Valuable background reading for anyone interested in sports activism.
A scholarly study of Black athletes’ protests in the 1960s and ’70s and their complex legacy.
Casual sports fans are likely familiar with Muhammad Ali’s activism and how track stars Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised Black Power fists on the medal podium at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. History professor Kaliss expands on those moments and explores how they were part of a larger effort among Black athletes and women to improve their status during the era, both within their sports and American society. A constant challenge among those protesters, the author shows, was determining how much to work with the system and how much to push against it. For instance, the Black Economic Union, led by star NFL running back Jim Brown from 1966 to 1973, provided financial support for individual Black businesses but paid little attention to systemic racism and ultimately fizzled. In 1969, 14 Black football players at the University of Wyoming were dismissed because of their work pressing for broader change. (The school formally apologized for its actions in 2019.) Forward movement, Kaliss observes, could only be achieved via half-measures—Billie Jean King, for instance, could only win better pay for women tennis pros by softening feminist rhetoric (and partnering with cigarette brand Virginia Slims). The tension between competing visions of progress played out vividly in Ali’s first championship bout with Joe Frazier, where, Kaliss writes, the two became proxies for different ideas of Black manhood and social protest. “Racial politics,” writes the author, “lay at the heart of the impassioned responses to the fight.” The text is well researched and engaging for an academic book. Indeed, a chapter on the ABA, a street-wise counterweight to the stuffier NBA, and its role as a precursor to the hip-hop era, deserves expansion into its own book.
Valuable background reading for anyone interested in sports activism.Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 9780252087066
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Univ. of Illinois
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
Everything about Sabathia is larger than life, yet he tells his story with honesty and humility.
One of the best pitchers of his generation—and often the only Black man on his team—shares an extraordinary life in baseball.
A high school star in several sports, Sabathia was being furiously recruited by both colleges and professional teams when the death of his grandmother, whose Social Security checks supported the family, meant that he couldn't go to college even with a full scholarship. He recounts how he learned he had been drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the first round over the PA system at his high school. In 2001, after three seasons in the minor leagues, Sabathia became the youngest player in MLB (age 20). His career took off from there, and in 2008, he signed with the New York Yankees for seven years and $161 million, at the time the largest contract ever for a pitcher. With the help of Vanity Fair contributor Smith, Sabathia tells the entertaining story of his 19 seasons on and off the field. The first 14 ran in tandem with a poorly hidden alcohol problem and a propensity for destructive bar brawls. His high school sweetheart, Amber, who became his wife and the mother of his children, did her best to help him manage his repressed fury and grief about the deaths of two beloved cousins and his father, but Sabathia pursued drinking with the same "till the end" mentality as everything else. Finally, a series of disasters led to a month of rehab in 2015. Leading a sober life was necessary, but it did not tame Sabathia's trademark feistiness. He continued to fiercely rile his opponents and foment the fighting spirit in his teammates until debilitating injuries to his knees and pitching arm led to his retirement in 2019. This book represents an excellent launching point for Jay-Z’s new imprint, Roc Lit 101.
Everything about Sabathia is larger than life, yet he tells his story with honesty and humility.Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13375-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Roc Lit 101
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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