Brockett Blog

Is one born a champion of the underdog, or nurtured into choosing the uphill battle? For me, it was both. Growing up in a small town that could barely field one team in any sport, the kids of Elwood would face long odds even against towns that require maximum zoomage on Google Maps. When we won, which was rarely, we earned it.

But my natural inclination for other sports, ones in which I wasn’t wearing Croakies attached to my glasses and simply watching on television, always has leaned toward the underdog. The 1990s were filled with dynasties in professional football, baseball and basketball, and only the close proximity to Chicago made the last worth rooting for. My fondest random sports memory of this time period is sitting on the couch with my dad as Princeton survived a horrible start to somehow beat babyface punk supreme Toby Bailey and UCLA. Neither Princeton nor myself could hardly be considered ragtag, but such an outcome gave hope – however tenuously connected – that such outcomes were possible in my life.

All this leads to, of all things, the 2003 Northern Illinois Huskies. I was there in 1998 when the school ended the longest losing streak in the country on a rainy homecoming. And I had left just in time to see the program reach its ascendency with All-Pro Michael Turner leading the way. Wins against Maryland (the last big school to play in DeKalb) and at Alabama (granted, during the Mike Shula years, but still!) propelled the team into the BCS standings and onto shows like Pardon the Interruption. It was unbelievable in the literal sense of the word. Unfortunately, the team dropped two conference games to ranked teams – really, the height of the MAC’s relevance – to finish the regular season 10-2 … and sit at home unoccupied during bowl season. Read the rest of this entry →

I had never been to a book signing/author event, and somewhat feared that they could resemble the scene in “The Squid and the Whale” featuring Jeff Daniels, complete with elbow patches on jackets and excerpts chosen specifically to showcase the author’s exquisite use of oblique imagery.

But I considered myself safe from such pretentions when deciding to attend author/writer/blogger Will Leitch’s event held at Chicago’s Book Cellar Friday night (though it was in Lincoln Park, which for a youngster in rural Illinois always had a certain upper crust feel even though it clearly had the second best zoo in the city).

He was promoting “Are We Winning?” which is the type of nonfiction/memoir type book that I finished and immediately was overcome by the knowledge that it was the type of book I could write, but could never write because now it’s been done so well already. And that’s not even getting into the specifics I shared with the author (Cardinals fans, baseball defenders, good friends with “enemy” Cubs fans from college, etc.).

Leitch’s last book, “God Save the Fan,” bounded all over the place in search of a strong central theme. I think his latest book showcases more of his heart and passion for being a sports fan, all while organized in a way (half innings of a Cubs/Cardinals 2008 game serve as a diving board into all sorts of subjects) that keeps the material focused.

The manic, fast-talking energy that Leitch displays in television interviews, podcasts and book events like these sometimes shows up in his writing. But these blasts of whimsy are balanced by some great moments of introspection that any late-20s/early-30s adult can relate to.

Read the rest of this entry →

There are moments when I can’t quite understand why there are pieces of cardboard in various states of protection scattered throughout my bedroom. I consider finding a way to cover them up, and let the other pop culture ephemera have the stage because they wouldn’t be so hard to explain to a visitor. Then I realize I sleep in a room with red shag carpet and wallpaper depicting NFL helmets as worn in the late 1970s (complete with the label under the silver and black helmet eschewing fluctuating municipalities and listing just “Raiders”), and my baseball cards fall down the list in potential bedroom embarrassments.

Two recent books, Cardboard Gods by Josh Wilker and Mint Condition by Dave Jamieson, take wildly divergent approaches to understanding the appeal of these collectibles. I can gaze at my navel long enough to understand why I spend a few bucks here and there to assemble almost every card issued featuring pitcher Barry Zito in an Oakland A’s uniform: the chase, the gamble, the sense of discovery and completion, nostalgia tucked into 9-card plastic pages and three-ring binders, the economics of supply and demand in a microcosm, and, of course, the joys of dealing with eBay powersellers.

Read the rest of this entry →

One fortunate byproduct of a mostly nonfiction reading diet? Never allowing a fanboy’s eye to cloud a movie adaptation. In fact, Moneyball remained a contender for the first “read before you see” for me, after I passed up favorable female-male ratios at a The Time Traveler’s Wife screening. (Actually, the “winner” was I Love You, Beth Cooper a few months back, which stumbled about in teen movie homages without transcending them, to slightly worse affect than the book I enjoyed.)

But Youth In Revolt remains a different story, as it always has been. My late Aunt Becky gave me the book when I was 14 or 15, mysterious in the way that any book you’ve never heard of might be when received as a birthday present. I managed to put down my library-loaned Ray Bradbury collections long enough to open the daunting first page. By the last page, I had a book to call my favorite.

A wordy, literate journal writer like Nick Twisp appealed to my intellectual (or, more harshly, haughty) nature, and the way his mind vacillated between cultural criticism and pornographic pursuits legitimized a similar pull any dork with a library card might feel when the hormone equation changes*. Whereas my dalliances mostly involved pictures of Pamela Anderson procured through newsgroups on America Online, Twisp’s adventures appeal to the repressed thrill-seeker in any teen.

Much of that appeal can be attributed to author C.D. Payne eschewing any sense that a 14-year-old might not use such overblown writing. Payne lets Twisp know way too much in one entry, then knowingly places him completely out of his element in the next. The concept rewards readers both young and old, as Twisp turns into either a wish fulfillment for our 15-year-old selves or an embarrassing photo of what might have been for the 29-year-old self. A character like Sheeni remains both completely impossible and an amalgam of all the “unique” intellectual girls one comes across before they realize there are quote marks around that uniqueness.

The sexual nature of the plot, the unwieldy length and an intricate plot all worked to eliminate any thought that the book even could be adapted. And after having watched the movie on opening night, it took a great idea and many little failures to do so.

The great idea? Turning Twisp’s alter-ego into a different version of Michael Cera altogether. Cera’s psycho blue eyes, knowing puffs off a cigarette and a mustache built for tickling as Francois make for the best bursts of comedy in a film otherwise filled with more observational or deadpan humor. These moments interrupt a string of quotes and scenes pulled lovingly from the source material. Yet, while a reader of the book can appreciate an appearance by Lefty and his girl troubles with Millie and erectile dysfunction, his scenes prove completely unnecessary to the plot and the characterization of Twisp.

When screenwriter Gustin Nash and director Miguel Arteta don’t work strictly by the book, their choices are suspect. In particular, I didn’t understand bits of animation/claymation found in the opening credits and during a travel montage. One could surmise that the inspiration might come from the movies of Savage Steve Holland in the mid-1980s. But the story just isn’t madcap enough to handle these stylistic devices. The filmmakers could have satisfied their source material appreciation with a well-constructed background montage, which would have better hinted at the oddball world surrounding the main characters in Youth in Revolt.

The depiction of Sheeni Saunders by Portia Doubleday falls somewhere in between a success and failure, which should be considered a win for this movie. Frankly, it’s a character that exists somewhere outside the capabilities of any actress, with her mix of confidence, manipulation and mystery. She’s the belle of the Scholastic Bowl, and the alluring Doubleday does capably tap into some of her coolness and her … uh … hotness. Still, the infuriating (and best) part of Sheeni in the book is how she’s kept at arm’s length by the first-person writing style of Nick in his journal. A movie can’t really afford to do that, especially when the plot must be wrapped up in 90 minutes. I loved the idea floated by Cera that the source material might be served well by a television adaptation, as it could flirt with this convention while giving the likes of Fred Willard, Steve Buscemi, Jean Smart and Ari Graynor more space to do their thing.

As much as I might quibble with the adaptation, my quick-reference knowledge of the plot still relented long enough to earn a few legitimate laughs and no consequential groans. Through the end, this valiant attempt knew its audience. Rather than giving in to the conventions of the teen comedy with a pop-punk jam or a Frank Sinatra tune that Nick Twisp might pick out, the filmmakers chose “Popular Mechanics for Lovers” by Beulah … from an album that would rank in my top five of the 2000s. I was helplessly caught up in a target market.

* Reading through the book, I completely forgot the other reason I related to Nick Twisp – he had the same August 1 birthday as me! Yes, it’s a date shared by a fictional character, Francis Scott Key, Coolio and myself (in no particular order of importance).

If you like more than one pop culture medium, the middle of fall necessitates your transformation into a quivering, overstimulated fan of “Fever Dog” mumbling “It’s all happening … it’s all happening…”

If you like nonfiction books seeped with pop sociology, that has meant shelling out for the latest Malcolm Gladwell white-covered compendium, Chuck Klosterman’s latest batch of essays and ESPN’s Bill Simmons gigantic Book of Basketball (unless Amazon tells you your book will arrive the day of a book signing in Chicago, and you’re all ready to go, and just waiting for the mail to arrive, and the book doesn’t come, and you check online to see where the book might be, and the location is blank, and ARRRRRGHHHHH).

Movie fans can feel the same way, and it’s probably just a few Twilight covers to go until Entertainment Weekly rounds up all the Oscar bait into one freezing night’s worth of reading material. Music fans can track the big holiday season releases, or just wait for every blog’s best-of-the-year lists for downloading enjoyment. And video games wait until the most opportune time to provide an interactive experience that seems like a better option with every family holiday gathering.

So how best to start this home stretch of the calendar year? I heartily recommend The Onion AV Club’s Inventory. The listicle (or charticle, if you prefer to keep your introductory vowels) has developed a negative reputation among high-minded online writers, who view the traffic-baiting nature of an arbitrary list as something akin to taking literary advice from the producers of the E! Network. But the AV Club elevates this fluff to an artform with limitless topics and by diving deep into its staff’s nigh-limitless reserves of pop culture knowledge. For example, the subtitle-mentioned list on “Manic Pixie Dream Girls” identifies a movie trend, then each entry details both what makes this archetype what it is AND how the crazy/unique/free-spirited female character has grown all kinds of stale in all kinds of movies. So you might get the satisfaction of shared knowledge or opinion regarding Natalie Portman in Garden State, while also filing a few new movies to seek out/avoid as you see fit.

Comparative residents of the AV Club’s “heaven” and “hell” on each page, as well as shorter lists from guest listers, keeps the book varied and readable straight through. But most likely, this will be the type of random reading perfect for coffee tables or bathrooms (my apologies for being redundant if you’re a sick creature with a coffee table in your bathroom). And, best of all, the gimmick lives in perpetuity on the AV Club Web site.

After playing through Uncharted 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum on the Playstation 3, the same lifespan might also be in order. Let’s take Arkham first. Super-slick visuals bring Batman’s dance with the Joker in the criminal asylum to life, combining both realism of environments with a comic book’s flair for exaggerated human forms. The game wisely combines Batman’s role as badass with that of a stealthy detective. While you occasionally will be forced to mash buttons to take down a screen full of baddies, that soon will be followed by silently taking down a room full of henchman with guns. In each case, the controls allow for a variety of options to accomplish the objective, rewarding both timing and patience.

Comic fans will love the attention to detail among the variety of characters in the game. And while only some figure into the storyline, the ones that do provide satisfying and challenging boss battles. A few other notes worth mentioning:

• As a casual reader of the major Batman graphic novels, I didn’t give much thought to the Scarecrow. That officially changes a few hours into this game. The awesomeness knows no bounds.
• The collectibles/unlockables are spread nicely through the game, adding an element of open-world exploring if you so choose.
• The extended gameplay arrives in the form of challenge rooms. Both in the form of stealth and pure brawling, these are like the concentrated action parts of the game in easily accessed form. The game rewards sufficient combos in the brawling and specialty take-outs in the stealth, and even after playing through the storyline these standards provide great challenges. Recent downloadable content added some scenarios/challenges, and you’ll scratch your head to figure out how the top of the online leaderboards figured out how to knock out five guys in 35 seconds.

If you have the skill, this game will reward you with replay value. Still, by the end of a week with the game, I needed something to help dissipate the frustration of being good but not great.

A few hours into Uncharted 2, and that kind of frustration was a thing of the past. I bought my PS3 earlier this summer, and had heard good things about the original game while seeking out more recent games worthy of my hardware upgrade. Now I realize the error of my ways. The adventure game plays like the best combination of a James Bond and Indiana Jones mashup. Again, superb graphics immerse you into the world, and near-faultless gameplay keeps you there for as long as you want. The story and level design succeed in making the game more than just a succession of cutscenes amid cliffhanging jumps and shootouts (although there’s plenty of those), but a complete package that led Adam Sessler of G4TV’s X-Play to say it was the best single-player experience he’s ever played. And I’m inclined to agree.

The 24-plus levels of intricate detail would be enough of a tease to play through the storyline again. But the Naughty Dog developers weren’t just looking to hook people recreationally, they wanted full-fledged addicts. So you’ve got a bunch of treasure not related to the initial gameplay well-hidden throughout the levels. And then there’s the online mode. Now I’m about as much of a killer as Barney Fife in a deathmatch, but the game provides some nice alternatives for people like me. The co-op mode allows a group of three online players to play through two different levels, and another feature separates 10 players into teams with the goal of getting treasure into your team’s chest.

I rent most of my games through my Blockbuster Online in-store coupons. And most of the time, I part ways with a game amicably when the game is due. But with Uncharted 2, I will be hard pressed to keep a Bogart-level cool when our paths diverge.

I have garnered a few laughs in my day (mostly out of pity), but only admired the stand-up comic and never aspired to join him/her on that spare stage. The only bit that ever formed in my head involved haircare, and how if hair is just an accumulation of dead skin cells then shampoo and conditioner are just trying to make your hair less dead. Finally, the punchline involved Medusa being misunderstood as just someone trying to get some bounce to her hair and ending up with snakes.

Obviously, my stand-up career would not have gone far.

But William Knoedelseder’s book I’m Dying Up Here does conjure up some feelings of envy when placing readers into the heady 1970s comedy scene. Specifically, he focuses on the cross-country shift from New York to Los Angeles, brought on in large part by The Tonight Show‘s similar move. The author doesn’t come to this tale lacking material. He covered the scene for the Los Angeles Times as comedy clubs rose to prominence and catapulted stars like David Letterman, Tom Dreesen and Jay Leno from their stages and into pop culture at large.

Knoedelseder doesn’t turn this topic into an oral history or simple anecdote-fest. He has a beginning, an end (the Comedy Store strike of 1979) and a couple of protagonists to help guide his story in comedians Richard Lewis and Steve Lubetkin. By the middle of the book, as the Los Angeles comedy scene begins to thrive and its stars score movie and TV deals, I doubted the effectiveness of pinning this story to these two guys. Lewis was finding some success shooting a movie and Lubetkin was struggling with his act. All the while, the good stuff was happening on the Comedy Store stage without them. But circumstances bring them back to the story in a pertinent (and heartbreaking) way, and the author’s framework pays off in showing how much had changed in just a few years time.

Given the structure, some big names of the scene are described solely with Knoedelseder’s detached, journalistic eye. Robin Williams weaves in and out, amid his successes and the grumblings of other comedians that his rapid-fire style steals material from other comics. It is assumed that Williams didn’t sit down to reminisce. And so rather than linger on others describing the big name, the author moves on to so many of the other interesting characters who made up the comedy scene at the time.

Knoedelseder takes advantage of our knowledge as readers in 2009 to set up the dramatic confrontation in the last third of the book. People we know as eventual success stories (even successes at the time) still must bum a $5 bill to pay for a meal. The comedians work for free on the Comedy Store stage, and hope that the exposure will lead to paying gigs. Meanwhile, Comedy Store owner Mitzi Shore charges cover and expands her empire. The book expertly details the reasons why the comedians were so conflicted about this setup, and Shore herself. Appreciation and deference give way to a sense of outrage and fairness, at least in most of the comics’ eyes. So an event that might have played for laughs at the time turns into this almost Shakespearean struggle of both supporting and railing against a maternal figure. Which is pretty heady stuff when you consider Gallagher’s involved.

Anyone who has struggled with the concept of the unpaid internship can relate to this battle, and anyone with a sense of humor can understand the stakes presented in this well-written historical account of backstage stories when we thought the stuff onstage was interesting enough.

Each day, it seems, another magazine turns off the press on its glossy pages for the last time. And just as the forms of blogs developed a different, multimedia-assisted way of producing journalism and communicating, so too did the heyday of magazines. Serving almost as a middle ground between the time investment extremes of newspapers and books, magazines allowed the best writers to find topics worthy of that middle ground. Five-thousand words could be used to tell stories that couldn’t carry 200 pages.

The best stuff, though, deserves some kind of permanence that gets lost when a new issue arrives in the mail to replace an old title. Compliations can tell bigger stories, and for books like The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan, they can tell great stories, too.

Jordan didn’t enter my consciousness until a great, unique post surfaced on Deadspin in March 2008. Though the piece didn’t conform to the “three paragraphs, two links and maybe an embedded YouTube link” that drives normal blog traffic, it stood out for using everyday interactions to create a big-picture portrait of present-day Jose Canseco. After reading some of his best work, you realize that isn’t anything new for Jordan, who has written the types of personal profiles that magazines used as cover stories for decades.

Jordan’s strengths lie in telling strong stories without overwriting (something at least one journalism contest judge has accused me of in my day, so I recognize its absence). Clear-eyed scenes with just the right amount of description set the stage for the personal revelations to follow. And, when they aren’t as forthcoming, that can reveal even more. Such is the case for a 1997 New York Times Magazine profile of Richard Williams and his daughters, Serena and Venus, where the father’s attempts at media manipulation reveal their own truths.

That doesn’t mean Jordan won’t turn a phrase, though. His greatest might just be this excerpt from “The Pork,” a look back on a unique basketball talent from Jordan’s adolescence:

A basketball in his hands looked like a beachball in the hands of a gnomelike child. He could never even think of palming a basketball, nor could he shoot one-handed like most basketball players, who spread their fingers over the ball, gripped it firmly, and propelled it with their fingertips. When the ball left their hands their fingers would be spread wide as if they were about to cop a feel from Dolly Parton. Alas, Porky’s small hands couldn’t encompass the breast of an eighth-grade girl. So he adjusted.

Inserting one’s self into a magazine story has become cliche, played for laughs in films like Adaptation and the Rolling Stone scenes in Almost Famous. Jordan doesn’t overplay his hand in this regard, but in some cases the interviews turn on what the author brings to the table. The former “bonus baby” pitcher flamed out before reaching his expected heights, but brings an athlete’s mentality and a writer’s introspection to every interview. So an infamous piece on Steve Garvey and his wife might refer to a “companion” or “stranger,” giving the reader the sense that even though Jordan is there with his tape recorder or notepad, he’s hovering above it all to take in a full scene that might not be so apparent to other interviewers. It makes for tremendous perspective, using eyes much more than I’s.

Jordan’s baseball background makes for some of the strongest pieces in this book, on guys like Carlton Fisk, Whitey Herzog, Roger Clemens (including what comic book fans might call a first appearance by Brian McNamee) and Steve Carlton. And he deals a devastating blow to the media echo chamber and the idea of a real-life Roy Hobbs in a 2001 story on “Toe” Nash. The prodigy, opportunists and journalists all come out the worse for wear after Jordan’s trip to Louisiana.

The book wraps a bow on the content with an interview between Jordan and Alex Belth. The questions help shed some interesting light on the back stories for some of the pieces, and the mindset of a guy who has reached for the definitive words to describe the world honestly. Some might say that this ability comes from Jordan’s brief time in the athletic spotlight and the empathy it infused into his mindset. But I think it might be simpler than that. In general feature writing, strength rests on the ability of the subject to be interesting. As Steve Martin’s character said in L.A. Story, showing off is the idiot’s version of being interesting. Jordan doesn’t have to show off, allowing the most interesting among us to talk with a peer for all the world to hear.

“Why do you like to play bridge?” I say.
“It’s a fascinating game.”
“Why is it fascinating?”
Tom [Seaver] looks at me, bemused. “It just is.”
“But why?”
“Why? Why? Why? It’s always, ‘Why?’ with you. That’s sick! I don’t know why! I don’t even think about why!”

You can read more from Pat Jordan and editor Alex Beth here at Baseball Analysts.

“She wrote a long letter/ On a short piece of paper” - Traveling Wilburys, “Dirty World”

For every length of writing, there is something to admire. If you can find the interesting in the mundane, people will subscribe to your Twitter feed for 140-character doses. When that form can’t hold a more complex thought, one graduates to blogs (and the potential for dozens of commenters to complain “Too long!” after more than one paragraph break). Still, some ideas demand more. With long-form magazine writing dying with every shuttered publication, the inspired writer turns to books for a proper medium … and a decent payday.

In a way, it could be like the Bill James concept of the defensive spectrum in baseball. Difficult positions like catcher and shortstop are on the left-hand side of the spectrum, with “easy” spots like first base and DH on the right-hand side. One can move to the right pretty easily (like a catcher moving to first base), but you wouldn’t want Boston Red Sox DH David Ortiz manning shortstop anytime soon. But is the book the most difficult writing medium to master? And is the blog “easier”?

The Onion AV Club highlighted a bunch of books back in November that were adapted from successful Web sites, with varying degrees of success. The Onion itself has archived itself in book form to great success, attributable to the quality of the comedy and interviews found in the newspaper and on the Web site. The holiday season afforded me the chance to check out a few of these books borne from the thousands of writers who have carved out a niche online.

Drew Magary, along with the rest of his cohorts at the site Kissing Suzy Kolber, disintegrates the notion that football fans care more about the jersey than the players wearing them. A post-game press conference or a simple photo can be all it takes for the creative writers to turn someone like quarterback Philip Rivers into an endless supplier of comedic material. And while each writer still holds true to his team alliance, the site offers a home for fans who can laugh at the game that causes so much anguish in others.

Magary used this ethos to write Men With Balls: The Professional Athlete’s Handbook. Through the gimmick of a life manual, Magary manages both to parody the form and the athlete culture that provides so much material for his Web site. The book succeeds where (former) Deadspin editor Will Leitch stumbled with God Save The Fan. With so much potential material, Leitch couldn’t aggregate his various insights into a meaningful form, despite his obvious writing ability. Magary may be more prone to ALL CAPS declarations and references to sexual orifaces, but he rightly concentrates on the humor while letting the (accurate) insights slip quietly into the material. This clear focus results in a quick, funny read that Magary’s Web fans can foist onto friends unfamilar with Kissing Suzy Kolber as a primer to the must-read humor site.

Television Without Pity takes a somewhat different approach. Subtitled “752 Things We Love to Hate (And Hate to Love) About TV,” the book version almost seems like a collection of pop culture references meant to bring you up to speed in the snarky world of television reviewing – like those Lost reruns with pop-up information airing before the season premiere. Authors Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting wrote the book in 2006, but because the topics consist mainly of old television shows, the age of TV Land and DVD box sets keeps the content from growing too stale.

The book arranges information in an alphabetical encyclopedia, with references to other entries throughout its 300 pages. This helps its reading-on-the-toilet function, but the style doesn’t preclude someone from reading straight through. In either case, you realize this isn’t an academic exercise. The authors don’t mince words: The everpresent catchphrase consists of “Shut up, _____” (insert annoying person, place or Dawson’s Creek reference here). Both authors write with a conversational, knowing-but-not-all-knowing style ported nicely from the Web site. Many major sites have co-opted the TwoP style, but few match the type of tone that comes from being a devoted fan with enough writing chops to detail the highs and lows of a relationship with a TV show.

If you watch a lot of television, many of the references (like, say, the “Cousin Oliver-ing” of a character on a long-running show), might not knock you over with a revelatory blow. I’m probably just on the periphery of their target audience: about a dozen TiVo’d shows and a subscription to Entertainment Weekly. But there’s enough “there” there to make for enjoyable, lightweight entertainment … like a well-written episode of a sitcom without the embarrassments of a “very special episode.”

Finally, the launch of the MLB Network and lingering free agents means baseball can’t be obscured by the freezing temperatures, fresh snowfall or a media firestorm emanating from Dallas Cowboys camp. A couple of books have helped in bridging this gap from World Series to Spring Training, and one I have bought the last few years comes from The Hardball Times.

The 2009 Baseball Annual manages to take the “collection of essays” format and turn it into both a look back at the year that was and a macro view of the game and where it’s heading. With this volume, the casual fan can find a few interesting facts lost in the 162-game grind (from writers of the site and other well-known scribes like Joe Posnanski and Rob Neyer), while a statistician can devour whole sections devoted to offensive, defensive and pitching performance, replete with graphs and just about anything else you’d need. But my favorite feature makes it more than just an impulse buy and allows it to sit alongside the other books on my bookshelf: surprising looks back at baseball history.

This year, a couple of essays stood out. Craig Wright takes a great look at Honus Wagner, a man known today more for his baseball card than his remarkable skills. Books like Crazy ’08 worked to change that, and Wright shows how Wagner’s skills showed a remarkable lack of decline into his late-30s and early-40s, before Bonds and Clemens had (possibly through chemistry) changed our notions of a normal career arc. Frankly, if Wagner had played today, his stat line would invite the speculation that befell those titans. That he did so in the early part of the century when offensive production wasn’t so easy to come by? Just incredible.

Another essay (by Craig Brown) examines how Pete Rose went from being a Cincinnati Red to landing with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1979. Now, I consider myself at least somewhat knowledgeable about baseball history, and I have the Amazon.com bills to prove it. But I never knew about the convoluted system that greeted the first free agents, which included teams declaring which players they wanted to negotiate with (and with a cap of two signings per team and no more than 12 teams calling dibs on one player). Rose manages his way through this minefield to end up on a contender with a lot more gambling money in his pocket, and it stands as a unique contrast to current-day free agent maneuverings. Brown details all of this in a clear, matter-of-fact style that becomes this type of history.

Having read all three of these books, the authors trade the immediacy of the Web post for printed quality of various shelflife. Given that a price increase comes with such a change in medium (from $0 to about $15), each must overcome the convenience of an easy-to-find browser bookmark. The key, it turns out, is what makes for any time of good writing: quality thoughts, organized well, that you can’t find anywhere else. The rest is just a change in word count.

The anecdotes, humor and precise details fly at you all at once in Boys Will Be Boys, like if head coach Jimmy Johnson saw an opponent in a five wide receiver set and told you to get off the couch and play safety. Author Jeff Pearlman has carved out a niche with his books in examining teams and players on the tenuous line of success and excess: the 1986 New York Mets, Barry Bonds and now the 1990s Dallas Cowboys dynasty. Though not so long ago (even if the fashions might give that impression), the fact the championships occurred before the boom of the Internet Age brings old controversies to light and fleshes them out with reflective coaches and players who look back on the time with fondness and embarassment.

Here are a few things that stood out as unique in the book to me, a casual football fan of the era entering his early teens when the 49ers and Cowboys began their annual grudge match for a championship:

• In a sharp departure from current preseason practices, an early preseason tilt with new coach Jimmy Johnson against the Denver Broncos included John Elway playing the whole game and into overtime. This is partly attributed to Dan Reeves not getting the Dallas Cowboys head coaching job.
• Plenty of great quotes like this about eventual head coaching flameout David Shula – “The man was a true butt-head.” – wide receiver Ray Alexander.
• Pearlman tells great stories and organizes his meticulous resources with care, but he’s still prone to out-of-nowhere flourishes of language that hit you from the blindside. For instance: “Watching the Cowboys of 1990 was akin to sitting through a 16-week Days of Our Lives marathon – while drunk.” I also noticed this of-the-era pop culture referencing in The Bad Guys Won. I still can’t decide whether I like it or not, but maybe I’m more receptive to the references now because I remember the record ratings for that show during the same era.
• Many sites have embraced the numerous tales of an out-of-control Charles Haley, prominently featuring his “prominent member.” These stories only scratch possibly the greatest treasure trove of future fantasy football team names since Michael Vick first laid eyes on a young pup. Chapter 10 outlines the various nicknames all the Cowboys earned, but an early favorite name might come from this quote by Haley: “I’m the last naked warrior!”
• Example No. 476 of what probably wouldn’t/couldn’t/always shouldn’t happen in the new blog/cameraphone era: An alleged fight at a Hoopsters “charity” basketball game where Michael Irvin supposedly punches the ref. As the old Bill Simmons joke goes, if that happened today Skip Bayless’ head would explode on the set of First Take.
• Fans of multiple sports will see the parallels of team building and ego when comparing the Cowboys to the iconic Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees franchises. Though involving different kinds of personalities, one could compare the Jerry Jones/Jimmy Johnson grasping for credit to the Theo Epstein/Larry Lucchino relationship that almost disintegrated post-World Series win. In a more obvious example, the Cowboys teams with Deion Sanders look a lot like the Yankees of 2003-04. Both teams relied on high-salary homegrown players with patches found in the expensive free agent pool. Somehow, the talent carried the Cowboys to one more Super Bowl win before crumbling. The Yankees weren’t as fortunate, but we’ll see how far they fall.