The Book Shelf: Part 3 of 4

A brief look at some of the books I have read over the last while:

Keepers of the Game: When the Baseball beat was the best job on the paper – Author Dennis D’Agostino has written a fascinating oral history of Major League Baseball and the newspaper business. D’Agostino has spoken with 23 men – including Bob Elliott of the Toronto Sun – who either were or are on the baseball beat for daily newspapers. Some of these men are the greatest baseball writers of their time and their stories make for wonderful reading. The book opens with a wonderful forward by the legendary Dave Anderson. As an aside, D’Agostino is married to Los Angeles Times hockey writer/columnist Helene Elliott. (Potomac Books, Kindle, $16.25)

Last King of the Sports Page: The Life and Career of Jim Murray – Written by Ted Geltner, it is just that, a look at the life, times and career of Murray, the Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist who is mostly remembered for his work with the Los Angeles Times. But he was more than that because he also was a Hollywood-type reporter at one time – he covered the movie scene for Time magazine – and also was in on the ground floor when Sports Illustrated got started. (Kindle, $16.01)

League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth – Written by ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wade and Steve Fainaru, who are brothers, this book accompanies the two-hour Frontline special that appeared on PBS-TV in October. The TV special was heavy-hitting; the book is that and then some. The book opens with the devastating story of former Pittsburgh Steelers centre Mike Webster and goes from there. It details the moves the NFL made to keep concussion-related information from players, the battles between experts, especially those who were in the NFL's hip-pocket and those who weren't, and what would become the race between interested party to get their hands on the brains of deceased players. History will show that the TV show and this book played an important role in the concussion story. Read this book and you will never, ever look upon the NFL the same way again. (Crown Archetype, 416 pages, Kindle)

Live By Night – No one does Boston gangsters any better than Dennis Lehane. This one isn’t up there with his best – Mystic River; Gone, Baby, Gone – but it’s still pretty damn good. Start with Joe Coughlin, the son of a Boston police captain who takes the wrong fork in the road, and throw in South Florida and Cuba and you’ve got an entertaining read. Oh yes, there’s also a touch of baseball here. (William Morrow, soft cover, 402 pages, US$16.99, Cdn$18.99)

Mulligan’s Stew – The ubiquitous Terry David Mulligan tells his story and, yes, it’s interesting if a little shallow. Uhh, the book is shallow, as in thin, but his life has been anything but. Mulligan actually started out in the RCMP before heading off into radio and then TV and movies. Yes, there is some name dropping in here but, all in all, it’s a quick and interesting read. Glen Schaefer, an entertainment writer at the Vancouver Province, helped with the writing. (Heritage, soft cover, 221 pages, Cdn$19.95)

The Murder Room – The Vidocq Society was started by three men, each a crime fighter in his own way, and eventually grew to involve almost 200 members and associates. It would meet and attempt to solve cold cases. This is an intriguing look at the society, focussing primarily on two members – forensic artist Frank Bender and profiler Richard Walter. More than anything, though, this is a window in the evil that lives in our world. Author Michael Capuzzo tends to over-write at times, and the story jumps around a bit, but, still, this is an intriguing if scary read. (Gotham Books, soft cover, 439 pages, Cdn$19.50, US$17.00)

Northern Light: The enduring mystery of Tom Thomson and the woman who loved him – It somehow is only fitting that Roy MacGregor, one of our country's great essayists, has an obsession with Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven artist, and what happened to him in July 1917. MacGregor, who spent a lot of his young life in what had been some of Thomson’s haunts, explores Thomson's demise from every angle and then some in what is a thoroughly engrossing read. You don't have to know anything about Thomson or landscape art to enjoy this book, although, in the end, it will leave you wondering what really happened. (Vintage Canada, soft cover, 358 pages, US$19.50, Cda$22.00)

The Notorious Bacon Brothers: Inside Gang Warfare on Vancouver Streets – If you live in B.C., you are well aware of the Bacon brothers – Jamie, Jarrod and Jonathan. And you know full well of all the blood that has been shed as the various gangs, including the mighty Hells Angels, battled for control of the drug trade on the Lower Mainland, in Prince George, and in Kamloops and Kelowna. Author Jerry Langton does a good job of outlining the history of gangs in B.C., and all those involved. In fact, you really do need a scorecard in order to keep track of all the players. But he does make some logistical errors involving the location of some Lower Mainland areas; also, there isn’t a Tim Hortons within crawling distance of the Aberdeen Mall in Kamloops. And if you’re looking for a whole lot of background on the Bacon boys, including just how much their parents knew, that really isn’t here. Still, as a straight-up, easy-to-read book explaining all that’s gone down, including the Surrey Six shooting that really shook things up, this is a pretty good read. But if you are a follower of reporter Kim Dolan in the Vancouver Sun, there won't be much here that is new. (Wiley, Kindle)

Over The Line: Wrist Shots, Slap Shots, and Five-Minute Majors – The acerbic and colourful Al Strachan provides the reader with 265 pages of anecdotes, bon mots and tales from the world of the National Hockey League. . . . Of “radio people,” he writes: “They’re biased and proud of it. That’s why the continent is full of stations calling themselves The Fan or The Team. I don’t know an any called The Truth.” . . . Strachan thinks Don Cherry should be in the Hockey Hall of Fame and that Gary Bettman shouldn’t be the commissioner of the NHL. If you follow the NHL, you will enjoy this one. (McClelland & Stewart, soft cover, 265 pages, Cdn$19.99)

Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story – This apparently is the first biography of Vin Scully, the legendary radio voice of the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, and it’s a fun and entertaining read. Author Curt Smith writes in something of a different voice, and it takes a bit to get used to it. But once you get into the rhythm, it’s great. “The sound of (Scully’s) voice,” actor Robert Wuhl once said, “like the sound of your dad coming home and throwing his keys on the kitchen table, is the sound of comfort and security for so many of us.” Ain’t that the truth. (Potomac Books, hard cover, 264 pages, US$29.95; actually found this one at a Walgreens in Bellingham, Wash., for $5. Perhaps my best buy of 2013)

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    If you are a fan of the late Jim Murray, you should know that there is a new book available about him, his life and his career.
    Ted Geltner’s Last King of the Sports Page (The Life and Career of Jim Murray) has been published by University of Missouri Press.
    There is more info, including how to order it, right here.
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    The 112th U.S. Open tees off this week at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Win this one and you're in the big leagues, baby. Many have stepped up to the first hole, placed that little dimpled ball on the tee, silently recited a few Hail Marys and Novenas and waltzed their way across the bent grass dance floor to history.
    This week, we flash back to 1983 and a Jim Murray column in which he writes about the Open’s habit of chewing up and spitting out the pros and letting the wallflowers dance.
    Enjoy!

THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 1983, SPORTS
Copyright 1983/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

JIM MURRAY

The Open Scoffs at Legends

    The sporting writers, God bless their little pointy heads, make much of the fact the 1983 U.S. Open has been won by (a) a guy who was 92nd on the money list of golf this year, (b) a guy who was winning only his sixth championship ever, (c) a guy who had missed the cut 10 out of 17 times this year, (d) a guy who didn't take up golf till he was 21 years old, and (e) a guy who spent most of his life on tour not trying to make history, just money. The sporting writers say, Gee Whiz, what an upset! What a story! A guy like this winning the Open!
    I submit it's dog bites man. Larry Nelson is the archtypical U.S. Open winner. The upset would be if one of the certified giants of the game ever won the Open. It's the hardest single thing for the deserving to win in all the fabric of sport. If it were a World War, Albania would win. It's almost, but not quite, the No-Name Open.
    Consider that the Real Nelson — Lord Byron himself, who once won 19 tournaments in a single year, 11 in a row and 54 in his lifetime — won only one U.S. Open. Sam Snead won none, but he won more tournaments (84) than any golfer who ever lived.
    To be sure, Ben Hogan and Bobby Jones won four. So did Jack Nicklaus. But only 10 men have won as many as two, and many of them were back in the dark ages when golf was only played by the kind of people who owned yachts.
    You look at the recent history of the United States Open and it's the most formless competition you can imagine. Larry Nelson is a fine, capable golfer — but for him to win a U.S. Open at this stage of his career is like a club fighter winning the heavyweight championship, a stock Pontiac winning the Indianapolis 500, or me winning a Pulitzer. Somebody made a terrible mistake somewhere.
    Still, a stock Pontiac, so to speak, always wins the U.S. Open. A member of the chorus gets the Oscar. Bear in mind that Arnold Palmer won only one of these. Larry Nelson has now won precisely as many U.S. Opens as Arnold Palmer, and that, you have to say, means no one is minding the store, as Arnold is a cool 55 lifetime victories ahead of Larry.
    You look over the recent history of the U.S. Open and it comes into focus like a member-guest truck-driver's tournament or a contest of driving range pros. Run a checklist of winners over the past couple of decades and you find no less than four players winning their first tournament ever in the U.S. Open. One of them was winning his last tournament ever. But you had a winner in 1974 who had won only two tournaments before the Open and they were the same tournament, in separate years. The following year, the winner was a guy who had won only two previous tournaments. In 1978, the winner had won only one other tournament besides the Open and that is still the case.
    It's a graveyard of champions. A hoodoo, not a championship. In our little circle of friends, I have a standing wager which I offer to all comers and which I lose only every other eclipse of the sun. I will give any bettor his choice of five players in a U.S. Open. And I will take the field. Under extreme provocation, I will give my bettor a multiple choice — any Tom in the field, for example. Any Andy, Bob or Jerry.
    On the face of it, I would seem to have the house edge. I mean, I get 145 players, the wagerer gets five. But, in an Open, you have to throw out 100 players automatically.
    The only times this bet has been lost in the past 20 Opens has been in 1967, when Nicklaus won it, 1972 when he won again, 1980 when he won his fourth Open, and 1982 when Tom Watson won it. The moral there is, the bet does not work when the course is Baltusrol or Pebble Beach. Throw out Pebble Beach and Baltusrol and the players are bucking a stacked deck.
    I contend Larry Nelson should have been an odd’s-on favorite in the closing stages of the Open at Oakmont. What you do in an Open is take the least deserving of the survivors in the hunt and bet the house and car on him. It never fails. When Nelson came up against Watson (28 tournaments won and two British Opens), Seve Ballesteros (25 tournaments worldwide, plus two Masters and a British Open), Ray Floyd (19 tournaments won, including a Masters and two PGAs), Nelson had everything going for him. He was the chalk. The wheel was crooked. He couldn't lose.
    The real upset would have been if one of the other recognizable silhouettes had won it. "Unknown Wins Open" is not really a headline anymore, it's a cliché. It's "Germany Goes to War," "Liz Taylor Remarries," "Castro Blames U.S." It doesn't even sell papers anymore.

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation | P.O. Box 60753 | Pasadena | CA | 91116


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