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Bezig met laden... Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports Historydoor Mike Pesca (Redacteur)
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. This collection of essays posits many "what-ifs" from American sports history, focusing less on "what if this team won the game instead of the other team" and more on general trends in sports history that changed on split decision or error. Some of the essays are just really silly and played for laughs. "What if the Olympics Had Never Dropped Tug-of-War?" - Nate Dimeo. Honestly, a world in which the world's top athletes fought for the gold in tug-o-war would be a good place. "What if Basketball Rims Were Smaller Than Basketballs?" - Jon Bois keeps the one-note gag going for EIGHT PAGES. "What if Game 7 of the 2016 World Series Had Turned Into Every Sports Movie Ever Made?" - Josh Levin. If that final game of the Cleveland Indians-Chicago Cubs World Series wasn't absurd enough, imagine if it had ghosts, a dog, and an ape joining in? Some posit that the long term outcome wouldn't change much. "What if the 1999 U.S. Women's National Soccer Team Had Lost the World Cup?" - Louisa Thomas recounts everything that actually happened after the USWNT won the 1999 World Cup with the idea that the attention the team drew was a bigger motivator in what did (and didn't) happen in in the aftermath. "What if Major League Baseball Had Started Testing for Steroids in 1991".- Ben Lindbergh. Turns out that the 1990s/early 2000s would still have been an era of great offensive output but with fewer outliers, so Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Roger Clemens would not have been quite so great, and Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire probably wouldn't have been all that remarkable at all. Even the popular idea that the McGwire/Sosa home run race "saved baseball" is challenged by evidence that baseball was already rebounding, and whatever gains it gave were lost to fans who stopped watching after the PED crisis was exposed. Some decide that on the whole, things would have ended up a whole lot better. "What if Jerry Tarkanian Had Beaten the NCAA and Liberated College Basketball?" - Jonathon Hock. College basketball should pay it's players and in this world they create a successful league. "What if the Dodgers Had Left Brooklyn?" - Robert Seigel writes from an alternate reality where the Dodgers stayed in Brooklyn and became a dynasty and Brooklyn became a prosperous independent city. Somehow in this reality, New York still gets the Mets, but the Giants and the Cubs move to California. "What if Bucky Dent Hadn't Homered Over the Green Monster in 1978?" - Stefan Fatsis. Technically, Fatsis' story is from the perspective of his younger self skipping school to cheer for the Yankees at Fenway, so it's supposed to be disappointing when it results in the Red Sox starting a dynasty and the Yankees wallow in mediocrity, but I definitely think that's an improvement. Some see a world where things end up much worse. "What if Baseball Teams Played Only Once a Week?" - Will Leitch. Baseball becomes a weekly EVENT like football & Leitch tracks the changes which are all awful. Some imagine a world were niche sports were much more popular. "What if Horse Racing Was Still the Most Popular Sport in America?" - Peter Thomas Forntale. Horse racing maintains it's mid-20th century popularity by consolidating under one organization, linking tv broadcasts with college football games, and making state lotteries based on horses rather than ping pong balls. The result is the opening of a luxury track in Brooklyn by Jay-Z and Beyonce. "What if a Blimp Full of Money Had Exploded over World Track Headquarters in 1952?" - Paul Snyder. A somewhat more ludicrous premise leads to a similar outcome as the horse racing essay, where track & field ends up attracting the nation's top professional athletes. Some focus on broader social issues. "What if Muhammad Ali Had Gotten His Draft Deferment?" - Leigh Montville. In this essay, Ali regains his prime years as a boxer, but loses his place as a heroic icon. "What if the United States Had Boycotted Hitler's Olympics?" - Shira Springer. It would've been the right thing to do, and according to Springer it was both an opportunity to stand up to Nazism and nip the IOC sportocracy in the bud. "What if Nixon Had Been Good at Football?" - Julian E. Zelizer. Apparently Richard Nixon loved to play football but wasn't very good at it. Zelizer hypothesizes that youthful success on the gridiron could've made Nixon less bitter and paranoid, and thus a better leader and President. These are some fun what-if's. Perhaps someday I'll write my own. Here are the topics I have in mind if you want to take a stab at them.
Favorite Passages: A better argument can be made in the other direction. What if he hadn’t lost that time? Those missing years were what defined his career, what made his life so different from all the other boxers who came along before or have come along since. How could he have been the Greatest of All Time, the icon of icons, an important figure in politics and art and everyday life if he had plugged along on a normal athletic arc? How could he have been Muhammad Ali if he simply… boxed? Blessed with speed, strength, and charisma, Ali worked to achieve great mastery of the skills of his sport. But it was this ordeal, these troubles, that made him everything he became. - Leigh Montville geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
"From Mike Pesca, host of the popular Slate podcast The Gist, comes the greatest sports minds imagining how the world would change if a play, trade, injury, or referee's call had just gone the other way. No announcer ever proclaimed: "Up Rises Frazier!" "Havlicek commits the foul, trying to steal the ball!" or "The Giants Lose the Pennant, The Giants Lose The Pennant!" Such moments are indelibly etched upon the mind of every sports fan. Or rather, they would be, had they happened. Sports are notoriously games of inches, and when we conjure the thought of certain athletes - like Bill Buckner or Scott Norwood - we can't help but apply a mental tape measure to the highlight reels of our minds. Players, coaches, and of course fans, obsess on the play when they ask, "What if?" Upon Further Review is the first book to answer that question. Upon Further Review is a book of counterfactual sporting scenarios. In its pages the reader will find expertly reported histories, where one small event is flipped on its head, and the resulting ripples are carefully documented, the likes of... What if the U.S. Boycotted Hitler's Olympics? What if Bobby Riggs beat Billie Jean King? What if Bucky Dent popped out at the foot of the Green Monster? What if Drew Bledsoe never got hurt? Upon Further Review takes classic arguments conducted over pints in a pub and places them in the hands of dozens of writers, athletes, and historians. From turning points that every sports fan rues or celebrates, to the forgotten would-be inflection points that defined sports, Upon Further Review answers age old questions, and settles the score, even if the score bounced off the crossbar"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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What I was missing here was the voice of Mike Pesca himself. Those who have followed his reporting on NPR and his fantastic work on Slate's 'The Gist' may be disappointed that Mike doesn't really have a chapter of his own. I'd love to hear, in his voice, one of these great what-if stories.
That said, I did enjoy this book, and recommend it to all the sports fans out there. ( )