thursday february 07
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Sports
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Winter can be a very long stretch of time for a baseball fan. Dreams of sunny afternoons at the ball park begin to float around with increasing frequency. There is an art exhibit currently installed in the atrium of the Main Library that serves to make those idealistic images even more alluring. For a generation of fans, Willie Mays is the embodiment of grace in the outfield. In oils, watercolors, collage, and pencil drawings, Mays is represented for his artistry and for his love of the game.
Originally gathered in 2006 in honor of Mays' 75th birthday, the collection was first displayed at the Louisville Slugger Museum. Cincinnati author Mike Shannon, editor of Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine and creator of the annual Casey Award, was the curator of this art collection; the Library has it on display through March 20. Mr. Shannon will appear at the Main Library on Saturday, March 1 from 1:00 to 3:00 pm in the Reading Garden to meet the public and to sign books. The accompanying book can be purchased at the Library Friend's Shop, open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.
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monday october 08
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Sports
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I don't know why, but as far back as I can remember I've had a passion for scuba diving. There's something about entering a completely different environment surrounded by a strangely organic and colorful world that is just mind-bending. In Stephen Harrigan's book
Water and Light: A Diver's Journey To a Coral Reef, he asks the question about his own passion for diving and where it originates
. In an attempt to answer this question, he sets out to spend several months diving off
Grand Turk Island. He explores the quiet, exquisite, and powerful beauty of coral reefs along dozens of sites around the island.
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wednesday october 03
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Sports
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I don’t like football. I understand the rules, but not the fascination with the game. As strange as it may seem, I enjoy watching the television show Friday Night Lights, starring Kyle Chandler and the Dillon Panthers, the high school football team of small town Dillon, Texas. Season two kicks off this Friday, October 5th.
The television series (and the 2004 movie) is based on the book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H.G. Bissinger. Originally published in 1990 (around the time yours truly was graduating from high school), Bissinger follows the 1988 Permian Panthers of Odessa, Texas into the locker room and onto the field, from preseason to playoffs.
The Panthers keep the hopes and dreams of this oil town alive, so Odessa takes its championship team seriously. The Permian High School stadium seats 19,000 and has artificial turf. Women carry black leather purses that look like footballs. One man has attended every game since the school opened in 1959 (except when he had heart bypass surgery). And angry fans, upset over a loss, place “For Sale” signs in the coach’s front yard.
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wednesday september 05
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Sports
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I like baseball, but not nearly as much as the protagonist of Robert Coover's novel The Univeral Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. The character's name is Henry Waugh, and he is not just a typical rabid Major League Baseball fan. He has taken baseball fanaticism to new heights. In fact, real life Major League Baseball isn't what he is concerned with, but a completely imagined league that is played as a game with dice. And if even this doesn't sound too out of the ordinary, Henry's game is fabricated to such a degree that a whole universe has been created around every possible aspect of the experience. For example, entire generations of players and seasons have already taken place and are established in his mind and all players past and present have fully realized personalities and histories that come to bear on the game itself.
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sunday may 13
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Sports
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Drivers wanted for Burt (B.S) Levy's Series of 1950's open-road car racing novels!
The Last Open Road series features narrator and small-town New Jersey resident Buddy Palumbo. Willing to do anything besides follow in his father’s footsteps by working in a chemical plant, Buddy finds work as an auto mechanic. Through this medium, Buddy discovers his talent for fixing classic sports cars. Among his favorites are MG’s, Ferraris and Jaguars. Eventually, Buddy falls into the practice of racing the sports cars and testing out his skills and handiwork. He develops a deep love for the cars, the racing, and the boss’ off-limits daughter, Julie Finzio.
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tuesday may 01
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Sports
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When it comes to concocting mysteries about fast horses and fast tracks, Dick Francis is the undisputed king. Although I can't track down the source, it seems that I recently read something about his unfortunate demise. You can imagine my suprise when, on a beautiful day during Keeneland's spring meet, I saw Mr. Francis himself autographing copies of his most recent book! That was a mystery I just had to solve.
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friday april 13
Categories
Sports
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As a kid I loved Kung Fu movies. So, naturally I was drawn to a book titled Lost in Place: Growing up Absurd in Suburbia by Mark Salzman. This memoir, through many hilarious scenes, evokes all of those wild ambitions most of us had as teenagers and our obsession to do whatever it took to make them a reality. Salzman recounts his adolescent fascination with Kung Fu and his quest to become a Zen master.
He quickly sought out the only Kung Fu school in his town and formally enrolled in a class. Only 14 years old at the time, he managed to convince the martial arts instructor to allow him to study and practice with the adult class. Not only was this a little dangerous, but the instructor was a bit of a loose cannon, leading his pupils through a series of reckless and ill-advised exercises. Needless to say, he got a little banged up during these weekly sessions and in the process was introduced to the adult world in a pretty skewed way.
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friday april 06
Categories
Sports
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The Cincinnati Reds, baseball’s oldest professional team, opened their 136th campaign on Monday at Great American Ballpark. In no particular order, here are a few baseball novels this Red's fan has enjoyed over the years.
The Southpaw by Mark Harris. A 1973 film starring Michael Moriarty and Robert De Niro made famous Bang the Drum Slowly, the second book in the Henry Wiggin quartet . Published in 1953, The Southpaw was the first . Henry’s appealing, idiomatic narrative limns his rookie season in the big leagues. The Southpaw is one of those distinctive American narratives clearly descended from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
If I Never Get Back by Darryl Brock. This baseball fantasy pays a homage to another Twain novel. San Francisco newspaperman Samuel Clemens Flower falls asleep on an Amtrak train in the 20th century, but awakens on a steam train in the company of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. A well-researched baseball story about the primitive professional game.
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monday march 19
Categories
Sports
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The Vernal Equinox comes every year in the Northern Hemisphere around March 20. Spring arrives! Day and night, for one 24-hour period, are equal.
I find that springtime light brings a lifting of moods and a deep contentment that never fails to brighten my spirits. I have dug up a variety of books from a variety of subject areas, all about spring:
Chasing Spring: an American Journey Through a Changing Season Bruce Stutz writes about following spring from the Gulf of Mexico to the Alaskan arctic, experiencing renewal and joy at the beauty of the awakening season.
Boys of Spring: Timeless Portraits from the Grapefruit League, 1947-2005 Ozzie Sweet is a renowned photographer, and this book of baseball photographs will get you in the mood for a game.
Everything for Spring: A Complete Activity Book for Teachers of Young Children: Activities for March, April, and May Spring fever is especially rampant in classrooms. These activities will help keep our youngest students busy.
The beautiful symphonic works of Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring and The Tender Land cannot fail to move you; available on CD or cassette.
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saturday february 24
Yesterday, my son was rejected by CCM as a piano performance major. Fortunately, he got over it in a few minutes because he liked Bowling Green (where he was accepted) better anyway.
I mention this because if you're planning to push your child into something, piano is better than figure skating, especially pairs figure skating. Pianos are expensive, but they're cheaper than ice time, skating coaches, skates (you'll have to have more than one pair, because your feet will keep growing as you get older, although maybe less than most people's if you're a girl and aren't allowed to weigh more than 100 pounds). Plus even if you're playing a piano duet, there's practically no chance that your partner's skate blade will pierce your skull. Jon Jackson's 2005 On Edge: Backroom Dealing, Cocktail Scheming, Triple Axels, and How Top Skaters Get Screwed; and Joy Goodwin's 2004 The Second Mark: Courage, Corrpution, and the Battle for Olympic Gold make this pretty clear.
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tuesday february 13
Categories
Sports
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Hockey is by far my favorite sport. I love the slap shot, the body check, the zamboni, and the fights. I sit and cheer and wish for skates as those "little boys" fight it out to get the tiny puck in the elusive net. And when they do, boy oh boy!
In 1980 something wonderful happened. Our young, green little boys duked it out with the big, seasoned Russian hockey team in the Olympics, and they won!
Wayne Coffey's 2005 book The Boys of Winter tells their story, which is even more fascinating than you think. The coaching was unconventional, and by using tactics that were unpredictable and new the Boys outsmarted the Men. They simply played better hockey, newer hockey, and their devotion and grit paid off in a gold medal.
Something wonderful happened in 1998 too: The US Women won Olympic Gold in hockey! Read about it in Crashing the Net by Mary Turco.
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saturday january 27
Categories
Sports
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Selling junk from around the house on eBay is fun, but driving to the post office is kind of a drag. When I saw Julian Dibbell's Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot, I thought I might be onto something I'd enjoy. For one thing, when my daughter got sick of Neopets, I took over her account, and I'm glad to report that our oldest pet, Jenifrlopez, is now 1,298 days old. (My daughter's gotten into Runescape: she's the girl with a chef's cap who goes around butchering virtual zoo animals.) Right now on eBay, someone is trying to sell a Runescape virtual Santa Hat for $100. Some virtual items have sold for hundreds of real dollars, presumably to game players who don't want to spend the hours it can take to earn rare items.
There is no market for virtual Neopets stuff on eBay, and my daughter refuses to sell her Runescape items. Neopets is not exactly a MMORPG ("massively multiplayer online role-playing game), and Runescape is not one of the more popular ones. Check the MMORPG Web site or similar ones for an update.
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saturday october 21
Categories
Sports
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Tom Callahan, a sports columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer in the early 1970s, has written a superb biography of Johnny Unitas, Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitas. I highly recommend it.
A native of Pittsburgh, John Unitas played quarterback at the University of Louisville in the early 1950s. The Pittsburgh Steelers selected him in the 9th round of the 1955 NFL draft, the 105th player taken. The Steelers then cut him. After competing in a Pittsburgh city-league, Unitas was invited to a tryout in the spring of 1956 by the Baltimore Colts. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
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saturday september 09
Categories
Sports
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Pound for Pound, a posthumously published boxing novel by F. X. Toole has received a lot of critical attention. It's the story of an emotionally scarred Los Angeles trainer, Dan Cooley, and his association with Chicky Garza, a rising young Hispanic fighter from San Antonio. The novel provides an unsentimental treatment of the redemptive power of boxing drawn from the elemental relationship between trainer and fighter.
In 2000, at the age of 70, F. X. Toole entered the literary world with a debut collection, Rope Burns: stories from the corner. He'd worked previously in boxing as a corner “cut man,” giving him an insider’s knowledge and perspective of the fight game. Toole died of heart disease in 2002, and never saw his story “Million $$$ Baby” translated into an Oscar-winning feature film in 2004.
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tuesday august 22
Categories
Sports
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I didn't set out to write about plane disasters involving athletes, but I just sort of happened upon two new books on the subject this week.
The first is Nando Parrado's Miracle in the Andes. Nando Parrado, of course, is the hero of Piers Paul Read's 1974 Alive! which you've certainly read or heard about unless you are too young. Parrado was one of two Uruguayan rugby players who crossed some of the highest peaks of the Andes, 62 days after the team's small plane crashed. They hoped to reach rescuers in Chile, which they believed to be much closer to the crash site than it was. Of the 45 passengers and crew members, 15 survived.
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friday june 23
Categories
Sports
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The Soap Box Derby has come back to Cincinnati after 30 years. When I was a child, the Soap Box Derby was a huge event with kids working all year to build and race the perfect car. Since its beginnings in Dayton, Ohio in 1933, the Derby has attracted large numbers of participates and observers. If you are interested in finding out more about the Soap Box Derby visit the official website or the local division.
For nostalgic glimpses of the Derby, check out some of these titles from the library
thursday june 22
Categories
Sports
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While the
Reds remain in contention in the pennant and wild card races (I'm typing as fast as I can), it seems a good time to remember
Jim Brosnan. The Elder High grad was a big, bespectacled, right-handed pitcher, used primarily in relief, whom the Reds acquired from the St. Louis Cardinals in midseason of 1959. As it happened, Brosnan was writing a personal account of the daily life of a professional baseball player that year.
The Long Season was published by Harper in 1960, and what an account it was.
Brosnan's singular chronicle of life in the big leagues was frank (but without vulgarity), funny, and the first of its kind. Never before had fans so intimately glimpsed the sport of baseball behind-the-scenes. Readers were rewarded with surprising observations, such as this one about old Crosley Field: "Life in the Cincinnati clubhouse in midsummer is lived in the raw. Pregame uniform is jock strap and shower clogs. The thought of putting on a flannel uniform over woolen socks and undershirt starts the sweat rolling."
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wednesday june 14
Categories
Sports
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Tomorrow marks the beginning of the 2006 U.S. Open Golf Championship, held this year from June 15th-18th at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, New York. Many people will be watching Tiger Woods's return to the tour after his father's death from cancer on May 3rd. His nine-week layoff is the longest of his career. Phil Mickelson won the last major, the Masters, in April, and many expect the two to duel it out on Father's Day.
Fans of both Tiger and Phil will probably enjoy John Daly's recent autobiography--My Life In and Out of the Rough: The Truth Behind All That Bull**** You Think You Know About Me. If you like reading about the game as much as playing it, you might want to try Peter Jacobsen's Embedded Balls: Adventures On and Off the Tour with Golf's Premier Storyteller, or Howard Sounes's The Wicked Game: Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and the Story of Modern Golf. The game of golf is also well-represented by Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly's two hilarious novels about Ponky, a semi-fictional golf course in Massachusetts-- Missing Links and its sequel Shanks for Nothing.
Interesting footnote: The first U.S. Open was played in October 1895 and the winner took home $150. Last year's winner, New Zealand's Michael Campbell, won a paltry $1,170,000.
wednesday june 07
Categories
Sports
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For four weeks—beginning June 9—football (that’s soccer to Americans) fans around the world will be glued to their television sets watching the
World Cup unfold. You’ve probably heard the World Cup described as the most popular event on the planet, but what exactly does that mean? According to
an analyst for a London firm that buys media space for advertisers, the tournament is expected to attract a television audience of more than five billion. The final match is expected to attract 300 million viewers. (By contrast, 95 million people tuned in to Super Bowl XL.) Now that’s big! Ready to get involved in the hoopla?
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friday june 02
Categories
Sports
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Raise your hand if you're gearing up for the World Cup matches in Germany. Thirty-five hundred English fans have been banned from attending because of past bad behavior at previous football (we call it soccer) matches.
Bill Buford was editor of Granta and fiction editor for The New Yorker, and then he gave it all up to study cooking seriously. His book about the learning experience, Heat, got such a good New York Times review that I wanted to read something else he'd written and discovered his 1992 bestseller, Among the Thugs.
Buford had lived in England for fifteen years and never seen a football match. Intrigued by the sight of soccer fans systematically destroying a train, Buford took a package tour to Turin, Italy, with a group of historically violent Manchester United supporters and was carried away by the rioting and looting that followed the game.
Buford's original thought was that the rioters were disenfranchised outsiders who used soccer violence as a way of venting their understandable rage against society. Surprisingly, he found that many of the supporters had high-paying jobs, and he had to find new theories to explain the violence that football engenders around the world. Part of the blame seems to go to the nature of football itself.
