Book Review: "Gods At Play" by Tom Callahan

 

Allow me to quote from page 248 of Tom Callahan's terrific book, "Gods At Play":

Red's (Smith) death reminded me that, when the eyewitnesses go, sports are left only with the bare statistics, which aren't nearly as evocative or reliable.  Red rode trains with Babe Ruth. "It wasn't just that Ruth hit more home runs than anybody else," he said.  "He hit them better, higher, farther, with more theatrical timing and more flamboyant flourish.  Nobody could strike out like Babe Ruth. Nobody circled the bases with the same pigeon-toed mincing majesty."

With that overriding thought in mind, Tom Callahan sets out to write everything that he has seen in over fifty years as a sportswriter and columnist in cities such as San Diego, Cincinnati, Washington, and New York. Try to think of a significant sports personage over that period of time, and chances are, Callahan had an encounter with them and tells a great story about them in this book.  In addition to the sporting figures....Paul Brown, Joe Montana, Mickey Mantle, Roberto Clemente, Gale Sayers, Pete Rose (Pittsburghers, wait until you read what Pete had to say about Forbes Field!), Bob Cousy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Muhammed Ali to name just a few.  Equally compelling are the stories that Callahan tells of other sportswriters like Red Smith, Shirley Povich ("the only man to appear in Who's Who in American Women), Bill Nack and others.

If you are a sports fan, I simply cannot imagine you NOT liking this book. I finished it in three days.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

Reading this book also made me think of some of the things that I have seen, both in person and through the magic of television, in my sixty plus year of following, watching, and loving sports.  Such as....

• Clemente fielding, throwing and hitting
• Maz turning a double play
• Bradshaw to Swann and Stallworth
• Ben to Hines and Heath and AB
• Franco and Jerome
• Connie Hawkins grabbing rebounds out of the air with one hand
• Joe Greene changing the fortunes of a franchise by the sheer force of his will
• Mario and Sid

And that's just the local guys.  Fifty years from now, people will still read of these guys and will be able to look at all the numbers, as well as see their busts and plaques in Halls of Fame, but, as Callahan said in the passage quoted above, numbers don't even begin to tell the stories.

Read the book.