“San Francisco Giants: 50 Years” by Brian Murphy (Insight Editions, 2008)

As only a recent fan of the San Francisco Giants, I know of the 2002 World Series defeat, Barry Bonds’ race to reach and beat Hank Aaron’s homerun record, and the young and magnificent arm of the 22 year-old pitcher Tim Lincecum.  I know the names of the great Giants like Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Juan Marichal; but the period from the 1958 move of the New York Giants to San Francisco up to the end of the 1990s is a time I know little about.  Thankfully 2008 is the fiftieth anniversary of the San Francisco Giants, and to commemorate it a beautiful book has been published, written by Brian Murphy (a host for the KNBR sports radio station), celebrating the fifty years of San Francisco baseball history with the Giants.

The cover of San Francisco Giants: 50 Years captures the book perfectly with a split picture: on the top is Seals stadium, formerly a place for minor league baseball; it was where the new San Francisco Giants played their first games; at the bottom is the breathtaking AT&T Park, where the Giants currently reside.  A foreword from longtime fan Danny Glover takes the reader back to moments in Glover’s history as a little boy watching the greats play as Giants.  Brian Murphy then sweeps you back to the first days of the New York Giants gracing the streets of the city by the bay as the new San Francisco Giants.  Murphy uses a descriptive style that congers images in one’s mind of the history of this baseball team, not overloading the book with stats and numbers, but providing facts and details where necessary, informing the reader of the many great strides the Giants have made, as well as the crucial times they came within reaching distance of the World Series ring: in 1962 against the New York Yankees, in 1989 against the Oakland Athletics, and in 2002 against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Brian Murphy takes the readers through the many high points of the San Francisco Giants history, as well as the many low points.  There is the miraculous story of the pitcher Dave Dravecky, a star for the team until a tumor was found in his pitching arm, who after surgery and recovery returned to pitch one of his best games ever.  In the following game, he snapped his humerus bone, and eventually had to have his arm amputated.  The story of the great Bobby Bonds, as his son hung around the clubhouse and watched his father and godfather, Willie Mays.  The career of Barry Bonds who came to the Giants in 1993 and spent the next fourteen years smashing records and creating news goals for future players to reach.  And hints at possible future greats for the San Francisco Giants like Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum, who pitched in the 2008 All Star Game at Yankee Stadium.  The book ends with a superb finish: an afterword from the great Willie Mays, as he recounts some of his memories as a Giant.

San Francisco Giants: 50 Years is a treasure for any sort of fan of the Giants bursting with photos, booklets featuring team photos and opening day lineups for all fifty years, along with an audio CD recounting fifty years of play-by-play highlights.  It is a book that will never spend long on the shelf, as readers will keep picking it up again and again, whether to look up a detail of history, check on a team member or stat, or simply to look at some of the greatest players the world of baseball has ever known.

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Originally written on July 26th 2008 ©Alex C. Telander.

“Near Death on the High Seas” Edited by Cecil Kuhne (Vintage, 2008)

The sense of adventure is a facet of humanity, and while some choose to ignore it, others indulge in it: dabbling with the dangerous, playing with the portentous, and facing one’s fears.  Near Death on the High Seas is a collection of real life stories about people who strive for thrill and adventure, through the medium they love: a boat and the open sea.

Beginning with an inspiring foreword from the late William F. Buckley Jr., the first story begins simply about a man and his boat; having traveled the seas many times over, he is a skilled seamen but on this particular day there’s a storm that will give him a run for his money and leave his beloved boat in pieces, while he barely escapes with his life.  Provocative, descriptive, and well-written, the important thing to remember is that each of these stories actually happened, and while at times they seem to copy each other, these are real lives being brought close to the edge here, and in some cases where not all the characters survive, real people have sadly died in these catastrophic events.  Near Death on the High Seas also includes memorable and renowned high seas stories from Thor Heyerdahl on his Kon-Tiki traveling to Easter Island, as well as Sir Francis Chichester on his Gipsy Moth traveling around the world.

Near Death on the High Seas is a book that will take you across the icy cold seas of the world, through torrential storms and typhoons, as well as the horrors of the deeps; all from the comfort of the comfortable seat you choose to be sitting in at this moment.  The key is to remember that while these are incredibly written stories of daring and destruction, they are stories about real people who faced these real dangers for the thrill to be on the water in a boat.

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Originally written on March 15th 2008 ©Alex C. Telander.

“The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer” by David Goldblatt (Riverhead, 2008)

The Ball is Round is possibly the most comprehensive and thorough book on the sport of football or soccer – depending on where you’re reading this from – ever compiled and written; weighing in at a smidge under a thousand pages, after reading it cover to cover you will be able to hold an argument with any well versed football hooligan on the planet, or have a discussion with any professional sportscaster.  While David Goldblatt hasn’t much to his name, other than the Dorling Kindersley World Football Yearbook, The Ball is Round is an ideal book whether you consider yourself a soccer aficionado who knows everything there is to know, or whether you’re new to the sport and wish to satisfy a curiosity.

Goldblatt begins at the beginning with a somewhat brief but complete history of soccer, due to the lack of evidence on the subject.  While he doesn’t necessarily say one specific country was the sole creator of the international sport, he does indicate that England was the first to play the closest relation to the modern day version.  Nevertheless, it is an interesting look back at the different cultures that used a type of ball for sport, such as in China, where it would be bounced off the trunks of trees, or a simplified version that was played in the Americas involving not just feet, but hands and all parts of the body.

It is during the nineteenth century that football or soccer as we know came to be played and here Goldblatt outdoes him with the details of people, places and times, going up through the years and decades.  Once passed the First World War, Goldblatt breaks it down even further, dividing the time periods by location, from Europe to Latin America to Africa.  But the author doesn’t simply tell the complete history of soccer, but also relates to the importance of culture, economics, sociology, and anthropology.  For a sport that has become so ingrained in so many societies for some time – for countries like Spain and Italy and South America where it is the lifeblood – Goldblatt goes beyond just the sport, but extending it as a metaphor for the world, the ultimate uniter.

Twenty years in the making, Goldblatt traveled to many different places around the world for both research and inspiration.  There is even a preface for the paperback edition where he discusses why soccer has not become as popular and prevalent a sport in the United States as it has in the rest of the world, explaining its completely different pacing, layout, and scoring system as opposed to the major American sports like baseball, football, and basketball.  The Ball is Round literally has something for everyone, and with a thorough list of contents and index, along with some interesting photos, it’s also the ideal reference manual.

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Originally written on February 16th 2008 ©Alex C. Telander.