Gods at Play
An Eyewitness Account of Great Moments in American Sports
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A beautifully observed narrative of American sport: character, grit, tragedy, unremarked heroism, and, always, the illuminating story behind the story.
As a columnist for Time magazine, among many other publications, Tom Callahan witnessed an extraordinary number of defining moments in American sport across four decades. He takes us from Roberto Clemente clinching his 3,000th, and final, regular-season hit in Pittsburgh; to ringside for the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman fight in Zaire; and to Arthur Ashe announcing, at a news conference, that he’d tested positive for HIV. There are also little-known private moments: Joe Morgan whispering thank you to a virtually blind Jackie Robinson on the field at the 1972 World Series, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar saying he was more interested in being a good man than in being the greatest basketball player.
Brimming with colorful vignettes and enlivened by Callahan’s eye for detail, Gods at Play offers surprising portraits of the most celebrated names in sports. Roger Rosenblatt calls Callahan “the most complete sportswriter in America. He knows the most and writes the best."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sportswriter Callahan recalls the most memorable moments from his career with grace and humanity in this resonant memoir. Callahan's career began in 1966 in the Baltimore Evening Sun's newsroom, followed by stints at papers in San Diego, Calif.; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Washington, D.C., before a tenure at Time magazine. Rather than focus on individual games, Callahan homes in on anecdotes that reveal the inner lives of the men and women who played them. For example, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explains how, ashamed of his height in his youth, he looked to the Empire State Building as a positive role model; Muhammad Ali told Callahan, "My destiny is at stake," in an intimate moonlit conversation about an upcoming fight with George Foreman; and baseball great Pete Rose shared that his white teammates disdained him, ("they called him a hotdog for trying to do things he couldn't") while his Black teammates "treated me like a human being." Callahan's seamless mixture of tales from his own career and wisdom gleaned from the athletes he covered makes for a strong offering all-around. The book works as both a paean to sportswriting's glory days and a lyrical reminder that athletes have rich lives away from the stadium lights.
