Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman Review

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(More customer reviews)While every major league team is required to retire Jackie Robinson's #42, the Lords of Baseball might also consider having every team display a pair of rimless glasses, an unlit cigar and a bow tie in memory of Branch Rickey. Until that happens, Lee Lowenfish's book stands as an excellent and precise memorial.
Robinson's contribution to baseball and American history is undeniable, but he was acting, to some extent, in his best self-interest. Rickey's self-interest, as normally defined, however, would have been to continue to bar the door to African American participation in the big leagues, while denying the door was even shut. This was the path of his fellow baseball decision-makers, for decades.
Rickey defined his self-interest in broader, even spiritual terms. He was several kinds of paradox: a muscular Christian, a country gentleman who lived and worked in the biggest cities, a tee-totaler who constantly supported and even loved rascals like Leo Durocher, Dizzy Dean and Pepper Martin.
Mr. Lowenfish, in addition to being a fine baseball maven and historian, is also a professorial-grade expert on American History. He combines these areas of expertise smoothly, giving depth and meaning to the various events and decisions in Rickey's life. He weaves details from inside baseball and culture into a deeply textured whole.
He also does not see the world in terms of cardboard heroes and villains, a particularly rare and useful point of view when it comes to this story, which has so much genuine and well documented heroism. Lowenfish reports on Happy Chandler, Lee Mac Phail, Ben Chapman, even that original baseball Satan, Walter O'Malley, by treating them as real people with complex motives, instead of mere evil-doers put in the world specifically for Robinson and Rickey to overcome.
Give Robinson, who walked through the door, all the credit in the world. But also credit he who opened the door. Lee Lowenfish does so in the way that Rickey himself would have most admired: by showing the human beings behind the myths.

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The Billion Dollar Game: Behind the Scenes of the Greatest Day In American Sport - Super Bowl Sunday Review

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(More customer reviews)The subtitle on this book states that it will take you "behind the scenes of the greatest day in American sport...Super Bowl Sunday". Well, author Allen St. John delivered superbly on that promise.
Basically, this book takes you through the lion's share of the preparation that goes into pulling off perhaps the biggest logistical nightmare in sporting history...the NFL Super Bowl. From choosing a stadium (heck, BUILDING a stadium!), coordinating the crowd, throwing the parties, and broadcasting the on-field action, among many other areas, St. John takes you along for the ride as he begins to truly understand the magnitude of the events he is witnessing.
As a lifelong football fan, I have always watched the Super Bowl, but never really researched the kind of work that goes into making it all run smoothly (or at least as close to that definition as possible). St. John actually makes it fun, too, as his interviews with the key orchestrators of the event are always revealing without being pushy or overly dramatic...he's just a guy trying to wrap his head around everything.
There are really only two complaints I have about the book: First, is the prolonged focus on the building of the new stadium in Tempe, Arizona to host the Big Game. It almost seemed as if St. John's original goal was to show the kind of economic impact a new stadium could have on a particular reason, but then decided to broaden his scope. Also, I was left a little bit wanting by the ending; more specifically the fact that so little was actually written about the actual Super Bowl in question. St. John does a remarkable job of showing his readers the build-up to the event, but fizzles a bit when actually describing the events that made it all pay off.
All in all, though, this book is a fun little read for all NFL fans (or anyone in the marketing/advertising/production fields!) that will leave you wondering how it will all come together this February.

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Call of the Game Review

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(More customer reviews)I am not a big reader of books. Often I will buy a book, set it downand not pick it up for weeks, or even months or years. However, this book I sat and read almost cover-to-cover. As a sportscaster myself, I found it entertaining, informative, and provides excellent direction and insight for younger men and women who are hoping to break into this field. If you are planning or hoping to one day go into the broadcasting industry, whether its in sports, news, or whatever, I would say this is required reading!

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How many times have you listened to play-by-play on television and thought, I could do that job? With this book, perhaps you can. At the least, you'll learn what it takes to be a play-by-play announcer. Your teacher? A consummate professional. For more than 25 years, Gary Bender has described the action on the playing field of 29 different sports, 27 at network level.

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Jackie's Nine: Jackie Robinson's Values to Live By Review

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(More customer reviews)but I also seldom read a book this good. With chapters on Courage, Determination, Teamwork, Persistence, Integrity, Citizenship, Justice, Commitment and Excellence, this book can be read in one sitting or by the chapter (as each is an individual story). Some of the writing is Sharon's and some of it is Jackie's. Others contribute, including Roger Kahn, Christopher Reeve & Jackie's wife, Rachel. Baseball fans will enjoy stories detailing Jackie's initial meeting with Branch Rickey, stealing home in the World Series and his relationship PeeWee Reese. This is a great book to read with your children or to your children.

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Branch Rickey (Penguin Lives) Review

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(More customer reviews)The wonderful "Penguin Lives" series has hit another home run with Breslin's insightful, entertaining and revealing treatment of the man who, as GM of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the late 1940's, had the courage and foresight to facilitate Jackie Robinson's extraordinary breaking of the sport's color bar.
These "Lives" books are not meant to be exhaustive biographies. Generally, there are no indices, source notes. Rather, the author provides a quite selective bibliography for readers wanting fuller treatment. The mission of the "Lives" books, rather, is to sketch the full life, and home in on significant, inspiring acts of the subject that truly made a positive difference in the world. The several I have read, including this one, have the sense of a masterful story-teller chatting knowingly with me across a kitchen table.
Enter Breslin, an icon himself, who for more than 55 years has moved us to tears and laughter and greater understanding. His selection to treat Rickey really is "beautiful." By story's end, Penguin's choice of Rickey as the inaugural sports figure in the series--ahead of Robinson, Ruth, Thorpe--also seems totally appropriate. As Breslin shows, without Rickey doggedly pursuing his vision of integration against many foes, a decade (or more) might have passed unchanged.
What led Rickey to dissent from all 15 other baseball owners (Breslin provides their ridiculously pious and hypocritical "Statement on Race") and dedicate himself and his team to integration? Breslin reveals Rickey as a dedicated Methodist, a proponent of fairness for all, with an eye for talent (he champions a lanky young freshman named George Sisler; years later, Rickey and super scout Clyde Sukeforth seize on Robinson, but only after subjecting him to a four-hour grilling, "Will you have the guts to turn away?"; the recounting of that meeting is riveting). As do a number of others in the Penguin series, Rickey radiates as a true visionary. Not only was breaking the color bar the right thing to do morally; it also was great business. Rickey's every act in that direction was purposeful, as Breslin shows us a man who never relied on luck. "Luck," Rickey said, "is the residue of design."
So before Robinson could take the field in a Dodgers uniform and triumph over so much hostility, Rickey carefully built a new infrastructure. He steadfastly courted politicians to pass first a fair employment law and then to mobilize their constituencies; he spoke to African-American groups; he courageously ignored the racist sports writers of the time; he reasoned with some of his own racist players. "Proximity" was part of his vision for success--by being proximate to a player of Robinson's immense talent and focus, the rightness of integration would manifest itself. He was in his late 60's by then, had a long and successful career in baseball, but was determined to make this happen. And in Robinson he had a great chance.
With his unique style, wry humor and grace, gift for incisive anecdotes and riffs, and flair for embellishing dialogue without taking undue liberties, Breslin succeeds in letting his remarkable subject's life achievement show and tell itself. In so doing, Breslin's gem takes a rightful place among Penguin's other lives who really mattered.

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