Exploring the imagination of sports in books, history and culture
Also In This Issue: The Woeful A’s; Yogi Berra Documentary; Baseball Heaven in Vancouver; Restoring a Baseball Cathedral in Paterson; SABR Research Winners; Napoli’s Scudetto; A Women’s Sports-Only Sports Bar; Jerry Izenberg Memoir; Remembering Denny Crum, Vida Blue, Mike Shannon, Joe Kapp and Ralph Boston
Jim Brown’s life was difficult and glorious, triumphant and humbling, and with his death last week at the age of 87, he leaves behind a complicated and compelling legacy as a football player, celebrity, activist and human being.
The man considered by many to be the greatest running back in the history of the National Football League walked away from the game after only nine seasons in 1967, as he was feuding with Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell.
By then he had begun an acting career that took him to Hollywood, and long after that period in his life had passed, he remained in Los Angeles, working as a community leader and a social activist.
He was known more for those exploits by those of us of a certain age, who never saw him play, or may not have realized he also was a lacrosse standout at Syracuse University.
Born in the Georgia coastal town of St. Simons, Brown grew up on Long Island, then became a three-sport star at Syracuse (including track and field) before being drafted by the Browns.
He delivered for that beleaguered franchise the last of its four NFL titles, in 1964, when he got the bug to go before a film camera.
Brown was not an easy read, or an easy man. As he retired, he also stepped into black activism with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell and Lew Alcindor.
He was alleged to have had a history of domestic violence and sexual assault, including charges as late as 1999 by a former wife. It was a reputation that dogged him for the rest of his days, especially in the more recent #MeToo era, with less forgiving chroniclers.
While he admitted long ago he was “no angel,” Brown rejected the claims, and he never was convicted of a major crime.
Yes, “there are no perfect heroes,” and Brown’s history of black uplift in poverty- and crime-laden neighborhoods, working with gang members and prison inmates in Los Angeles and other cities is admirable.
He turned heads in late 2016 when he and former NFL linebacker Ray Lewis turned up at the Trump Tower to meet with a newly elected president (Brown also endorsed one Richard Nixon for president in 1968).
At Esquire, Joe Posnanski writes that many of these tributes and sober remembrances were perhaps inevitable:
“There is nothing easy here to cling to, no simple belief to magnify in the wake of his death. What was Jim Brown about? There’s no one answer. There’s no towering truth. This is how he wanted it. This is how he lived. How do you commemorate a legacy that, like Jim Brown himself, eludes and evades and runs you over? It’s complicated.”
A Few Good Reads
Napoli has won the scudetto, the Italian Serie A title, for the first time since Diego Maradona’s days there in 1990, and after dispensing with star players. At UnHerd, Tobias Jones writes about how soccer has liberated a city of contradictions;
The City of Oakland has lost the Raiders and the Warriors and is about to see its last team remaining, the dreadful Athletics, depart for Las Vegas. A major-league stadium swindle is in progress in Nevada as the team plays before four-figure crowds with a 10-44 record. Fifty-five years after moving from Kansas City, and boasting a franchise that’s the last to win three World Series in a row, the A’s will be mourned in Oakland, The Athletic’s Mark Carig argues, although it seems hard to believe for the moment;
It’s been nearly 91 years since Hinchcliffe Stadium was dedicated in Paterson, N.J., and it was the home of two Negro Leagues teams, the New York Black Yankees and the New York Black Cubans. In the 1960s, it was owned by a local school district and was named a National Historic Landmark. It’s been abandoned for more than a quarter century, and efforts to revive it have paid off. A $100 million renovation was recently shown off as a venue for school and amateur events, and a minor league team, the New Jersey Jackals;
Vancouver is home to Canada’s only minor league baseball team, the Class A affiliate for the Toronto Blue Jays. Kurt Streeter of The New York Times was enchanted by his visit to a Vancouver Canadians home game, which drew a whopping 1,500 spectators on a chilly night: “The charm of watching Canadians baseball at the venerable stadium got to me, with its swooping grandstand, its manual scoreboard, its views of a nearby park that will look like a verdant oil painting come summer;”
In Portland, Ore., a sports bar has opened that shows only women’s events. It’s called The Sports Bra, which opened in 2022 and features a photo of U.S. Women’s soccer star Brandi Chastain displaying her famous black brassiere after the 1999 Women’s World Cup finals. Hoops stars Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi recently made an appearance during a special event.
Sports Book News
Newly published, by Sager Group, retired Newark Star-Ledger sportswriter Jerry Izenberg’s memoir, “Baseball, Nazis & Nedick's Hot Dogs: Growing up Jewish in the 1930s in Newark.” Now 92, Izenberg’s tale centers on his relationship with his immigrant father, a World War I veteran and baseball scout. “He had given me a lifetime gift—a simple game and a simple shared love for it. It remains there, bright and shining in memory eighty-three years later. In the soul of my memory, I see our kind of shared love of baseball again. It never fades.”
Izenberg still contributes occasional columns to his old paper, and this week penned this remembrance of his father for Memorial Day.
The Society for American Baseball Research has announced winners of its research project category, giving the nod to books about Red Barber, American baseball tours of Japan before and after World War II and a history of the late 19th century Union Association.
Films
Sony Pictures has just released “It Ain’t Over,” a documentary of the life of Yogi Berra, at select theatres around the country. Berra would have turned 98 on May 12, and the film amply delves into Berra’s humorous hijinks. As Dean Karayanis, host of the History Author podcast writes, the film “helps restore Berra to his status as a three-dimensional hero,” including being honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.
Passings
Denny Crum, 86, coached the University of Louisville basketball team to 675 wins, two NCAA championships and six appearances in the Final Four. A former assistant at UCLA under John Wooden, he remained in Kentucky for the rest of his life. Former players offered their remembrances following a memorial service;
Joe Kapp, 85, played 12 seasons of professional football, including starting a Super Bowl for the Minnesota Vikings, and later coached at his alma mater, the University of California. In 1971, he challenged the standard contract in the NFL, which ended his career in the league but that eventually helped give players more leverage at the bargaining table. His memoir, “The Toughest Chicano,” details his youth in a Mexican-American neighborhood in California to his ultimate battle with dementia, brought on by brain trauma from his playing days;
Vida Blue, 73, won three World Series titles with the Oakland A’s from 1972-74, but it was the season before that, in 1971, that he’s known for the best. That’s when he went 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA and 301 strikeouts and won the Cy Young Award and American Leagye MVP. But drug addiction shortened his career and created problems in his post-baseball life, and Cooperstown consideration appears to be a longshot;
Mike Shannon, 83, was a second baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals and then moved to the radio booth as an announcer, calling games for the team for more than five decades. “He’s more than just a former player, he’s more than just a voice of a ballclub, he’s part of the city, he’s part of the region,” Dodgers radio play-by-plan man Charley Steiner said;
Ralph Boston, 83, was the Olympic gold medalist in the long jump who broke Jesse Owens’ record before winning in Rome in 1960. Boston bested that mark in qualifying in 1968 in a competition in which Bob Beamon leaped 26 feet, 11-1/4 inches in Mexico City more than two feet better than Boston and still the Olympic record. Boston was among the Tennessee State track and field luminaries and was a member of the inaugural class of the National Track & Field Hall of Fame;
Peter Good, 80, designed the logo of the Hartford Whalers (now the Carolina Hurricanes) in a work-for-hire gig for $2,000 and wasn’t a big hockey fan when he did so. Good ran a graphic design firm in Connecticut with his wife, and his work can be seen in the nearby Mark Twain House and Museum, among other Nutmeg State locales.
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. 261, published May 28, 2023.
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