Exploring the imagination of sports in books, history and culture
Also In This Issue: Death on the Gridiron; When the Horned Frogs Ruled College Football; Books That Sportswriters Love; Books on the Soviet Sports Era; 40 Years Calling the NBA; Jack Johnson; America’s Fitness Phenomenon; Best Sports Writing Editor Bids Farewell; A British Sports Photography Legend; Remembering Paul Silas and Kathy Whitworth
The end of 2022 brought with it the deaths of some colossal sports figures, led by the incomparable Pelé, who lived long enough to see Lionel Messi win a World Cup before succumbing to cancer at the age of 82 on Dec. 29.
So many books have been written about—and by—the 3-time World Cup-winning Brazilian (the only man to do so), most recently his 2015 memoir (order it here) that’s more introspective than his previous autobiographies.
“Why Soccer Matters” came in the final years of Pelé’s varied career that included MasterCard pitchman, global soccer ambassador (including the once soccer-resistant USA) and Brazilian sports minister, an ill-fated tenure to try to clean up “The Beautiful Game” that had gone horribly corrupt in his homeland and that even got him caught up in scurrilous allegations.
At the web magazine UnHerd Jonathan Wilson writes that “Jogo Bonito” essentially died out after Pelé left the playing field, and perhaps at his penultimate moment, when Brazil won the 1970 World Cup:
“Football as a romantic game was over. The 1970 tournament was celebrated as a brave new world of attacking potential; rather it was, even if Brazil were rather better organised than the samba cliché had it, a throwback to what had gone before because the heat and humidity of Mexico made the physical exertion demanded by a systematised game impossible.”
Before Pelé’s death, as his health became more grave, Brian Phillips wrote a retrospective at The Ringer focusing on his, and Brazil’s first World Cup, in 1958, when he was the 17-year-old wunderkind whose performance changed the event forever, but that now bears barely a shadow of itself in the expanded, hyper-corporatized spectacle just witnessed in Qatar.
Days before the Pittsburgh Steelers were to honor Hall of Fame running back Franco Harris on the 50th anniversary of “The Immaculate Reception” game, he died suddenly at the age of 72. His widow attended the Christmas Day tribute before the Steelers came back to defeat the Raiders, just as they did on that miraculous day in 1972, when Harris was a rookie, and that foreshadowed the Pittsburgh dynasty to come. His number 32 was retired, joining Ernie Stautner and Joe Greene. A cause of death has not been disclosed. The day before he died, Harris did this podcast interview with former Steelers defensive lineman Cameron Hayward. (Order Book)
Before getting to the rest of this newsletter, I’d like to say welcome to all the new subscribers to the Sports Biblio Reader in recent weeks. I hope you enjoy what you read here and will be in touch with your thoughts, suggestions and feedback on how to make this newsletter better. I pride this effort on being reader-friendly and look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for signing up, and Happy Reading!
A Few Good Reads
Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin is responding to family and teammates in a Cincinnati hospital and breathing on his own after collapsing in the first quarter of a Monday Night Football game against the Bengals. One player in NFL history has died on the field, Chuck Hughes of the Detroit Lions in 1971. This week, his widow, Sharon Hughes, talked to NBC News about getting “very emotional” to see Hamlin listless on the ground. His son, Brandon Hughes, who was two when his father died, said that “What happened to my father in 1971 is the Stone Ages as far as medicine goes compared to today. Are these young men getting the medical care and screenings that they should?”
More from Michael Weinreb about the death of Chuck Hughes, suffered after he caught a pass against the Bears, and the iconic photo of him lying on the Tiger Stadium turf with Dick Butkus looking on;
Former Los Angeles and San Diego Clippers play-by-play man Ralph Lawler did this Q & A with the Coronado Times about his 40-year career calling NBA games. He’s the author of a new memoir, “Bingo!,” a reference to his signature line behind the mic;
Texas Christian is an unlikely combatant in the College Football Playoff national championship game Monday night against defending champion Georgia. The school known as TCU has won the title only once, 1938, under the legendary quarterback Davey O’Brien. He guided TCU to an improbable crown in what were to have been the barren years following Slingin’ Sammy Baugh.
Sports Book News
Glenn Stout, the founding editor of the “Best American Sports Writing” anthology and who rebranded it as “The Year’s Best Sports Writing” with a new publisher in 2021, is calling time on his tenure with the project (Order 2022 book here). He announced the news as submissions for the 2023 edition are being accepted through January. “Although I’ll be helping a touch with the mechanics of The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2023 (for work published this year) and will make a few story recommendations, by my choice, after 33 years—more than half my life–my involvement with the series will effectively end on January 1.
Thanks for being readers. It has been an honor,” he wrote on the anthology’s Facebook page in late December. Be sure to read the comments from grateful readers and writers;
From Publishers Weekly, a review of a book about Jack Johnson and his 1910 fight in Reno against Jim “the Great White Hope” Jeffries, that’s to be published in February (pre-order here);
The newly published “Fit Nation,” a chronicle of the fitness phenomenon in the U.S. after World War II, gets reviewed at The Wall Street Journal (order book).
What Sportswriters Love to Read
Your List of Lists: Brendan Crowley, proprietor of the excellent All Sports Book Reviews blog, has compiled the most comprehensive list of sports books since Sports Illustrated’s magnum opus in 2002 (and that could seriously use an update). Crowley contacted a superb list of writers to give their favorites, calling it “The Books That Sportswriters Love,” then further broke it down by sport. One of my favorites that I didn’t see here is “The Joy of Sports,” of which I’ve written before as a key influence in my starting Sports Biblio Reader, and that I see in a somewhat different way now. I may write about that in a future post, but thanks to Brendan for these lists, and for the shoutout that has prompted some of our new subscribers.
When Soviet Sports Were Supreme
Those Were The Days: The Wall Street Journal recently rounded up notable books about sports in the Soviet Union, with Olga Korbut’s memoir an obvious fan favorite. But critic Rae Meadows pointed to Bryn Mawr College Russian professor Tim Harte’s 2020 sweeping “Faster, Higher, Stronger, Comrades!” to top the list, and it’s a volume that ranges from the country’s pre-Bolshevik roots to recent doping scandals, pulling together art, political ideology and Russian/Soviet identity during the Cold War. | Order Book
A 40-Year Lens On Sports
Here’s Looking At You: Leo Mason gave up a career in advertising to turn his camera toward the world of sports in the 1970s, as he parlayed an initial focus on British athletics to a worldwide perspective as the age of global sports expanded. His new book, published by Porter Press, collects more than 120 images from the Olympics, cycling, tennis, boxing and even the Bonneville Salt Flats. From MotorSport magazine, a look at Mason’s work in more detail.
Passings
Gaylord Perry, 84, had a notorious history with the spitball that earned him nearly as much attention as a Hall of Fame career with 314 wins and two Cy Young awards. At FanGraphs, Jay Jaffe goes deep on “the rule-bending rogue” who was the first pitcher to win the Cy Young in either league and only the third to reach 3,000 strikeouts;
Paul Silas, 79, won three NBA championships as a player with the Boston Celtics and won 875 games as a head coach in the league. He was among the legions of outstanding athletes and figures coming out of Oakland, Calif., including Celtics’ defensive stalwart Bill Russell, as well as Curt Flood and Huey Newton of the Black Panthers;
Kathy Whitworth, 83, won a record 88 tournaments on the Ladies Professional Golf Association, and battled fellow LPGA luminary Mickey Wright as the tour stepped into a bigger spotlight in the early 1960s after its initial decade. That was still the age before big prize money, and players had to do much of the work setting up courses and frequently traveled by car. She emerged from the hardscrabble courses of west Texas and New Mexico and under the tutelage of Harvey Penick forged a glittering career: “Golf just grabbed me by the throat. I can't tell you how much I loved it. I used to think everyone knew what they wanted to do when they were 15 years old.”
The Sports Biblio Reader e-mail newsletter is delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search recent archives. The full archives for Sports Biblio Digest can be found here. This is issue No. 256, published Jan. 8, 2023.
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