Sports Biblio Digest, 4.14.19: The Unsettling Legacy of Howard Cosell
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: “Field of Dreams” at 30; Liverpool’s History Chase; Cristiano Ronaldo Treble; The Collapse of Coventry City; American Sports and Intellectuals; Israel Folau; Sexual Abuse in Gymnastics; Paula Radcliffe; Purging Kate Smith; Remembering Tommy Smith
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Over the Christmas holidays I picked up a couple of books about Howard Cosell when I probably shouldn’t have.
I was in one of my increasingly grumpy moods about the stagte of sports and wanted to glean some insights from one of the more notable sports curmudgeons of our time about how he got that way.
I feared I was going down the same path, and as I kept reading, the more convinced I felt that I was already past the first few exits. There may be no turning back for me at some point, but for very different reasons than Cosell.
Mark Ribowsky’s engrossing 2011 biography, “Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports” (Norton) is a catalogue of a lifetime of remarkable success as a giant of American sports television and media commentary, as well as just as many, if not more, grievances, grudges and resentments.
The longtime ABC broadcaster and commentator didn’t let go of any of them up to the day he died, 24 years ago this week, on April 23, 1995.
I got the sense that there was an awful lot of guilt coursing through Cosell’s veins in his later years, in part because of his unreconciled Jewish identity, and for the toll his demanding, bombastic personality took on his abiding wife Emmy, who died of lung cancer in 1990 (there’s a photo in the book of them at a formal dinner, faces heavy and drawn from years of chain-smoking, heavy drinking and stressful living).
Then Cosell penned a second memoir, “What’s Wrong With Sports” (Simon & Schuster, 1991), which I also read, and which contains many of the same complaints about the American sports scene that exist today.
A current-day reader, especially of a younger generation, may find some of Cosell’s arguments quaint, especially those about the amateurism of college sports and hustler coaches and agents who exploit them.
Cosell was especially disdainful of the National Football League just as it was becoming the dominant spectator sport, as he railed against its labor and business practices. He turned his back on the boxing world that gave him his initial fame, decrying the presence of Mike Tyson, Don King and another self-styled business impresario, Donald Trump, whom he dubbed a “jock-sniffer.”
The feud between New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Dave Winfield led Cosell, disgusted by both, to conclude that “all sports are inextricably woven with immorality. It’s an insult to the intelligence of the public.”
At this point I’m realizing that despite my concerns about sports today—more gorged on money, television and publicly-subsidized stadiums than ever before, and happily indulgent in a corrosive popular culture—I could never be as pessimistic as Howard Cosell.
It’s a shame, given his talent, intelligence, courage (taking Muhammad Ali’s side when few in the media would), and relative privilege compared to many of the athletes and sports figures he befriended, that Cosell seemed to harbor so many enemies.
It would be easy to point to his ego, arrogance and narcissism as the main causes, and they are major factors, but not the only ones.
That’s where Ribowsky’s book is particularly useful in a telling that’s frank and judgmental in places, but also gives the reader space to make up his or her own mind.
Cosell, Ribowsky writes, came along “when the outside world began to seep into sports.” A lawyer conscious of his Jewish upbringing and conflicted by the troubles between his parents, but who rarely discussed it, Cosell had “an eye for advancement, a hunger for money.”
He took those attributes, along with his expansive vocabulary, and got into the media by producing well-regarded sports documentaries in the late 50s and early 60s.
As his media star climbed, he found a distaste for many sportswriters that was returned (an exception was Red Smith), notably by Dick Young, the firebrand of the New York Daily News, who had more in common with Cosell than either man would acknowledge.
Stung by bigotry, Cosell was keen to the contemptuousness many writers had for Ali when he refused to be inducted in the U.S. Army. They became close friends, allies and confidantes:
“They were, by all measures, a team, complete opposites in every way except for their organic meshing of purpose that seemed to magnify, even elevate, each of them, both separately and in tandem. Only with Cosell could the young black Muslim have perceived that it wasn’t just safe but preferable to push the envelope on race and religion.”
At a time of great tension in American society, Cosell was poised to break away from the pack to carve out an even more profound space in sports journalism. As “more than a reporter; a speaker of truth,” Cosell is placed by Ribowsky in a position where few would ever think to go.
However, instead of more thoroughly examining Ali’s conversion and “to place this or other issues related to athletes involving themselves in social or religious causes into a broader, deeper, context,” Cosell “punted.”
“Howie the Shill” was being born, but he also was offering a new template for sports journalists coming along in the 1960s. They continue to influence still younger generations marinated in political, cultural and social critiques of sports that have in many respects become too commonplace. Cosell's general uncharitableness can be experienced on occasion by reading some contemporary sportswriters who find little connection with everyday fans.
Cosell wouldn’t “stick to sports,” and as he ascended into the booth of “Monday Night Football” at ABC, his clashes would grow worse. Feuds on the set with "Dandy" Don Meredith, and with Roone Arledge behind the scene, were ugly and petty.
His cravenness toward showbiz celebrities was even more outlandish. After moving up the ranks at ABC by taking on the establishment, Cosell had eclipsed it, and even the occasional brilliant calls (“Down Goes Frazier! Down Goes Frazier!) and the skyrocketing popularity of MNF were becoming footnotes to Cosell's increasingly churlish treatment of others.
His autumnal years were marked by startling recriminations, especially from someone who experienced few true obstacles to his fame, and who overcame most of them. “He was just so anti-everything,” former ABC baseball producer Dennis Lewin told Ribowsky. “He was anti-everything that moved.”
While Ribowsky concludes that Cosell “may have wanted to take an era of journalism with him to the grave,” his temperament for social commentary may have been grafted on his successors, if not his style.
The impulse to cut to the heart of the matter when it comes to sports and how it shapes, and is affected by, what happens in our society, was what gave Cosell his imprimatur on all that he observed.
He was the original, and none will ever come close to the man born Howard Cohen, as Ribowsky asserts, precisely because of his times:
“An era that taught us so much about ourselves and our clay-footed heroes irrevocably ended when the gifted one finally went off into the good night, with not so much as a graceful bow.”
Come On You (Cyber) Reds
Not since 1989-90 has Liverpool FC won a first-division English League championship, a drought predating the creation of the Premier League, and coming on the heels of the Hillsborough disaster that claimed the lives of 96 fans 30 years ago this past week.
Five years ago, one of the most storied soccer clubs in England appeared on the cusp of ending that streak, only to fall to Chelsea down the stretch. The Reds meet Cardiff City today, trailing Manchester City by a point with two games to play. Crucially, the Blues having a game in hand although a bit tougher run to claim the title.
It’s one of the best title races in England and in Europe in years, and the psychological battle also includes the dynamic of both clubs expending themselves in the European Champions League.
Adding to the stress for Liverpool is a two-leg quarterfinal series against Barcelona and Leo Messi. For Man City and manager Pep Guardiola, formerly of Barca, getting knocked out of Europe by English rival Tottenham has freed up their schedule.
The Liverpool Echo tried to predict how it all might turn out through FIFA ‘19, simulating the final games with both clubs' best lineups (on Xbox, at least). I’m not sure I’ll ever warm up to eSports, and as a Liverpool sufferer of about 25 years, for me the virtual results have only ratcheted up the agony to unfold over the next few weeks.
A Few Good Reads
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes that the way Americans regard sports heroes versus intellectuals speaks volumes:
“Neither high culture nor pop culture are a measure of intelligence, just of past exposure. Any attempt to use either as a means to imply superiority demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what art strives to do: bring us closer together by showing that we are all equal in our needs to love, be loved, and strive to be better tomorrow than we are today.”
The film “Field of Dreams” marks its 30th anniversary this year with perspectives that are as polarized as our politics: Bravo! and Bah! I think I’m like many in that I feel somewhere in between. The charms of memory and tradition got bogged down by treacly sentimentality and the lackluster performance of Kevin Costner. “If you build it, he will come” is a good line in an otherwise forgettable movie. The “Shoeless Joe” novel upon which this was based wasn’t the best of W.P. Kinsella’s extensive baseball bibliography, but it shouldn't be blamed for a mediocre result on the big screen;
At The Washington Post, Robert Birnbaum offers his picks of the new baseball book litter;
At the essential When Saturday Comes, Harry Pearson notes the recent death of Hugh McIlvanney and compares his legacy to that of another noted football writer, Eric Batty, who died in 1994 and was a stylistic and philosophical contrast;
David Conn, a noted soccer writer still actively among us, explains the sordid tale of Coventry City, whose hedge fund owners have venally mismanaged the club’s affairs so badly that it could be expelled this week from the English Football League, exactly 100 years after gaining admission;
Cristiano Ronaldo has become the first player to be part of winning top-flight league championship teams in England, Spain and Italy as Juventus clinched the Serie A title on Saturday. The crown was a record 35th for the Turin club, which had two titles stripped in the mid-aughts due to a match-fixing scandal. Juve also won a record 8th consecutive scudetto but was knocked out of the European Champions League earlier last week by Ajax, only the second time a team featuring Ronaldo hasn’t gotten to the semis in the last 12 seasons.
Third-Rail Chronicles, Con't.
Kate Smith brought her acclaimed “God Bless America” rendition to the ice of the Spectrum in Philadelphia in the early 1970s, as the Flyers won back-to-back Stanley Cups. Since the Sept. 11, 2011 terror attacks, the New York Yankees have played the same during the seventh-inning stretch, but no more, after discovering the popular singer may have harbored racist views and sang songs some think demean blacks (and whose cover artists also included Paul Robeson) in the 1930s. “God Bless America” is hardly among them, and there wasn’t a particular complaint made to the Yankees, but rather the move smacks of pre-emptive virtue-signalling that’s all the rage in American society. The Flyers quickly covered up her statue in front of their current arena, prompting former team VP Lou Scheinfield, who started the “God Bless America” run in Philly, to note that “the PC police have struck again:”
“How do I feel about her demise? I’m disappointed, especially in the heavy-handed way she was dumped. Yanking the song and clumsily covering the statue was harsh. I’ve been asked what [former Flyers owner Ed] Snider, who had her statue erected and who served as a pallbearer at her 1986 funeral, would’ve done. That’s hard to answer, but I do know he had a damn strong backbone.”
Australian rugby player Israel Folau is demanding a code of conduct hearing after being charged by Rugby Australia with a breach of contract for homophobic and transphobic comments posted on his Instagram account. It’s not the first time Folau, one of the most high-profile of the Wallabies, has come under fire from the federation for such public remarks. He’s since received a $4 million contract that could be in jeopardy with the Rugby World Cup coming up later this year. Folau, raised as a Mormon and now an evangelical Christian, also is being banned from the National Rugby League. Public opinion is mixed, with some arguing Folau can’t win a religious freedom argument, and others saying he shouldn’t be punished for stating his views, not unlike embattled Aussie tennis icon Margaret Court;
Paula Radcliffe, the 2012 women’s Olympic marathon champion, has joined the ranks of Martina Navratilova in arguing against the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports. She renewed her calls as the Court of Arbitration for Sport is expected to rule this week on the case of Caster Semenya, the intersex gold medalist challenging IAAF rules that she take medication to lower her testosterone levels. Radcliffe fears “the death of women’s sport” if Semenya prevails, seeing that as a bridge to more participation from biological males who identify as females. Whatever the verdict, the gender dynamic in international elite sports figures to become more contentious, especially since the runnerup to Semenya in the 800-meters in Rio admits she has the same hyperandrogenism condition.
Sports Book News
From Rachel Haines, author of the newly published “Abused: Surviving Sexual Assault and a Toxic Gymnastics Culture,” an excerpt about being “Survivor 195” at the hands of Larry Nassar. The future U.S. national team member first went to him for medical attention at the age of 14 and said he performed “manipulations” on her repeatedly, over a number of years, but at least at the beginning, “like every other girl, I trusted him and his treatments.” It would take years for those assaults to end, and for Nassar to be brought to justice.
Passings
Tommy Smith, 74, played on nine championship teams for Liverpool in 638 games between 1960-78, and later was a columnist for the Liverpool Echo. Ironically, his last piece appeared in 2014 just as the Reds seemed poised for their first English Premier League title. He compared them to some of the teams he played with under legendary managers Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley.
The club will bill farewell to Smith, who suffered from dementia, at his funeral Thursday.
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This is Digest issue No. 163, published April 21, 2019.
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