 when UK won its first basketball championship in 18 years (and in my lifetime, if you’re keeping score). He decided to write about it.

Weinberg’s book is pretty simple. He talks basically about two things: that explosive 1996 UK team and its march to the championship and his group of obsessive UK fan friends. Of course, you can’t live in Kentucky and not have some obsessive UK fan friends, so that’s really nothing new. And the basketball isn’t painted particularly well in here.

I somewhat enjoyed the book because it brought back memories of the glory days of probably the best college basketball team I remember. That said, this is a pretty thin book and doesn’t really have much to say. I think I paid about $5 for it. It might be worth a read at that price.

Joe