Over de Auteur
Sean Deveney has been a writer and editor at Sporting News since 1999, covering all aspects of sports, and appeared as a guest on ESPN, Comcast Sports, CNN, Fox News, CBS, and MSNBC. He has helped author six looks, including The Original Curse and Facing the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Werken van Sean Deveney
The Original Curse: Did the Cubs Throw the 1918 World Series to Babe Ruth's Red Sox and Incite the Black Sox Scandal? (2010) 89 exemplaren
Facing Michael Jordan: Players Recall the Greatest Basketball Player Who Ever Lived (2014) 12 exemplaren
Before Wrigley Became Wrigley : The Inside Story of the First Years of the Cubs' Home Field (2014) 8 exemplaren
Facing Kobe Bryant : players, coaches, and broadcasters recall the greatest basketball player of his generation (2016) 8 exemplaren
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Statistieken
- Werken
- 9
- Leden
- 144
- Populariteit
- #143,281
- Waardering
- 3.6
- Besprekingen
- 5
- ISBNs
- 19
The sports angle is covered by the 1986 World Series champion New York Mets and 1987 Super Bowl champion New York Giants. Star players Dwight Gooden for the Mets and Lawrence Taylor for the Giants each struggle with their celebrity in New York and each end up with cocaine addictions that mar their careers. But Deveney just can't seem to focus on these two players and what they mean to the larger story of New York in the 1980s, and instead spends a lot of time describing the experiences of other Mets and other Giants and play-by-plays of important games in their championship seasons. And while this kind of narrative can be interesting, there are whole other books dedicated to these teams' champion seasons, whereas this one promises and fails to tell a more relevant story of Gooden and Taylor in 1980s New York.
The other storylines focus on New York mayor Ed Koch as his third term is rocked by scandals among the Democratic party leaders throughout the city. Future mayor Rudy Giuliani makes his mark as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York by aggressively pursuing cases against the Mafia as well as the political corruption in the Koch administration. And Donald Trump carries out a convoluted plot to get a NFL team and a domed stadium in Queens (paid for with other peoples' money, naturally) by suing the NFL on behalf of the USFL. The plan fails, but he somehow redeems himself by restoring the Wollman skating rink in Central Park. Pretty much every sketchy detail of his character (and lack thereof) was evident in the 1980s, but for some reason people still decided to make him famous and then elect him President. Ugh!
These storylines - if the Mets/Giants stories were excised - could almost make a good book, but there's still too much and it just comes out messy. Granted, the 1980s in New York were a mess and it's still difficult to make any sense of it. Deveney doesn't make a dent in that mess, but I will give him credit for at least making it a pageturner of a read, if ultimately too fluffy for its own good.… (meer)