With the door seemingly closed on the George Steinbrenner Era, it seems appropriate for a review of the Tampa shipbuilder’s time at the helm of baseball’s most storied team. George: The Poor Little Rich Boy Who Built The Yankee Empire promises “an exciting and compelling story well told,” and by and large, it delievers. And this is coming from a guy that would have celebrated in the streets had Al-Qaeda decided to crash a couple of planes into Yankee Stadium in April, in a manner of speaking.
Golenbeck’s well-researched book chronicles Steinbrenner’s days as a spoiled little ass growing up in Cleveland, his antics in the Air Force and as an assistant football coach, and ultimately his forays into sports ownership. Steinbrenner’s dickish ways were first on display as owner of the Cleveland Pipers of the old ABL, but would assume a more prominent stage in 1973, when he would lead a group of investors to buy the New York Yankees from CBS for $10 million, a paltry sum when one considers what the landmark franchise is worth today.
The meat of the book begins here, as Golenbeck chronicles Steinbrenner’s relentless tormenting of players, managers, and front office staff alike. The Billy Martin saga, The Dave Winfield contract, and his two suspensions from Major League Baseball are laid out–by the people that were there–in a way that may shatter your image of the guy that was so lovably parodied on “Seinfeld.” Golenbeck’s subject is nowhere near lovable, and the evidence might blow your mind. Read the rest of this entry »
Another sports website has obtained a copy of the book, Blowing The Whistle: The Culture Of Fraud In The NBA, written by former NBA ref Tim Donaghy. The book exposes some of Donaghy’s personal dirty laundry, including how he decided to bet on certain NBA games during his tenure there. But one of the lighter anecdotes in the book involves a bet that referees would make to see who could hold out the longest before calling the first foul of the game.
During one particular summer game, Duke Callahan, Mark Wunderlich, and I made it to the three-minute mark in the first quarter without calling a foul. We were running up and down the court, laughing our asses off as the players got hammered with no whistles. The players were exhausted from the nonstop running when Callahan finally called the first foul because Mikki Moore of the New Jersey Nets literally tackled an opposing player right in front of him. Too bad for Callahan-he lost the bet.
I became so good at this game that if an obvious foul was committed right in front of me, I would call a travel or a three-second violation instead. Those violations are not personal fouls, so I was still in the running to win the bet. The players would look at me with disbelief on their faces as if to say, “What the hell was that?”
Seriously, read the whole thing at Deadspin, and here’s hoping that the book actually sees the light of day. I mean, everyone knows that outcomes are fixed in the WWE and they seem to be doing pretty well. Besides, I’m pining for the day that Kevin Garnett finally smacks Bruce Bowen in the head with a steel chair.
The frozen head of late baseball legend Ted Williams was abused, according to an excerpt from an upcoming book. The book, Frozen, chronicles the remains of the late Red Sox slugger in the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryogenic facility in Arizona. The book’s author, former Alcor executive Larry Johnson, describes how Williams’ body was mistreated and abused.
The book, out Tuesday from Vanguard Press, tells how Williams’ corpse became “Alcorian A-1949″ at the facility, where bodies are kept suspended in liquid nitrogen in case future generations learn how to revive them.
Johnson writes that in July 2002, shortly after the Red Sox slugger died at age 83, technicians with no medical certification gleefully photographed and used crude equipment to decapitate the majors’ last .400 hitter.
Williams’ severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can.
More nightmare fuel after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Those of you looking for another great football read or just walking around with twenty bucks to blow owe it to yourselves to check out The Football Fan’s Manifesto, the dickslappingest book ever written that doesn’t involve Jesus, zombies, or the American Revolution. Yeah, even better than that one guy’s book. Tell us about the book, Michael Tunison:
I finished editing this thing months ago and have had to spend the meantime sitting around praying specific jokes and references would hold up long enough not to be outdated by the time the book even hit stores. For example, there’s one part where I mock Cleveland for its 45-year title drought. Only so the Cavs could made me sweat it out for three whole rounds of the playoffs before failing miserably! Tension, I tells ya. via.
I haven’t finished the book yet, but the paperback cover feels fantasic against my baby soft skin. No, it’s a funny book from a funny guy, whose work you can still find on this site. And on Kissing Suzy Kolber. And on The Sporting Blog starting next week. But the book is better, and therefore, worth spending money on. Unlike your tramp girlfriend, who’s a tramp. Huh, that’s somewhat redundant, isn’t it?
God’s Quarterback (sorry, Kitna) just co-wrote a new book with his wife called First Things First: The Rules of Being a Warner, and it sounds like Rule No. 1 is the same as it is in every family: Father Gets Hosed. From NBC New York (via Tunison):
As the book unfolds, it becomes clear the the QB struggles at home: Warner had to offer one of his sons a quarter for every completed pass so that he’d agree to a game of catch in the backyard. He can’t even get them to agree to come to watch him play in the Super Bowl. Two skipped the game in February, and there was a good bit of tooth pulling involved to get the other five to show up for the game. What’s watching your dad play in a Super Bowl next to a Nintendo DS?
What a great family.
“Hey Dad, how was work?”
“We won the Super Bowl on a last-second play against Tennessee! It’s the greatest day I ever could have hoped for!”
“That’s nice. Can I have the car this weekend?”
Kids these days.
What follows is somewhere between a literary review and a book discussion. Sorry about the headline being a complete lie. But let’s be realistic: people aren’t going to click a headline with the word “book” in it.
It was almost two years ago that the collection of basketball philosophers at FreeDarko introduced the Competitive Style Guide, a series of sketches on graph paper that illustrated perfectly what the website’s authors had been trying to communicate for years with thousands of slippery words.
Two NBA seasons later, Bloomsbury USA is publishing FreeDarko’s The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, a field guide to the lens of style through which FreeDarko views the NBA. And while the en vogue book in the blog world right now is Drew Magary’s excellent and hilarious Men With Balls [Ed. Note: Drew will handle posting duties on With Leather tomorrow to promote the book], I found FreeDarko’s move from blog to book the more rewarding of the two.
