Replays, Rivalries, and Rumbles

Steven Gietschier, a former sports researcher and now a history professor, has gathered a team of sports historians to present features of past sporting events.  The anthology, “Replays, Rivalries, and Rumbles,” is intended to remind readers of iconic stories, the type of tales to be enjoyed over a beer by sports enthusiasts.  He does a great job of selecting the moments we all remember with the additional bonus of adding details that are not well known.

The origin of baseball, comparisons of NBA rivals Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, the Rumble in the Jungle, Billie Jean King’s pantsing of Bobby Riggs, the Miracle on Ice, the formation of ESPN, and other memorable stories are recounted here.  One thing I always marveled at was the stark difference in the hoops talent of both Bird and Johnson, the grace of a ballerina vs. the sturdy reliability of a gifted auto mechanic.  Who can forget a determined US amateur hockey team taking the Olympic gold medal away from a rigorously schooled Russian juggernaut?  What caused Dan Grable to lose his only collegiate wresting match (the last of his collegiate career) leaving him with a lifetime record of 181 wins and 1 loss?  These stories and more fill the pages of this great nostalgic look at great stories along with some surprises.

The editor has judiciously included well-written works that are impressively researched and of great interest to those of us who care.  Myths, legends, and stark reality are unfurled here.  I found the book to be fascinating and filled with  memories.  Great reading.

This is the sort of book you can enjoy in chinks .

The selections are interesting the viewpoints are diverse and will change your views or make you more interested . 

If you are european it may require a familiarity with us sport but the writing takes you through the details that you may not understand or be aware of

A wonderfully researched book on a wide variety of sports. Baseball, tennis, basketball, boxing, wrestling (Olympic wrestling, not WWE), football, and hockey are all covered. There is a discussion on flag dipping at the Olympics as well as the formation of ESPN. This is a collection of well known sports moments with some additional nuggets of information to help you one up your pals at the bar. Several of these stories have entire books dedicated to the lore of the event, however this book does an excellent job of capturing the essence of each one without dedicating hundreds of pages to each one. You will gain a greater appreciation for some moments, and leave with a new perspective on others. This book kept making me think of Paul Harvey, "and now you know the rest of the story."

Each of the nearly two dozen essays in this superb collection takes a look at an iconic moment in American sports history and provides fascinating insights into what really happened, and now just what we “know” happened. A wide variety of sports and issues are addressed, including some that are to be expected such as the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics or the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, and some surprises, such as American flag bearers and the “dipping” of the flag during the parade of nations at the Olympics and the unbelievable defeat of wrestler Dan Gables. 

For the die hard sports buff, this book is a true gem. One highlight is that each essay concludes with a “for further reading” section which provides a treasure trove of additional books/and or resources in case the reader wants to learn even more on the subject. What a find!!

A very enjoyable book to read and there was quite a lot of things I had never known before because it was US based sports/incidents.

Nothing provokes an argument better than a sports controversy.  Did Babe Ruth point to the outfield during the 1932 World Series and then pound a home run there?  Did Muhammad Ali improvise the rope-a-dope strategy during his fight with George Foreman?  Did the dying George Gipp tell Kunte  Rockne to win one for the Gipper?
	These questions and others are answered, or, at least, discussed in Replays, Rivalries and Rumbles, edited by Steven Gietschier. This volume is a compilation of 23 short essays by  historians,  each dealing with a famous sports event. 
     Some of their findings are quite well known.  For example, it is accepted that Rockne made up the Gipper story to inspire Notre Dame at the halftime of  a scoreless game against Army. What Ronald. A. Smith uncovers in his essay is that Notre Dame refused to pay for Gipp’s medical expenses. It was only after the college president retired that Gipp’s doctor was paid about half of what he claimed he was owed. 
          Smith also shows that Gipp , a high school dropout, never went to class. He was kept on the team solely because of pressure from the alumni who wanted a winning football team. 
     Sometimes, historical digging doesn’t resolve a controversy, but only muddies  the water. Larry R. Gerlach’s essay on Babe Ruth at the 1932 World Series proves that there was never a consensus on what Ruth intended when he pointed to the outfield. Some people in the stands said Ruth  held up two fingers to show the umpire that he knew the strike count.  Others claimed he was indicating where he intended to hit a home run.  Ruth himself, gave contradictory accounts over the years. 
     Michael Ezra shows in his essay on the Ali-Foreman fight, that Ali and his trainer worked out the rope-a-dope strategy months in advance. They were both convinced it was the only way for the aging Ali to overcome the superior reach and harder punching power of Foreman. 
     But in media interviews later, Ali claimed that his trainer tried to stop him from laying on the ropes. His falsehood was gobbled up, unquestioningly, by reporters because it made for a more dramatic story. 
      Ezra also found that Ali lied about throwing his Olympic gold medal in a river to protest racism.  In fact, Ali simply lost the medal and made up the story to cover up his carelessness.  After Ali developed Parkinson's disease, reporters were reluctant to expose these and other of Ali’s fabrications. 
     Other essays in the book deal with the famous tennis battle of the sexes between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, the founding of Negro League baseball , the early days of ESPN and the notorious 1972 Olympic basketball match between the USA and the Soviet Union. 
     Each essay is illustrated and concludes with a list of sources for those who want to dig deeper into the event described. Replays, Rivalries and Rumbles would make an excellent gift for the sports fan or for anyone with an interest in American history.

I received this ARC of this book from NetGalley.  I am a big sports history fan, and I think at that the story behind the story is sometimes more interesting. If you feel the same way, this book might be one for you.  Did Babe Ruth really point and call his shot?, Why did the Dodgers really move to LA?, and even stories that about events that changed sports, like Curt Flood, and the 1958 NFL Championship.
I enjoyed the book and enjoyed learning more about famous sports stories.

Most of the stories in this book people will know. Some people might not even care about. Me on the other hand was a sports nerd during most of these events. One I thought though the author had more information about, was the Juan Marichal and Johnny Roseboro incident. The author goes into what else that was brewing. With Marichal he was worried about his family on the Dominic since the National Guard was sent down there in 1965. Roseboro was still dealing with the Watts riots since he lived right there and was dealing with the riots stills. That was interesting. Most of the other stories I thought they were all good, I really never got the whole Billy Jean King, Bobby Riggs match. The author speaks of the women’s movement, for me though my grandmother graduated College before women could vote, she received a certificate not a diploma and form before World War I until she passed, she felt women could do anything, my mother had two master degrees and worked, so really that tennis match I never got. The stories were good and the last one about the National Sports Daily, was a fantastic paper. I still three copies of them because of the articles that were in the different ones. They wrote about sports differently than regular papers or sports magazines, they gave you stats and most importantly the history of every sport. The history of football, hockey, basketball all of them. Because really baseball is the only the talks about and celebrates its past stars, football people only talk of the Super Bowl, and who is the greatest. When you have men like Sammy Baugh who played quarterback, defensive back with a career 31 passes that he intercepted, Don Hutson who had 488 receptions and intercepted 30 passes and was also a place kicker for extra points and for his first five tears in the league they did not even keep stats for interceptions. These are just two there are many, many more and that paper would give people the insight into the past as well as what was going on in the day. For a sports geek like myself at the time it was perfect and I was and still am disappointed that it is gone. Overall I thought this was a good book.