Dan Patrick (1)

This is a perfectly enjoyable little book of answers to questions like "Why do they call it a hat trick?" or "Why do pitchers pitch off a mound?" The authors call clubhouses, halls of fame, and old timers in their search for these facts. In many cases the answer is "It's traditional" or "Nobody knows" which is fine with me.
Their smart alec tone cracks me up, as do the aphorisms that accompany each question, like "Where the ice-cream truck of fact hears the childish shrieks of conjecture, slows - then speeds on."… (meer)

The Occasionally Accurate Annals of Football, by Dan Patrick and Joel H Cohen, is a fun semi-factual look at football. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Patrick.

My rating is an average of what I would give the audiobook alone and what I would give the paper version alone. Patrick does a fine job narrating, but the book is composed of little snippets with illustrations around them. These are grouped into chapters. In addition to not having the mostly fun illustrations, we lose some of the feel of these being a lot of short anecdotes (usually with a germ of truth that gets embellished, shall we say). The physical book would be one you might want to dip into periodically for fun. The audiobook is set up, and read, as chapters. That is just a bit more than I wanted to handle. It isn't that Patrick doesn't usually try to pause between pieces, but when listening it all gets to be a long stream of fun but absurd jokes.

I did find myself looking up a lot of stuff to see where exactly the facts end and the fiction begins, which was fun. I've followed and read about football since I was a child and there was a lot I learned here.

My recommendation is split. I recommend the audiobook with the warning to take breaks far more often than every chapter, which becomes a bit cumbersome. The physical or ebook, however, I recommend highly, the format keeps you from reading straight through and adds some whimsy.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (meer)