Archive for the ‘Sports Topics’ Category

Sum It Up

Sunday, May 5th, 2013

The Book of the Week is “Sum It Up” by Pat Summitt with Sally Jenkins, published in 2012. This ebook is the autobiography of a long-time coach of the women’s basketball team at the University of Tennessee; Olympian, Olympic coach, daughter, wife, mother, etc., etc.

Summitt’s childhood consisted of doing hard labor on her family’s Tennessee farm, drag racing and playing aggressive basketball with her three older brothers. Her father was a gruff, hard worker who refrained completely from showing affection toward his family. Nevertheless, he had a passion for basketball. Therefore, in the mid 1960′s, he had the family move to a fixer-upper residence so that his daughter could play high school basketball on a very good team.

Unfortunately, the team was part of a pathetic interscholastic program that existed for girls at the time. There were many inequalities between male and female sports programs in Summitt’s generation. For one, she had to pay full college tuition, because “…athletic scholarships for women simply didn’t exist in 1970.”

At 22 years old in 1974, even when she was named head coach of the women’s basketball team at her alma mater, she was given a budget that was a fraction of the men’s team’s budget. Also, unlike a male coach, she had to play many roles in addition to coaching, such as serving as driver, laundress, ankle-taper, gym-floor cleaner, and bench assembler. Her office was at the top of five flights of stairs in a hot attic with no elevator and no air conditioning. At the same time, she was taking four master’s degree classes and was required to teach undergraduate classes.

Finally, in 1975, Title IX– which was supposed to “even the playing field” for male and female athletes– was signed into law by President Gerald Ford (according to the book). Summitt started to benefit from progress, but even in the late 1970′s, the men’s sports teams still had bigger marketing budgets and staffs than the women’s teams; plus the men traveled by airplane while the women had to drive hours and hours.

Summitt also discusses basketball as a metaphor for other aspects of life. She writes, “The point guard position in basketball is one of the great tutorials on leadership… they only follow you if they find you consistently credible… If there is a single ingredient in leadership, it’s emotional maturity.”

Read the book to learn about the coaching-career teams, victories, setbacks, comebacks and defeats; and family, health and retirement issues in the life of this overachiever.

Posted in Autobiography/Biography, Medical Topics, Nonfiction, Sports Topics | No Comments »

Bonus Post

Saturday, May 4th, 2013

In honor of the Kentucky Derby, this blogger would like to report on “My Guy Barbaro” by Edgar Prado with John Eisenberg, published in 2008. This ebook tells the story of a horse named Barbaro, ridden by the author, a jockey.

Prado grew up in Lima, Peru in a poor household with seven brothers, three sisters, his mother, and a father who was a horse groomer. Two of his older brothers became jockeys. He had a natural rapport with horses, and became a licensed jockey at fifteen and a half. He graduated high school, and at eighteen, moved to Miami, Florida in 1986 for more challenging racing.

Prado rides on different horses in various states in races throughout the year. The Triple Crown is a trio of races very difficult to win. It consists of the Belmont Stakes on Long Island in New York State, the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, and the Preakness Stakes in Maryland. Up until 2008, race tracks in that third state suffered financially in the past decade, unlike those in Delaware and West Virginia, as it declined to allow cash-cow slot machines at its race tracks.

In the 2006 Kentucky Derby, Prado had the privilege of riding Barbaro, a horse that was a racing prodigy, owned by the late pop star Michael Jackson. Read the book to learn of Barbaro’s fate.

Posted in Career Memoir, Nonfiction, Sports Topics | No Comments »

Bonus Post

Monday, April 22nd, 2013

Besides Andre Agassi’s ebook, there is Pete Sampras’: “A Champion’s Mind,” published in 2008.  This ebook’s author tends to be a bit narcissistic, as is evident from the title, and the fact that the passages describing the matches he won, outnumber those he lost, by a few.

Nevertheless, Sampras racked up bragging rights through becoming the number one ranked tennis player in the world for six years. He won fourteen Grand Slams. He overcame various problems, including the stress from unfortunate occurrences concerning a fellow pro tennis player and two of his coaches (deaths and crime), his illnesses and injuries, plus meeting the psychological challenges of playing many finals matches in major tournaments against Andre Agassi, a formidable rival, beating him more often than not.

Read the book to learn the details.

Posted in Career Memoir, Nonfiction, Sports Topics | 1 Comment »

Open

Sunday, April 21st, 2013

The Book of the Week is “Open” by Andre Agassi published in 2009. This engaging ebook tells the life story (up until his mid-thirties) of a famous American tennis player.

The author’s traumatic childhood invites the reader’s sympathy and the entertaining writing keeps the reader enthralled. Although this is a first-person account and the book is all about him, he does not come off as narcissistic. He has bragging rights as a world-class tennis player, and has done some serious introspection– he shares with the reader his emotional states while recounting his life lessons.

Agassi’s childhood was tennis-obsessed, as his father ordained that he was going to grow up to be a professional tennis player. As a powerless child, he could not argue. Besides, he told himself that he loved his father, wanted his approval, didn’t want to make him mad. His father became even more tyrannical than usual when angry. So his tennis career became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Fortunately, during his journey to the top, Agassi met friends, mentors, lovers and even opponents, who helped him to become a better athlete and a better person. When he got his first taste of celebrity, Agassi writes, “Wimbledon has legitimized me, broadened and deepened my appeal, at least according to the agents and managers and marketing experts with whom I now regularly meet.”

Grateful for his fame and fortune, the author decided to give back. He wanted to create “… something to play for that’s larger than myself and yet still closely connected to me… but isn’t about me.” He co-founded a charter school called Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, located in Nevada.

Agassi proudly describes the school; a few aspects with which this blogger takes issue. He claims that pouring money into the school would make it a better school. He says Nevada is a state that spends less money per student on education than most other states. At least one study has shown that spending is not a factor in improving education quality.

Agassi also supplied the 26,000 square foot education complex with “everything the kids could want”– the very best entertainment and computer centers, athletic facilities, etc. On any given day, a famous politician, athlete or musician might drop by to teach the kids.

The author boasts, “Our educators are the best, plain and simple.” Yet, he goes on to write, because the school “… has a longer school day and a longer school year than other schools, our staff might earn less per hour than staffs elsewhere. But they have more resources at their fingertips and so they enjoy greater freedom to excel and make a difference in children’s lives.”

In other words, Agassi’s take on education is misguided in various ways. It seems he thinks kids will get a better education with quantity over quality when it comes to money and time. True, passionate teachers do not work solely for the money, but they value student enlightenment and recognition more than sparkling new classrooms. Admittedly, the author is a man of contradictions. Read the book to learn more about them.

Posted in Autobiography/Biography, Career Memoir, Education, Nonfiction, Sports Topics | No Comments »

Bloody Confused!

Sunday, April 7th, 2013

The Book of the Week is “Bloody Confused!” by Chuck Culpepper, published in 2007. An American smartass sportswriter wrote this ebook after becoming jaded by covering baseball, football, basketball, etc. for a couple of decades in his own country. He decided to acquaint himself with the cultural quirks of professional English soccer.

In 2006, Culpepper moved to England in order to wholeheartedly throw himself into the lifestyle of a “supporter,” which involved a gluttony for spending time (on transportation) and money (on transportation, tickets, drinks and food) before, during and after the matches, not to mention choosing an underdog team to root for, so as to invite emotional trauma.

While conducting research before attending his first Premiership, the author learned of the concepts “promotion” and “relegation.” Unlike a United States baseball or football league, each season, an English soccer league determines team-places based on a point system, which allows upward mobility of teams and consequently, downgrading of its worst three clubs that will play in a lower-tier system the following season.

On more than one occasion, Culpepper was prohibited from purchasing a ticket to a match because he had never purchased a ticket before, to see a particular team. He had to watch the match in a pub instead. One time, he got lucky and bought a ticket from a supporter whose father was unable to go to the game.

Once the author started attending games, he noticed the beefed-up security at the stadiums– separate seating for fans of say, two teams with a history of hatred toward the other. This, due to deaths and serious injuries from stampedes of people (!) in recent decades. America has its team rivalries too, but rarely does the belligerent, drunk behavior of fans get more serious than trash-talking.

If an English soccer player scores a goal, which might happen only three or four times during ninety minutes of play, unlike in America– fans engage in hugging each other, though they are strangers. On the other hand, American spectators who are strangers will chat with each other throughout an entire professional sports game; the English, instead of gabbing, will sing the same one or two lines of parodies of well-known tunes, repeatedly. Possibly with gratuitous expletives. English parents explain to their children that raunchy language is okay at a soccer game, but hardly anywhere else.

Another cultural difference the author noted is that all aspects of American professional sports are profit-driven. Culpepper was surprised that English soccer action is not paused every other minute for commercial purposes. He was appalled by the English teams’ shabby locker rooms and disgusting stadium food. Yet, the beer served at American stadiums is less than refined. Also, Culpepper writes that in America, “…people play for one title. They give trophies and junk for conference titles and division titles, sure, but there’s only one champion.” In England, “Premiership clubs play for up to three championships.” There are “cups” to compete for, galore.

Read the book to learn about Culpepper’s encounters with a blue bear, his other observations of English soccer fandom, whether English athletes stack up to their American counterparts in terms of behavior off the field, their salaries, their mobility between teams, and team diversity.

Posted in Nonfiction, Sports Topics | No Comments »

Deals on the Green

Sunday, March 3rd, 2013

The Book of the Week is “Deals on the Green” by David Rynecki, published in 2007. This ebook discusses how golf fuels business deals among the super-rich.

The author contends that the personality traits golfers need for success in golf and business include: friendliness, “imagination, tenacity, multitasking, guts, passion, and compassion…” The very act of playing golf is a major ingredient for success at many big-name companies, including GE, McGraw-Hill, J.M. Smucker, Tyson Foods, McDonald’s, Goodrich, Estee Lauder, Morgan Stanley and Johnson & Johnson. Businesspeople observe how others play the game– an indication of their character– to determine whether to do business with them.

The people who build a golf course include architects, landscapers and marketers. Many country clubs are exclusive, invitation-only kinds of places. The way “nobodies” can play on the golf courses at such clubs is to participate in fundraising events or volunteer to do menial work at them (and write big donation checks). Most of the major maufacturers of American golf equipment are located in Carlsbad, CA.

Etiquette dictates that any talk of business on the golf course should take place between the fifth and the fifteenth holes. There should be casual conversation, not an aggressive pitch.

Read the book to learn the names of people, places and equipment related to golf, and “…what really goes on when the titans of industry and finance get together” on the golf course.

Posted in Business, Nonfiction, Sports Topics | No Comments »

Venus Envy

Sunday, October 14th, 2012

The Book of the Week is “Venus Envy” by L. Jon Wertheim, published in 2002. This book describes the colorful characters that graced women’s professional tennis in 1999, 2000 and 2001.  Those included the Williams sisters, Hingis, Davenport, Pierce, Capriati, Kournikova, Sanchez-Vicario and others.

Most tennis players who become professionals are pressured by a parent to make playing a career. Venus and Serena Williams’ father Richard filled that role. He had the promotional instincts of Don King. In the mid-1990′s, when his older daughter had just turned pro at the young age of fourteen, he predicted that both his daughters would play each other in Grand Slam finals. Most people thought, “This wasn’t a tennis father from hell. This was a tennis father from outer space.” He knew what he was talking about. Not only did he guide them to success, but did so without making them crazy, unlike so many other tennis parents who cause their kids psychological harm.

Tennis is a typical professional sport in that making money is the major goal. Tennis’ authoritative bodies that hold global tournaments, have a history of awarding less prize money to the women than to the men. The purported reason is that the women are less entertaining. This led to an interesting course of events in the early 1970′s.

The women also get treated differently at post-tournament press conferences, at which they are asked personal questions that men would never be asked. Another cause for complaints from the women is that the quirky ranking system awards more money to some players who have more entertainment value than playing ability. The system “unfairly punishes older, less attractive players.”

Read the book to learn more about why women’s tennis is the “world’s most popular and financially successful women’s sport.”

Posted in Collective Biography, Nonfiction, Sports Topics | No Comments »

The Tennis Partner

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

The Book of the Week is “The Tennis Partner” by Abraham Verghese, published in 1999.  This is the autobiographical account of the relationship between a medical professor (the author) and an intern at a teaching hospital in the United States.  The two play tennis against each other.  At the time, they are each going through traumatic personal problems; the professor, the aftermath of a failed marriage that produced two sons, and the intern, a struggle to beat drug addiction.  Verghese deftly describes these in engaging detail, throws in his perception of the playing styles of various professional tennis players, and recounts some interesting medical cases.

Posted in Career Memoir, Medical Topics, Nonfiction, Sports Topics | No Comments »