Upon Further Review
The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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.
"Intriguing...thought provoking...delightful." --The Washington Post
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his first book, Pesca, host of The Gist podcast, collects lively and informative essays on possible alternatives to some of the most notable moments in sports history. The entries come from sports columnists, historians, documentarians, and fans, and "propose hypotheticals that sparked the imagination, that opened the door to a hidden history or set off a plausible chain reaction we might not have even considered." Highlights include Shira Springer's "What If the United States Had Boycotted Hitler's Olympics?" in which she presents a convincing case that a boycott would have been better for the 1936 Olympics, immediately setting the sporting event on "a more progressive" course. In "What If Muhammad Ali Had Gotten His Draft Deferment?" Leigh Montville convincingly argues that Ali's time away from boxing in 1966 "was the most important time of all" that without his image of "challenging authority," Ali's career would have been "perfunctory, simply about boxing." In one of the best essays, "What If Nat Sweetwater' Clifton's Pass Hadn't Gone Awry?" Claude Johnson takes a look at racism in the early days of professional basketball with Nat Clifton playing in 1948 on the New York Rens, an all-black pro basketball team (Clifton's errant pass caused the Rens to lose the game, and perhaps a franchise spot on the newly formed NBA). Enlightening and entertaining, Pesca's collection of hypothetical sports outcomes gives sports fans much food for thought.
