Thanks, Monica and Dave, for inviting me to join the fray and kick start the book blog. Since you took me up on my suggestion to start off with Selena Robert’s book on Alex Rodriguez, I’m preparing to shoulder the blame should it somehow fail to be blog-worthy material. My hope was that, at the very least, the subject matter and writing will serve as lightening rods for other issues that matter to us as journalists and sports fans.
So I guess it’s only fitting that I begin my first post by explaining why I wanted to read this particular book in the first place. It has nothing to do with being either a Yankee or A-Rod fan. (Full disclosure: I grew up in Queen as an angst-ridden Mets fan.) My ears do, however, prick up at the scintillating gossip surrounding A-Rod. Like most people who thumb through the tabloids at the supermarket checkout line–Monica, can you tell I’m desperately in need of book club salvation?–I am curious to learn about the exact nature of A-Rod’s relationship with Madonna–did she brainwash him to the point where her videos put him in a trance? did the two really have Sabbath dinners together?
On that and any matters related to Kabbalah, I’m hoping this book settles the score once and for all.
Seriously, however, my real motivation for reading this book is the author. When Roberts worked at Times, I followed her byline religiously. Her dramatic narrative style, packed with vivid color and suspense, made for the kind of engrossed read that kept my spoon frozen over the cereal bowl.
There was also the mystique to being a female sportswriter. I often imagined her in the locker room, jockeying a hoard of male reporters for a good quote and besting them in print the next day.
Yes, it’s true, she is overwrought on occasion, but in sports writing especially, it’s a forgivable sin. But since I’ve spent way too much time fishing through the Times archive, I’ll let you folks decide. Here are a few random excerpts, in no particular order:
All that was left in John Starks’s locker was a T-shirt, a gum wrapper and a blank Post-It note. He was long gone without a trace.
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The ranting collection of men in the front-row corner seats were boring their way under the thinning skin of Latrell Sprewell. At first, he could take the irritation, and tossed back the hostile vibes filling up the Arena in Oakland like a stiff shot of whiskey.
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The Giants are never without words. They rail and they ramble. In the Coughlin Era, they have almost always been steeped in a back-page saga. Yesterday, they functioned for a normal cause: winning.—–
He scoffed at the masked muscle before him. He sneered at the challenge. And that is how it has to be for the Knicks. They have to scoff and sneer and act like nothing is too overwhelming, daunting or challenging. And when they did that today, the Knicks rediscovered something wild and wicked within them as they made up a 14-point, second-quarter deficit and snatched home-court advantage from the Heat by taking Game 2 of their first-round series, 96-86.
Monica, Dave, and any readers out there, who are your favorite sportswriters and sports books?
