Book Review: The Best Boston Sports Arguments
I recently finished reading a very interesting book called The Best Boston Sports Arguments: The 100 Most Controversial, Debatable Questions for Die-Hard Boston Fans (whew!). The book is written by two newspaper columnists that most Boston sports fans should be familiar with, Jim Caple of ESPN and Steve Buckley of The Boston Herald.
The book leans pretty heavily towards the Red Sox side of things, with 50 of the 100 arguments being geared towards the Sox. You could essentially call the book, 'The 50 greatest Red Sox arguments, with some Celts, Bs and a few Pats arguments thrown in for good measure'.
Overall I liked the book. It's an easy read, with each argument broken up into it's own chapter, each of which are generally only two to three pages long. There are a lot of interesting facts and pleasant memories from Boston sports lore that are discussed in the book, as well as an occasional history lesson for readers who assuredly know the names of Boston's greatest athletes but may not be all that familiar with some of their feats.
The book also does it's job of presenting some arguments that people might disagree with as well. In reading the book, there were a few 'arguments' that definitely got under my skin a bit, though that might have been in part due to the general tone of the writing. The fact is, the book is not really a collection of arguments, but a collection of opinions in which Buckley and Caple tell you the way things are, and if you happen to disagree, well you don't really know what you're talking about anyway.
Your enjoyment of the book may depend a lot on your sensitivity to the, at times, condescending, 'we're professional sportswriters and you're not' tone of co-writers Buckley and Caple. If you are someone who generally likes to read sports columnists and generally agrees with what they have to say, then you will probably like this book. If you are someone like me, who tends to find sports columnists somewhat grating, you might not enjoy the book as much, but, then again, the book is called The Best Boston Sports Arguments, so I guess a somewhat confrontational tone should be expected.
One of the undertones in this book that continually got on my nerves was the general sentiment that all of the recent success of the current Boston Red Sox, culminating with their winning of the World Series in '04, could never truly compare with the success of Red Sox teams from the now distant past, even though, that past 'success' was usually underscored by a very painful failure, (if that makes any sense).
Of course, this reeks of Buckley who has a well known obsession with nostalgia and 'old tyme' baseball. Anyone familiar with Buckley's work should be able to quickly pick out the 'arguments' that were written by him. (Oh yes, he gets all of the Tony C arguments that you've probably read or heard from him a hundred times into the book.)
I'm sorry guys but I disagree with the 'argument' that the '75 Red Sox were better than the '04 team. Forget the nostalgia. Who's got the rings? There's no argument there in my mind. There's just something about bringing home a big shiny piece of hardware that tends to make me think the '04 team trumps '86, '75, '67 and all the others going back to 1918 or so. But that's just me. I'm not a pro sportswriter after all..
In the end, if you are a fan of Boston Sports, particularly the Red Sox, you really can't go wrong with The Best Boston Sports Arguments. It's a quick and easy read that is both fun and yes, at times even educational, and hey, arguing about sports is what half the fun is all about, right?