While I am day late, I hope all Americans reading this enjoyed Independence Day. Sports have been a part of American culture for nearly its entire life and like with other aspects of life, "what-if's" are a part of the sports landscape. This book takes a look at a few of these possible "what-if's" Here is my review of "Upon Further Review"
Title/Author:
“Upon
Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs of Sports History” by various authors, edited
by Mike Pesca
Tags:
Baseball,
Football (American) basketball, ice hockey, boxing, horse racing, Olympics,
fiction, humor
Publish
date:
May 15,
2018
Length:
308 pages
Rating:
4 of 5
stars (very good)
Review:
Not just
in sports, but in many aspects of life, “what if” is a question often asked
when wondering if something could have happened differently. For 31 sports occurrences, this question is
answered by many authors in an entertaining book edited by Mike Pesca, who also
wrote one of the stories.
Many
different sports are addressed in the book, from baseball to horse racing to an
obscure Olympic event, the tug of war.
Most the stories make for great reading. The reader will see that there
is really no specific theme to the collection of stories – some are meant to be
factual and the conclusions are based on research of the key people in the occurrence. Some read like pure fiction and really should
be treated as such. Some can be downright
funny, such as the last story about game 7 of the 2016 World Series and comparing
it to many sports movies.
One
quibble I have with the book is the cover. On the cover there are four classic
sports moments. They are Bill Buckner’s error in the 1986 World Series, “The
Catch” by the late Dwight Clark, a photo from Super Bowl XXXIV when Kevin Dyson
fell just short of the end zone on the last play (although the photo is not
from that play) and Charles Barkley holding the NBA championship trophy with
the Phoenix Suns. The last one is
fictional – and the only one in which there is a story to go with the photo.
Why would the other three photos be used if stories were not in the book to go
with them?
As with
any collection, there are some great stories (the aforementioned 2016 World
Series, Sweetwater Clifton and the early days of the NBA and Muhammad Ali
receiving his draft deferment) and a few clunkers (Bucky Dent not hitting the
famous homer in 1978) but there are many more of the former than the latter.
Between the variety of sports, the variety of styles to tell the story, and
even the variety from fact to pure fiction, this book should have something for
everyone who enjoys reading about sports.
I wish to
thank Twelve Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange
for an honest review.
Book
Format Read:
E-book
(Kindle)
Buying Links:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/upon-further-review-mike-pesca/1127061684;
No comments:
Post a Comment