Customer Reviews

The Best American Sports Writing 2007

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Most of the books in this series have been excellent. This is the rare exception. I want to read what the title promises -- the best of the previous year's writing. This completely fails to deliver, in what I suspect was an attempt by this editor (who hopefully won't be asked to play this role again) to assemble what amounts to a sideshow of sports largely ignored by the public -- for good reason, as you'll discover by reading. The writing is average at best and the subjects are just not that interesting.

This book takes for you for a loop in that you think that the major sports are going to be covered in baseball, football, basketball and maybe some hockey. The first chapter is actually about racoon hunting and the next one is a satire about Bugs Bunny if he played in an actual baseball game.

In fact here is a list of the additional sports covered in this book:

-High school "futbol"

-High school football

-Former NFL player Jake Scott's wherabouts today

-Mark McGwire in retirement

-The first $100,000 bonus given to a baseball player

-Horseracing

-Don King & boxing

-Olympic skiier Bode Miller

-Cycling

-A woman race-car driver

-Fishing

-Surboarding

-Bill Parcells

-John Cheney

-Red Aurbach

-Shady HS Basketball sneaker company recruiting

-Travel baseball

-Former college football star's life after serious injury

-Pickup basketball games

-Pool

-Former college basketball player's encounter with stopping the shoe bomber

-Iraqi soccer

-Running

-Rodeos

-Turkey hunting

I am giving this book 5 stars to off-set the one-star rating because this book doesn't deserve that low of a rating. Most of the short-stories are from well-respected publications and notable authors. It is hard to read this book straight through because of the variety of the work, but it was a very high quality read.

No way is this collection worthy of only one star. There are too many good or better than good stories, as David Maraniss mixed it up to include a lot of different sports. His focus is on the human element, not actual game stories or their immediate aftermath, as they usually are far too ephemeral for a collection, not matter how sharply done.

The challenge for this particular set is that only a few are at all memorable enough to stick with you after completion. Too many are not that interesting or are nothing special or simply didn't appeal to me, such as the one on John Cheney and the odd take on Bugs Bunny.

My favorites were the high school football game that went 73-72, the running Hoyts, surfing technology, the Saturday hoops tradition, and Jake Scott. The surfing was a nice touch, as it was on a subject about which few readers probably have a clue, making it especially fresh and informative.

If you are only interested in a single sport or two, look elsewhere.

3.5 stars

I read the reviews here, but thought, "how bad can it be?" It's very bad. Every single story was dull, dull, dull. David Halberstam, we miss you!!!

I bought most of the books in this series and gave them for Christmas gifts. My husband loves the Sports pages, so I gave him this book. He said the book has very few good stories, very poor writing in many of them. He said he felt that the editor decided he needed to have one story about each sport, rather than the best stories about a few sports.