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Heartland.    Keith O’Brien. A Forgotten Place, An Impossible dream and the Miracle of Larry Bird. If you are a basketball fan, even a young one, chances are good that one has heard of Larry Bird.     Author Keith O’Brien decided to write about the basketball legend in his latest book with the surprising title “Heartland”.    Although the NBA finals have finally ended it really is never a bad time to read about basketball stories and biographies.    This rendition of Bird, who did not participate in the creation of this manuscript, is worth the effort to read.   The first thing I want to address is the title of the book.     It is not necessarily a bad choice, but the word Heartland is a broad term that does not directly connect to Larry Bird or necessarily conjure images of basketball.      It is true that Bird grew up in rural southern Indiana and we can consider that middle America.   ...

  Every Day is Sunday.    Ken Belson. How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut. If every day were Sunday, then sports fans would get a full dose of NFL football all week long.    One could argue that already happens throughout the season anyway since NFL games are televised all day, and night, Sunday, Monday night, Thursday night and in December occasionally on Saturday when the college football regular season has ended.   And that is just how the NFL wants it.    According to author Ken Belson, the league is perpetually motivated to help grow their brand or meet lofty financial expectations.     This, along with the three most important figures in the league today, is what Belson expounded in his book, “Every Day is Sunday” .       Belson, a current New York Times writer who also happened to cover the NFL for a decade prior, hit the three mai...

It seems hard to believe that a team with only one loss could be left out of a post season in any sport.     However, that is exactly what happened to the University of Pittsburgh’s football team upon the completion of the 1963 season.      Pittsburgh writer and sports authority David Finoli and his co-author Gary Kinn wrote about this underrated team and their surprising success through what was not only challenge in western PA but also took place during a turbulent time throughout the nation.     Finoli and Kinn go through each game of the season explaining the important details of each contest, even including the box score and statistics.     We like that they provided key plays but did not overwork the explanation in each chapter.     The authors mostly kept to the facts at hand without offering personal opinions about the quality of play and performance.    Instead, they let the quotes from ...

  A Load of Old Balls.   The QI History of Sport.   James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski. A holiday gift from my spouse, this book took me a while to start but finishing was not a problem and largely worth the effort.     It is a humorous title, A Load of Old Balls , but appropriate for the topic pertaining to many of the three hundred and forty-six pages.   We like the fact that this book addressed many off-beat sports and activities that may or may not have required the use of a ball.     The authors clearly researched plenty of history as noted in many of their findings.     It is also worth noting that the authors are British and come across as quite worldly.     As a PE instructor, several examples of the books content fell right into my personal wheelhouse.     That was namely facts and interesting trivia, which is part of what the book comprises anyway.    An examp...