Nothing new in this angry diatribe from sports columnist and novelist Lupica (Jump, 1995, etc.): Professional athletes and team owners are arrogant, selfish, and greedy; the fans are fed up; and somebody should do something about it. This should be the Golden Age of sports, with more sports and greater access to them than ever before, says Lupica. But it isn't, he continues, because fans are powerless against rising ticket and cable prices and because of escalating salaries for mediocre or ``preening'' players. The modern fan ``feels like someone trapped in an abusive relationship.'' He lays part of the blame on free agency, which came for the players in the mid-1970s but has been around a long time for the owners: Seeking better deals, owners like Walter O'Malley can move the beloved Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles with no regard for loyalty or tradition. More recently, Art Modell, in spite of 30 years of sold-out crowds at Cleveland Stadium, betrayed the city and Browns fans and moved to Baltimore. But as for the players' role in alienating fans, the author drags out the usual suspects: Dennis Rodman, Derrick Coleman, Michael Irvin, Albert Belle, Darryl Strawberry—misfits who have repeatedly shown contempt for fans, authority, and their game. Lupica provides statistics of athletes arrested or charged with crimes during 1995: Among them are 160 college football players; 49 professional football players; 21 hockey players. He offers a number of oft- heard solutions: no guaranteed contracts; pay college athletes something—maybe they'll stay in school longer; boycott ``rat owners''; institute a strict Code of Conduct for owners. Most will concur with Lupica's Lament, but his voice is so shrill, and he is often so crude (he says Modell sold the team for the same reason an ``old dog licks his balls. Because he can'') that even the angriest fan will turn away. (First serial to Esquire; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 14, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-14221-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading...
A maddening, well-constructed tale of medical discovery and corporate coverup, set in morgues, laboratories, courtrooms, and football fields.
Nigeria-born Bennet Omalu is perhaps an unlikely hero, a medical doctor board-certified in four areas of pathology, “anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology,” and a well-rounded specialist in death. When his boss, celebrity examiner Cyril Wecht (“in the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star”), got into trouble for various specimens of publicity-hound overreach, Omalu was there to offer patient, stoical support. The student did not surpass the teacher in flashiness, but Omalu was a rock star all his own in studying the brain to determine a cause of death. Laskas’ (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Hidden America, 2012, etc.) main topic is the horrific injuries wrought to the brains and bodies of football players on the field. Omalu’s study of the unfortunate brain of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at 50 of a supposed heart attack, brought new attention to the trauma of concussion. Laskas trades in sportwriter-ese, all staccato delivery full of tough guy–isms and sports clichés: “He had played for fifteen seasons, a warrior’s warrior; he played in more games—two hundred twenty—than any other player in Steelers history. Undersized, tough, a big, burly white guy—a Pittsburgh kind of guy—the heart of the best team in history.” A little of that goes a long way, but Laskas, a Pittsburgher who first wrote of Omalu and his studies in a story in GQ, does sturdy work in keeping up with a grim story that the NFL most definitely did not want to see aired—not in Omalu’s professional publications in medical journals, nor, reportedly, on the big screen in the Will Smith vehicle based on this book.
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading it.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8757-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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