What I've Been Reading...
Basketball, football and spicy literary fiction, with some Scranton thrown in
In my small corner of the world, Northeast Pennsylvania, the current days are blisteringly cold and short while the nights are long and dark.
It makes it the perfect time to sit on the couch under a blanket and read a book. Or two. Or three.
I tend to be a seasonal reader. January and February are typically strong reading months for me, before I taper off in the spring and summer months, although some summer months are conducive, with their daylight that stretches until 9 o’clock and it’s sometimes cooler to be outside on the patio than inside the house. Basically the complete opposite of the cold winter months.
This month, I’ve already finished three books; two of them sports-related and one that was highlighted on The Ringer in an article entitled “The Year of Spicy Literary Fiction.”
The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam
This is widely considered a “classic” among sports books and by sports journalists.
Halberstam, who died in 2007 in an automobile accident, covered everything from Vietnam (The Best and the Brightest), and for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, to sports, including some of the greatest sports books, which includes one on former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick (“The Education of a Coach”).
“The Breaks of the Game” is widely considered his masterpiece among his sports books, and one that I’ve been aware of for thirty years, but finally decided to read thanks to the list of recommendations by Substack’s very own
.It details the Portland Trail Blazers, who won the NBA championship in 1977, but by the 1979-80 season was a shell of its once promising dynasty.
The key cog in that championship and supposed future was Bill Walton, the giant red-headed center who had proceeded Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at UCLA during the college’s dynastic run in the 1960s and early ‘70s.
As gifted as Walton was as a player, a true big man who could pass and score seemingly at will, he was ultimately betrayed by his body, in particular, his feet.
As the book opens, Walton has been traded by the Trail Blazers to the San Diego (now Los Angeles) Clippers, even though it is still not known if he’s fully healthy enough to play, or ever will be.
I recently listened to a podcast with Walton, who died last May, where he said the book is the only one of Halberstam’s he didn’t read, and not because he was unhappy about how he or his teams were portrayed, but because it’s a sad story.
And he was right. Athletes always seem to have an unhappy or sad ending. They just can’t seem to help themselves, no matter how great they are.
Johnny Unitas plays for the Chargers. Jordan plays for the Wizards. Ruth plays for the Boston Braves.
“The Breaks of the Game” is a great piece of immersive reporting, and Halberstam’s profiles of the players, coaches, trainers and owners are a masterclass in writing.
“Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL” by Jeff Pearlman
In the 1980s, I was infatuated with sports. I watched ESPN continuously, including the ridiculous sports they covered back then, as they tried to fill 24-hours worth of sports programming.
Golf. Pro wrestling. World’s strongest man competitions. Australian Rules Football. If it was on, I watched it.
One of the greatest parts of ESPN was the USFL, the spring time pro football league, which gave this 9-year-old his football fix between Mets games and sick days home from school.
To me, the USFL was on par with the NFL. It was football on TV.
After reading Pearlman’s well-researched book on the league, which only lasted three seasons (1983-85), it gave me a totally new appreciation for the men who entertained me on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, Monday nights, and during Wednesday afternoon re-runs.
Like me, Pearlman had his own infatuation with the USFL, including a senior paper in high school that ran more than 40 pages. After proposing the book for years, even as his career took him to Sports Illustrated, he eventually found a publisher willing to work with him on his pet project.
To say the characters in this book are unique is an understatement.
Booze, cocaine and strippers seemed to be part of every team’s preparation during the week, including sometimes on the field during games.
A group of “wealthy” owners, including our very own 45th and 47th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, all joined the mission of spring football as a counterpoint to what had become the stodgy NFL, known as the “No Fun League”.
As much as the USFL was a success, it was also an overwhelming failure. And much of that, according to Pearlman, falls at the feet of Trump, who was intent on joining the Old Boys Club of the NFL.
After finally winning an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL — for $1 — the USFL officially ceased operations in 1986.
The legacy of the USFL, however, would color the next decade of the NFL. Quarterbacks Doug Williams and Steve Young would win Super Bowl MVPs. Jim Kelly would lead the Buffalo Bills to four straight Super Bowl appearances. Defensive end Reggie White would lead the Packers back to Super Bowl glory for the first time since Super Bowl II.
Coach Jim Mora would become a success in the NFL with the Saints and Colts. Marv Levy would be Kelly’s coach in Buffalo. “Ball coach,” Steve Spurrier would become a legend in Gainesville, Florida, where he led the Gators to a National Championship.
And Carl Peterson, who worked in player personnel for the Philadelphia-Baltimore Stars, would become a success in the NFL with the Kansas City Chiefs.
Pearlman goes beyond the wild, wacky and hyperbolic stories, however, to show just how much the league meant to the hundreds of young men who would never play again when the league closed it’s doors.
“Rejection” by Tony Tulathimutte
I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to really discuss this book.
It’s like no other book I’ve ever read. It’s a novel, but told through a collection of short stories. Certain characters appear in multiple stories, sometimes as the main character, sometimes as a bad and brief dinner date.
The author, Tulathimutte, also appears as a character in a story, and so you are left wondering if what you are reading is fact or fiction.
It’s a puzzle, wound and wrapped in a web of the internet, identity with a long, meandering request for a made-on-demand sex-fantasy video thrown in.
This is probably not everyone’s cup of tea, and was not one I would recommend.
Hopefully some of the other tombs on the list of The Ringer’s “The Year of Spicy Literary Fiction” has something that appeals more to my reading taste buds.
Literary Scranton
One of the crazier things I find during all of my reading is how often “Scranton” appears in books.
In “The Breaks of the Game,” Walton is befriended by Jack Scott, who happens to be a former high school football player from Scranton. Walton, who grew up in sunny San Diego, has trouble adjusting to Portland’s rainy cloudy climate, which is not a problem for Scott.
In “Football For A Buck,” Pearlman mentions a league tryout in Scranton, attended by a number of “coal miners.” While none of them made the team, and the scout was worried, “I thought they were gonna kick my ass.” There was one local player from the Scranton area, however, who played in the USFL. Fullback Frank Yanik, who ended up blocking for the New Jersey Generals and Herschel Walker, the Heisman Trophy winner the USFL plucked from under the NFL’s nose, when the NFL didn’t allow underclassmen to enter the draft.
Leave a comment and let me know what you’re currently reading, your favorite sports books, or if you’re hometown has ever appeared in a book:
I read the USFL book a few years ago, it was wild!