Sports Biblio Digest, 4.19.20: Missing The Connections of Sports
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: A Sports Photographer Felled by the Coronavirus; Michael Jordan; Vin Scully's First Game; John Havlicek’s Final Game; Maurice Stokes and Jack Twyman; Digger Phelps; Sports Bar Owners; Yogi Berra; Carlton Blues; Remembering Al Kaline, Glenn Beckert, Jim Frey and Tom Dempsey
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A few times this week, as I’ve seen social media postings linking to very optimistic contingency plans for the resumption of sports, I’ve responded simply: “Sports can wait.”
It seems frivolous to consider reopening stadiums and arenas at all, at least for the next year, given the rising Coronavirus death tolls and case confirmations, with only a small number of people being tested at all.
Brett Hutchins, a communications professor in Australia, offers this reminder of the importance of sports beyond immediate entertainment gratification, noting that undoubtedly for “those who dislike sport, this absence is likely a source of amusement or quiet satisfaction.
“But the very fact of this rejection emphasises that sport is a central presence and widely shared lingua franca in social life and national culture.”
Social rituals, he writes, have been greatly disrupted, and I certainly felt it when the start of baseball season came and went, without any games. March Madness never happened, The Masters didn’t tee off, and the NBA playoffs, set to begin this weekend, may not take place. The Tokyo Olympics are off, for a year at least.
In the fall in the United States will come football and tailgating and other rituals, and the massive money-making entities of the major college game and the NFL carry with them huge economic implications, given their rich television rights.
That’s about the business of sports, of course, but Higgins reminds us of the deeper connections—not just to sports, but to one another—that we’re missing dearly:
“There’s a collective hunger for rituals, symbols, emotions and connections that can offer relief from the social isolation imposed by physical distancing and working from home. Sport, despite its flaws, sustains the memory and promise of connection at a time when lives and livelihoods are in the balance.”
Sports will be waiting, for a good long while, and it’s a sure bet that collective hunger will feel like a famine the longer the waiting lingers.
Regardless of how long sports may be delayed, what lies ahead in the longer-term figures to involve lasting disruptions going far beyond the more immediate fears of packed stadiums, arenas and other venues for public gatherings.
Tim Cowlishaw of the Dallas Morning News doesn’t think it does any sports fan any good to get premature hopes up for the return of live competition, and as much as it gets me down to ponder it, for the moment I can’t argue with any of this.
A Few Good Reads
Anthony Causi was an acclaimed sports photographer at a big-city newspaper in an era when there aren’t many like him left. He earned the respect of pro athletes in one of the toughest sports cities of all in 26 years with the New York Post, and the sports community there was stunned to learn of his death at 48 to the Coronavirus. Columnist Mike Vaccaro pays tribute to his fallen colleague;
The Indianapolis Star pieced together the story of five people who died from Coronavirus after attending a game of the Indiana state high school basketball sectional finals in early March, with nearly 3,000 fans in attendance. The victims were all men, middle-aged and older, and others at the game got sick with the virus;
The organist at Fenway Park isn’t letting a suspended season stop him. Every day Josh Kantor live streams a 30-minute show he calls his “7th Inning Stretch” to give Red Sox fans some musical comfort in the absence of baseball;
A number of art museums are taking to social media to offer virtual tours while they’re temporarily closed. We’ve written about this before, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has posted online a generous amount of its stash of 30,000 vintage baseball cards as part of the Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, one of the world’s finest curations of the printmaking arts;
We’ve also linked here before about sports artist Graig Kreindler, and here’s a new appreciation of some of his paintings, including works of Ed Walsh, Walter Johnson, Josh Gibson, Ty Cobb, and more;
My friend Kristie Ackert, the Yankees’ beat writer for the New York Daily News, writes this somber piece about the fate of baseball analytics publications like FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Reference;
Sports bars in the Big Apple, just as they are most everywhere, remain closed, subject to shelter-in-place rules, without any live sports to show and facing just as uncertain a future as any other shuttered entity;
Tonight’s the debut of ESPN’s new 10-part documentary series on Michael Jordan’s final NBA season, “The Last Dance,” moved up from its original June slot to fill the live sports void. In this set-up piece, Jackie MacMullan recalls visiting Birmingham when Jordan was embarking upon his baseball aspirations with the minor-league Barons, and noted that Jordan “still graciously made time for longtime journalists who once chatted with him in a batting cage. But the pure, innocent joy of the early triumphs seemed to have evaporated;"
Sports radio talk host Clay Travis has become one of the biggest skeptics of the Coronavirus, prompting this takedown by a conservative admirer, who thinks it’s part of Travis’ branding, even at the risk of becoming a pandemic fraudster;
Some hopeful words from Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post about the simple joys of watching kids play outdoors, social-distancing of course, in an outpost of Long Island, where the Coronavirus is on a rampage:
“As you watch them and their made-up, truncated, skipping-stone, chalk-on-the-walk contests, you realize that, though you always thought games were important — meaningful, not just trivial escapism — you never quite knew why until now. It’s because they’re our vitality. Humans play. Try and stop them. They play, even as they march out into the world in masks along with their work boots or heels or neckties, trying to put food on the table in the midst of a very bad time. You can’t kill fun — not with a gun or a bomb or a disease. Play is elemental. It’s how young mammals learn their survival skills.”
Sports History Files
In the 1970 Victorian Football League Grand Final, the Collingwood Magpies held a seemingly invincible 44-point halftime lead on Carlton. But the Blues mounted one of the more remarkable comebacks ever and would go on to win six more premierships over the next 25 years. At The Age, Jake Niall calls it “the most consequential match in the history of Australian rules football, the game that mattered most,” in a 50th anniversary retrospective. The paper’s game coverage is here;
April 6 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Maurice Stokes, the 1956 NBA rookie of the year who fell hard to the court during a game two years later. He became fully paralyzed after being diagnosed with post-traumatic encephalopathy. His friendship with teammate Jack Twyman afterward was one of the most inspiring stories in sports, and was recalled at a remembrance at St. Francis College (Pa.), Stokes’ alma mater and where he was buried after succumbing to a heart attack;
Another 50th anniversary piece, recounting the Fordham basketball team’s magical 26-3 season in 1970 under Digger Phelps, who soon would leave for greater fame at Notre Dame;
Saturday marked the 70th anniversary of Vin Scully’s first game as a radio announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and here’s a summary of how it went.
Sports Retro Files
The Boston Globe is digging into its archive to keep readers engaged without live games, and on Saturday offered Ray Fitzgerald’s column from April 10, 1978, about John Havlicek’s final regular season game with the Celtics, which had a “Havlicekian finish, choreographed better than a Broadway musical — 9 points in the last three minutes and then a spine-chilling sayonara with 15 seconds left;”
Many more roundups of favorite sports movies include “Bad News Bears,” and author Dan Epstein served up on social media this week his rather jaded 2014 story for Rolling Stone on the 40th anniversary of the film’s release, explaining why it tops his greatest list;
This one comes from L.A. sports media maven Tom Hoffarth, and I almost spit out my coffee when I glanced at the headline: “Herman Munster, the forgotten Dodger.” It’s as much about Leo Durocher’s cameo on the 1950s comedy show, and who as you might imagine laid down some of his cringeworthy humor from the era.
Sports Book News
From LitHub, an excerpt from Jon Pessah’s biography of Yogi Berra, published this week by Little, Brown and Company, and focusing on the young catcher’s arrival with the Yankees, during the twilight of Joe DiMaggio’s career;
Another sportswriter’s must-read baseball book list during this very barren spring;
The legendary Australian athletics coach Percy Cerutty trained Olympic champions Herb Elliott and Betty Cuthbert, employing what he called the “Stotan” method—Stoic and Spartan—an obsessive combination of austere surroundings, a revolutionary diet and theories about training that defied the 1950s and 1960s era. Graem Sims’ 2003 biography of Cerutty, “Why Die?” is now available via Kindle at a website dedicated to the coach; Here’s a review from Runner’s World when the book was first published.
Passings
Al Kaline, 85, was simply known as “Mr. Tiger,” not just for playing his entire Major League career in Detroit, but for embodying what any franchise would have wanted. His gentle persona was constantly compared to that of the combative Ty Cobb, but Kaline never seemed to be bothered by that, as he enjoyed a 67-year career with the organization;
Glenn Beckert, 79, was a four-time All-Star second baseman for the Chicago Cubs in the 1960s and early 1970s, belonging to a stellar infield that included Ernie Banks, Don Kessinger and Ron Santo;
Jim Frey, 88, was the manager of the Kansas City Royals team that won the 1980 World Series, and later was skipper of the Cubs team in 1984 that claimed the club’s first pennant since 1945;
Tom Dempsey, 73, kicked a 63-yard field goal for the New Orleans Saints against the Detroit Lions in 1970, which was tied for the National Football League record for 43 years. Born without some digits on his feet and hands, Dempsey was fitted with a special flat shoe that remains on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Dempsey had been living in a long-term care home in New Orleans after being diagnosed with dementia when he was stricken with the Coronavirus;
Bill Millsaps, 77, was a longtime sportswriter and columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and later became the newspaper’s executive editor.
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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. 201, published April 19, 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.