Exploring the imagination of sports in books, history and culture
Also In This Issue: A New Era for Women’s Football; A Century of Wimbledon; The Baseball Hall of Fame’s Mischievous Cousin; Subsidizing the Field of Dreams; Camden Yards at 30; Cy Young at Home in Ohio; Exceptional Baseball Stories; Althea Gibson; Mo Farah; ‘A League of Their Own’ On the Stream; A Century of Boxing on Film
As I put this newsletter together I listened to baseball on the radio, a subject I’ve written about here several times but that holds greater resonance this week.
Vin Scully has left us, days after Bill Russell passed, and the sports world that shaped an American generation of boomer fans has lost two of its absolute legends.
It’s a postwar sports world that, like much of the larger society around it, has practically been swept away.
I never saw Russell play and heard Scully’s voice live only sporadically, late in his career. But they lived to be older men, Russell to 88 and Scully to 94, and remained in the spotlight for most of that time to absorb long-overdue appreciation.
Some of that praise could be overwrought with nostalgia, but as public figures Russell and Scully helped us better understand the notable times in which they lived, and what made them so compelling.
So many wonderful, thoughtful tributes have been written about both men this week, so I’ll step aside and let you enjoy what I’ve been reading through the last few days.
The great Boston Globe basketball writer Bob Ryan penned “Bill Russell was unparalleled on the basketball court, uncompromising off it” in capturing the complicated figure who led the Celtics to NBA glory but whose outspokenness about racial issues made him a pariah there.
Other Russell remembrances by Thomas Boswell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Taylor Branch and Satch Sanders.
Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. mentioned that Russell’s FBI file referred to him as “an arrogant Negro, and pointed out how Russell waited nearly 40 years to accept his ring from the Basketball Hall of Fame due to what he claimed was its racism.
At his sports history Substack newsletter Throwbacks, Michael Weinreb writes about “The Road to Perfection,” Russell’s college years at the University of San Francisco in the mid-1950s, which weren’t always pleasant off the court.
Fans in Boston gathered to remember him at his statue, and former NBA player and current Indiana University coach Mike Woodson echoed a sentiment expressed by many: No other NBA player should wear Russell’s No. 6 ever again.
The tributes to Scully were just as touching, including Steve Rushin and Tom Verducci at Sports Illustrated and Dan Patrick on his radio show,
Art Spander noted how for Scully, there were no borders on his baseball broadcasts. He also symbolized baseball’s expansion when the Dodgers moved West, giving fans in California a voice of their own.
Jaime Jarrin, Scully’s Spanish-language radio counterpart who is retiring after this season, remembers his “tremendous friend.”
At Andscape, Ed Guzman wrote glowingly of what it meant for him, a Mexican-American kid from East Los Angeles, to grow up listening to “The soundtrack of a franchise. The soul of a sport. The best to ever do it.”
At The Ringer, Bryan Curtis wrote about Scully’s abbreviated TV career, noting that after famously calling Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit homerun in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, he “mostly retreated to Dodgers broadcasts, where he spent the next 28 years aging gracefully in front of people who loved him unconditionally.”
Would a figure like Scully be as revered today? At the New York Post, Phil Mushnick thinks not, since Scully “avoided gimmicks, hype, signature calls, forced belly laughs, endless stats and hollering over nothing” and he “wasn’t shy to note that the country was in illogical decline.”
In 2017, the season after Scully fully retired, Tom Hoffarth wrote this perspective about how Dodger fans were coping from the withdrawal over not hearing his voice.
The Dodgers’ tribute to Scully will make you shed a few tears.
News & Issues
Iowa officials looking for more public funds for new Field of Dreams stadium—Sports Business Journal
TV is Making a Fortune Off Thursday's Field of Dreams Game—KHAK FM
Barcelona Spent Its Way Into Crisis. Can It Now Spend Its Way Out?—The New York Times
A new era for women’s football—Financial Times
Strong Japanese Influence At The Heart Of Celtic’s Domestic Revival—Japan Forward
A Few Good Reads
The Baseball Reliquary Survived and Is ‘Better than True’—The New York Times
The Baseball Stadium That “Forever Changed” Professional Sports—The Ringer | Order “Home of the Game”
The Ohio Town that Baseball Legend Cy Young Called Home—Ohio Magazine | Order “Cy Young: A Baseball Life”
Books & Reviews
A Game of Extremes . . . A Baseball Book Review—Baseball Roundtable | Order Book
Book Review: The Life and Death of Andy Ducat—Derbyshire Cricket
Forthcoming: “Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson” by Sally Jacobs
Sports History
Hail, Lady Mary! Winning a Gold Medal for Belfast—The Critic
The Arts & Cinema
In ‘A League of Their Own,’ Abbi Jacobson Makes the Team—The New York Times
Cinema Pugilistica: A Century of Boxing on Film—The Criterion Collection
Astonishing documentary shows that finding the real Mo Farah has always been a riddle—The Mail
Now Hear This
1922 Wimbledon: All-England Lawn Tennis Club's move to a new home—BBC Radio 3 Arts & Ideas
Collectibles
Massive Forgotten Hoard of T206 Era Baseball Cards Set for Sale After Stunning Consignment—Sports Collectors Daily
"Hard Luck for Hardy"—Original Mike Trout Painting by Renowned Sports Artist Graig Kreindler—Love of the Game Auctions
Media
Michael Moynihan: All good things must come to an end—Irish Examiner
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. 249, published August 7, 2022.
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