Sports Biblio Digest, 3.8.20: Sports and a Growing Pandemic
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: The Athletic; Willie Mays; Red Holzman; Baseball’s Growing Technocracy; The Great American Baseball Novel, Redux; Baseball Book Sale; Tony Romo; Tommy Tuberville; Christine Brennan; Remembering Henri Richard and Eva Szekely
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A few links follow about the growing Coronavirus pandemic and how it’s affecting the world of sports, and I’m sure none of us can yet comprehend what’s to come.
For the next month, no fans will be allowed to watch sporting events in person in Italy, which is one of the hardest-hit nations with a fast-growing number of cases being diagnosed.
This is just staggering: The entire region of Lombardy, one of Italy’s wealthiest that includes Milan, will be put under a full quarantine until April 3.
Not far away, the mountain resort and former winter Olympic host site Cortina d’Ampezzo was to have been the venue for the Alpine Skiing World Cup finals. That’s been called off, too.
Italian matches in the Six Nations Rugby also are being postponed in the men’s, women’s and under-20 divisions.
The international women’s ice hockey tournament, slated to start March 31 in Nova Scotia, has been cancelled.
In England, the Premier League is considering banning fans over the age of 70, as elderly people are considered one of the biggest at-risk groups for contracting the contagious virus.
A few NCAA basketball tournament games at the Division III level have been played without fans present, including at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where several Coronavirus cases have been confirmed.
Handshakes are being banned or discouraged at sporting events, and the National Basketball Association is telling its teams to prepare to play in empty arenas, which prompted LeBron James to balk.
The National Hockey League has closed its locker rooms to the media as a means to prevent the spread of the virus, and at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control.
With March Madness soon to be underway, even more draconian measures are possible for the signature event of the college basketball season.
So many more sporting events are on hold or have been nixed altogether.
Looming most heavily over the international sports scene is whether the pandemic will have an effect on the Tokyo Olympics. Will the Games be contested at all?
As Louisa Thomas wrote at The New Yorker, it’s jarred so many of us who take these sports surroundings for granted. The notion that a handshake, an autograph seeker, a media microphone or fans congregating to watch events could be viewed as potentially harmful activities still hasn’t quite sunk in.
It hasn’t for me, even though little things have been adding up in my own world in recent days, chipping away at my impressions that we’ll be allright:
Getting two e-mail messages this week from my clergy, about not dipping bread into communion wine, locking arms during prayers instead of holding hands, and asking under-the-weather congregants to stay home (especially if they’re older).
After hearing confirmation of the first Coronavirus case in my suburban Atlanta county, seeing several empty shelves of handwipes at the supermarket, a real jolt.
Especially when a store employee told me those same shelves were full the day before.
Previous pandemics, at least in my lifetime, didn’t bring out these disruptions to daily life like we’re seeing now. For the most part the measures we're being asked to take are not terrible inconveniences, at least where I am.
Yes, sports must be smart about all this, and the unsettling nature of what’s happening, at blinding speed and with panicky threads fomenting on social media, just feels different this time.
This is my favorite time of year on the sports calendar—the intersection of March Madness, the start of the baseball season and the beginning of spring in North America.
On a certain level, and for many who’ve been afflicted or who live in places with major outbreaks, a long, dark winter is growing more worrisome.
A Few Good Reads
From Sports Illustrated: Tom Verducci turned in a brilliant assessment of baseball’s growing technocracy that he says helped paved the way for the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. Interesting quote from mega-agent Scott Boras: “The Houston Astros are a product of their environment. When fans go to games, they don’t want to know that the manager is not the one making the moves. You’ve got to create theatre, drama. I don’t care about efficiency. I care about the audience to help our game grow.” So much of what Verducci exposes is what’s happening in many segments of industry and society when he writes that “this is the game we get when we value knowledge over wisdom;”
George Yankowsky had a brief Major League Baseball career sandwiched around service in the U.S. Army during the Battle of the Bulge, earning a Bronze Star and a Combat Infantry Badge. He died last month as he was fighting baseball officials for retroactive inclusion into its formed pension program. He’s one of nearly 900 former players examined in a forthcoming book by Douglas Gladstone;
From Ben Strauss at The Washington Post, another look at the growing sports media empire at The Athletic, which is gaining kudos for its in-depth, subscription-based journalism, but whose finances still cause enough wonder about whether the Silicon Valley venture “could represent the idyllic future of sports journalism, a venture capital-backed mirage or something in between;
A $110 million stadium built outside of Chicago for Major League Soccer in 2005 is becoming a financial catastrophe for Bridgeview, the suburban town that foot the construction bill, is now saddled with $260 million in debt and may be losing the Chicago Fire team to Soldier Field;
Former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville is in a Republican runoff for an Alabama U.S. Senate seat with Jeff Sessions, a former U.S. Attorney General who’s campaigning to get his seat back. While Sessions was stung by his experience in Donald Trump’s cabinet, Tuberville is an unabashed backer of the president, and his former players are perplexed;
From The Ringer: Larry David’s Curbed Sports Enthusiasm.
Sports Book News
We’ll have more on new baseball books soon, but the University of Nebraska Press is running a 40 percent sale on selected baseball books from its vast catalog through March 31 for customers in the U.S. and Canada;
Emily Nevens, author of the newly published “The Cactus League,” explains for the Electric Literature site her stab at The Great American Baseball Novel.
Now Hear This
Mort Zachter, a former tax attorney and professor who previously profiled Brooklyn Dodgers’ great Gil Hodges, is the latest guest on the New Books in Sports podcast, discussing his biography of New York Knicks coach Red Holzman published last fall;
San Francisco Chronicle baseball correspondent John Shea is interviewed at KNBR radio about a Willie Mays memoir he’s ghostwriting and that’s being published in May by St. Martin’s Press;
On the baseball podcast Good Seats Still Available, the latest guest is Annika Orrock, author of “The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League,” to be published Tuesday by Chronicle Books.
Lodge Notes
ESPN wants Al Michaels and is willing to spend more for Peyton Manning to be its Monday Night Football analyst than the $17 million annual salary CBS is shelling out to keep former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo;
Christine Brennan of USA Today is the 2020 recipient of the Red Smith Award, given by the Associated Press Sports Editors for major contributions to sports journalism.
Passings
Henri Richard, 84, played on 11 Stanley Cup championship teams in a 20-year Hockey Hall of Fame career with the Montreal Canadiens. Known as the “Pocket Rocket,” a spinoff nickname from “The Rocket” dubbed for his brother, Maurice Richard, his quiet demeanor belied a fierce competitive nature. Among North American professional team sport athletes, Henri Richard tied Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics for the most titles as a player with 11.
Eva Szekely, 92, escaped the clutches of the Nazi regime in her native Hungary as a teenager, hiding out for much of World War II, then went on to win an Olympic swimming gold medal in record time in Helsinski in 1952. She also won silver in Melbourne and set six world records during her career that included induction in the International Swimming Hall of Fame. She spoke often of her experiences and of her Jewish identity and wrote several books.
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The Sports Biblio Digest is an e-mail newsletter delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives. This is Digest issue No. 196, published March 8, 2020.
I’d love to hear what you think about the Digest, and Sports Biblio. Send feedback, suggestions, book recommendations, review copies, newsletter items and interview requests to Wendy Parker at sportsbiblio@gmail.com.