Fathers & Sons & Sports: Great Writing by Buzz Bissinger, John Ed Bradley, Bill Geist, Donald Hall, Mark Kriegel, Norman Maclean, and others (Paperback)

~ Mike Lupica (Introduction)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

For generations, fathers and sons have used the language of sports to work out their differences and express their love for each other. Fathers & Sons & Sports presents a powerful lineup of real-world stories about fathers and sons playing one-on-one in the game of life, written by such great sportswriters and authors as

Henry Aaron, as told to Cal Fussman • Michael J. Agovino • Buzz Bissinger • Jeff Bradley • John Ed Bradley • James Brown • Darcy Frey • Tom Friend • Bill Geist • Mike Golic • Donald Hall • Paul Hoffman • Mark Kriegel • Norman Maclean • John Buffalo Mailer • Ron Reagan • Peter Richmond • Jeremy Schaap • Lew Schneider • Dan Shaughnessy • Paul Solotaroff • John Jeremiah Sullivan • Wright Thompson • Steve Wulf


The unforgettable accounts here include the stories of a professional football player passing on his father’s secrets to his own sons, a severely disabled boy discovering joy on a surfboard, a wealthy NFL player taking his coddled children back to the mean streets that made him, and a major league manager who must face the hard fact that nothing, not even unconditional love, can save his son.

Anyone who has ever been a father or a son will see himself in these moving snapshots of family life at its most emotional. Whether the stories take place on a diamond, a court, a gridiron, a fairway, or a chessboard, they’re all about the same subject: fatherhood, one of the world’s most intriguing sports.

About the Author

Mike Lupica , a nationally known columnist for the New York Daily News, has written books for both fathers and sons. His first two novels for young readers, Travel Team and Heat, reached # 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Lupica is also a Sunday morning regular on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters. He lives in New Canaan, Connecticut, with his wife, Taylor, and their four children.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: ESPN (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933060700
• ISBN-13: 978-1933060705
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #329,203 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #38 in

  Books > Sports > Miscellaneous > Journalism

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "FATHER & SON SHORT SPORTS STORIES: SOME GREAT-SOME NOT.", May 13, 2008

By	Rick Shaq Goldstein "Rick Shaq Goldstein" (Danville, Ca, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Fathers & Sons & Sports: Great Writing By Buzz Bissinger, John Ed Bradley, Bill Geist, Donald Hall, Mark Kriegel, Norman MaClean, and Others (Hardcover)

ESPN has put together twenty previously published "short" stories built around the FATHER & SON dynamic with sports as the stage and or backdrop. Some stories are twenty plus pages and some are one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half pages. And unlike the old saying "size doesn't matter", in this collection of stories, coincidentally, the diminutive stories are the ones that noticeably do not pack the knockout punch the reader is hoping for. Two of the best stories were excerpted from previously published complete books. The two books, which I have both previously reviewed on Amazon are: "PISTOL: THE LIFE OF PETE MARAVICH" by Mark Kriegel and perhaps the most beautifully and intelligently written book about playing college football and the missed emotional opportunities looking back years later: "IT NEVER RAINS IN TIGER STADIUM" by John Ed Bradley.

The sports imbedded in these twenty stories range from football to baseball to boxing to fishing to swimming to wrestling and even (?)chess. There are some tear jerker's involving a Father's love for his autistic, epileptic son who has an IQ they can't measure "because he can't, or won't, follow instructions." ("A Father's Small Hope") And a sad and eloquently transcribed remembrance of a son's missed wish of taking his golf loving Father to the Master's Tournament. The son had finally got passes for him and his Father to attend, and then his Dad passed away before they could live out the dream, and the son writes: "The funeral week was a blur. When we picked out his favorite Zegna sport coat, I went into his bathroom, holding those Masters credentials in my hands. I took them out, slipping them into the jacket pocket. If there was an Augusta National in heaven, I wanted him to get in. I'm sorry, Daddy, I said to the air, you didn't get to go. Seven months later, I was back at Augusta. It was a hard week. I wore a pair of his shoes around the course, trying to walk it for him. I wrote a column about it for my newspaper and, as I'm doing now, tried to find some closure. Then, I believed my grief ended with the catharsis of the last paragraph. I was naïve, as I found when I returned to Augusta in the coming years, finding my pain stronger each time." ("Holy Ground")

One of the other stories is about Tommy Lasorda and his deceased son Tommy Jr. It catches the reader off guard as it is written from the point of view of the people that knew the Lasorda's rather than by the Lasorda's. The senior Lasorda denies that his son was gay, despite the cause of death on the death certificate, and all of the son's friends celebrate the lifestyle that Jr. chose.

I rate this book as 3 ½ stars, because even though there are some real literary gems in this collection, there are also a few strikeouts.