All Roads Lead to October: Boss Steinbrenner's 25-Year Reign over the New York Yankees (Hardcover)

by Maury Allen (Author) "Don Larsen pitched a perfect game the last time two New York baseball teams got together in the 20th century for the 1956 World Series..." (more)
Key Phrases: other sportswriters, fourteen games, postseason play, New York, Billy Martin, World Series (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
If there's a sports tale ripe for the telling, it's George Steinbrenner's stewardship of the Yankees. But where to center? On the tumult, the terror, the absurdity, or the glory? In All Roads Lead to October, Maury Allen refracts the broad spectrum. Wandering genially from story to story and era to era, he scatters anecdotes and observations like a spray hitter in a book that reads like a long evening on a barstool beside an old sportswriter (which he is). He may stray at times, but he never gets lost.

Still, it's hard to go too off the track given the situations that have arisen and the personalities that have revolved through Steinbrenner's stormy tenure. Writers can't make up stuff like pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson trading families, Reggie Jackson proving "the magnitude of me" with his bat, the zaniness surrounding Billy Martin's hirings and firings, the humiliation of Dave Winfield, the exile of Yogi Berra, the sentimental melodrama of Joe Torre, and Darryl Strawberry's bottomless second chance. Well-covered stuff? Sure. But Allen's not shy about inflicting his personal prejudices and assessments on them--they give old stuff new spin.

Of course, even in that Bronx Zoo, there's no animal quite like Steinbrenner himself. With insights finely tuned over time, Allen paints the Boss with brush strokes nuanced enough to capture the complexities and contradictions Steinbrenner wallows in--is anyone else in sports so fascinatingly arrogant, egotistical, unbridled, passionate, terrifying, astute, silly, sappy, able, and goodhearted all in one? Allen doesn't think so, which isn't surprising. What is is his ultimate appraisal: "Imagine," Allen submits, "the Boss as a Cooperstown bust." Given the record, it's really not that big a stretch. --Jeff Silverman

From Publishers Weekly
Allen's uneven account of the fortunes of the Yankees since George Steinbrenner bought the team in 1973 can be divided into two partsAthe early years when Allen covered the team on a daily basis for the New York Post, and the later years after he had left the beat. During his days as a beat reporter, Allen had an insider's view of how the team rose from also-rans to world champions, and he provides a detailed, anecdote-filled look at those teams featuring such colorful characters as Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Lou Piniella and Billy Martin. Despite winning back-to-back World Series in 1977 and '78, the Yankees were a dysfunctional group: Allen vividly captures the battles between Jackson and Munson, Martin and Jackson, and Steinbrenner and most of the team. Allen is particularly sharp in tracing the complex relationship between Steinbrenner and Martin, the Yankee manager who Steinbrenner hired and fired five times. He's much less successful in recounting the Yankees' return to glory in the second half of the 1990s. The World Series the team won in 1996, 1998 and 1999 are covered in a perfunctory fashion, as Allen no longer had the access to the team he had 20 years earlier. Also disappointing is Allen's decision to take some cheap shots at several players, including the late Munson, whom Allen describes as a sour man; he even brags that he will never vote for Munson to enter the Hall of Fame. Allen does say, however, that Steinbrenner, having overseen five World Series teams, does warrant consideration in Cooperstown, a position that will have Yankee fans arguing for years. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st ed edition (July 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312261756
• ISBN-13: 978-0312261757
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #251,460 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Book That Misses The Mark, October 13, 2000

By	michael luciano (Riverview, fl USA) - See all my reviews

This book is a perfect example of the importance of truth in advertising. If Maury Allen wanted to write a book that provided an overview of his prolific sports writing career I'm sure that there would have been many interested readers. However, he has chosen to write that book and disguise it as a book about the Yankees. Sure, the focus of the book for the most part is on the Yankees, but Allen presents little that the average Yankee fan has not already seen. He also interrupts the narration on the Yankees with stories from his personal experiences that have nothing to do with the Yankees. There are no insights here for Yankee fans, which would be fine if he didn't promise a book about George Steinbrenner's years of ownership with the Yankees. Don't waste your time with this book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I Expected Better, June 21, 2000

By	Eric Paddon (Morristown, NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Rabid Yankee fan that I am, I bought this book expecting a fascinating overview of the Steinbrenner era with some new insights and perspectives. I got neither.

Maury Allen was without question a talented sportswriter in his prime, but this ranks as the worst written sports history book I have ever read. It soon becomes clear that Allen's book isn't the product of extensive research but merely personal reminiscences and meanderings that offer very little sense of depth or substance about this period at all. Allen's most gripping chapter is his first one concerning his eyewitness perspective on the Fritz Peterson-Mike Kekich "wife swap". After that, it's all downhill with skimpy warmed over rehashings of things I've read about in so many better written books.

Along the way, when Allen skimps over the seasons and games of the period he's supposedly writing about he wanders off into annoying digressions about players of the 50s Brooklyn Dodgers, or the early 60s Mets, or Richie Ashburn, or being rude to Richard Nixon in 1969, none of which has anything to do with the Steinbrenner era. And on top of that, he gets so many basic facts wrong that after awhile it really gets annoying. There's trouble in the opening when he has the Mets beating Houston instead of Arizona in last year's postseason! On another occasion he describes Dave Righetti's 1983 no-hitter as the first at Yankee Stadium since 1951 (uh Maury, what about Don Larsen?) Don Mattingly is described as the first Yankee captain since Thurman Munson (Graig Nettles, Willie Randolph and Ron Guidry held the position after Munson and before Mattingly). Tony Horton is described as playing for Boston and being victimized by Steve Hamilton's "Folly Floater" in Fenway Park (Horton played for Cleveland and the incident happened at Yankee Stadium). Don Mattingly's eight game HR streak is described as happening at a time when the Yankees were "going nowhere" in 1987 (They were in first place at the time).

This book is for completists only. As a comprehensive overview of the Steinbrenner era it is neither comprehensive, nor is it much of an overview.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Ron Guidry Really Likes Chess, August 8, 2000

By	Michael Zakhar (North Arlington, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

I was quite excited when I first saw this book, being a twentysomething die hard Yankee fan. I enjoyed Maury Allen's work for the New York Post for some time. Now that I've read it, I must say I'm terribly disappointed.

If you are looking for an objective view of George Steinbrenner, don't bother picking this book up. The Boss is clearly a complicated man, generous one moment and cruel the next, but not in Allen's view. He only casually mentions Steinbrenner's Hyde-like moments, then spends pages gushing about George's generous deeds. Yogi Berra's anger toward the Boss and self-imposed exile from Yankee Stadium is left out almost entirely.

Allen can also be quite sloppy at times. Chances are most people reading the book know that the "Curse of the Bambino" was born when Babe Ruth was traded to the Red Sox. Even so, bringing up the phrase once or twice is justifiable; to retell the story every time the Red Sox are in a pennant race, every time the Yanks sign a free agent from Boston, etc. gets to be tedious. Yet, that anecdote and others, are repeated and repeated.

Plus Allen glosses over that long, rough Yankee stretch between playoff appearances and completely ignores the terrible trades where that Yanks gave up future all-stars like Willie McGee for mediocre players like Bob Sykes. When Allen closes with the notion that the Boss is worthy of consideration for the Baseball Hall of Fame, I shivered and wondered where such an idea could have come from.