ESPN SportsCentury

Rating:
Summary: Sport in the last Hundred Years!
Review: There have been a lot of memories in the past one hundred years and Espn has put them all together into a two hundred and eighty six page book. In the book it talks about different heroic players that include Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, and Michael Jordan.

Michael Maccambride's first book was the Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine. Previously he worked for eight years as a columnist and critic at the Austin-American Statesman, Writing about movies, music, and popular culture. He lives in ST. Louis with his wife Danica Frost, and their son, Miles.
I really like this book it because it goes down to every single detail that happened in those ten years. It gives a little five-page story of the most famous person during those five years. It also gives who won the college basketball, Pro Basketball, Hockey, Baseball, Collage Football, and pro footballs champion for each year. One of my most favorite parts of the book is end of the chapter when it talks about the main points that happened. It also has the best coach of the past ten years and the best commissioner of the past ten years. I think that all the picture researches and art directors did a really good finding all the pictures because they had a great variety of old and new pictures. I think this book is amazing and I would recommend it to anyone that likes sports. Even If you do not like sports this book will still be interesting with all of its colorful pictures and great facts. Submitted review to Amazon.


Rating:
Summary: READ THIS BEFORE YOUR BUY!
Review: Have you ever seen sportscentury on ESPN?? I have to, but that's not what this is.. It's good, but that's not it. it goes by decade, and has a big bio on the main person from that centure, and has some extra stats for the decade at the end... then it talks about SOME other people..so it's still a good book, but if your buying it because u think it's like the tv show on ESPN, it's not

Rating:
Summary: A great gift for a sports fanatic
Review: I bought this book for a gift - but caught myself reading it before I wrapped it - so I bought one for me, too. A great look at sports through the 20th century. Any sports fan would enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: A great gift for a sports fanatic
Review: I bought this book for a gift - but caught myself reading it before I wrapped it - so I bought one for me, too. A great look at sports through the 20th century. Any sports fan would enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: a fine chronology, but not perfect
Review: I received this book as a gift, and prepared to be underwhelmed. After all, this is ESPN we're talking about, the kings of the 5 second highlight reel, putting out a book that attempts to summarize all the greatest events in sports of the most prolific century man has ever known. Thus, I felt that my skepticism was justified, but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself being mainly incorrect.

The book opens with some of the most famous photos of sports events and period pieces from the glory days and otherwise. A World Series game at Ebbets...the Babe hitting a homer...Unitas in the Championship... Bobby Orr flying through the air after scoring the winning goal, and more.

The Foreword by Chris Berman paints a fine historical perspective and a generous introduction by David Halberstam prepare the reader for the rest to come. All too often, these coffee table sports books are devoid of such strong writing which make them enjoyable for more than just a few minutes and worthy of hanging on to for perusement time and again. This book is one exception, thanks in part to these two, but it doesn't end there.

The book presents each decade one at a time, selecting one athlete from each period and covering them in detail. As a bit of a photo nut, but also someone who likes to be entertained with fine prose, this book holds just about the perfect balance of both. Most pages are touched with small to medium photos surrounded with text, and the pictures are not strewn about in any lackadaisical manner but help to completely paint a picture. The occasional full-page, full-bleed photo gets in your face and can appear to stop time for just a moment.

I really enjoyed this approach, while the other athletes of the time still earn approximately half a page synopsis of their accomplishments and a photo, which is generally more than sufficient.

The most important events of each decade are then highlighted in text, with an accompanying photo where necessary, and a timeline of events is given.

Finally, a section called Playbook lists all the champions of the 10 years by sport: Pro and College Basketball, Hockey, Baseball, College and Pro Football, complete with footnotes. When initially glancing over the book, this was my favorite part, along with many of the photos included. Each chapter is finished off and rounded out with fulfilling short sections which help ensure some of the great details of sport were not omitted.

You expect a book like this to fawn entirely over the "big three" sports and disregard all else, but for the most part this is untrue. We read about golf, tennis, track and field, boxing in addition to the "major" ones. The decades with the most events get slightly more coverage, which is a smart move. There was simply a lot going on in the 80's than at the turn of the century.

This book surprised me with some of it's inclusions, for example, a short piece about The National Sports Daily, which I found an odd addition at first. Then again, this is 100% safe, seeing as how the National went under eight years ago. Yet this book is not faultless - it lacks an index, for example, something which is generally found even in lesser books.

And at times, we have to sit through selective coverage which makes this book far from definitive and at certain time very hit or miss. For example, one has to strain to find any significant coverage of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, surely something which would have been judged among the biggest stories of the decade in it's day.

However, the largest shortcoming is one more or less of perspective and one my fellow reader may disagree with. When the objective sports fan reads this book, and begins to enjoy the great stories and biographies they put together, they can simply not be affected by the lack of words afforded one Wayne Gretzky. He is given 3/4 of a page following the fourteen provided to Pete Rose, who is admittedly deserving of coverage of his own. I would normally complain that ESPN is too busy kissing up to Michael Jordan to give Gretzky equal time, but that is not the case this go around, since Jordan is covered in a different chapter (decade). All told, Mr. Gretzky's nine seasons with the L.A. Kings are given all of one sentence, which can hardly be considered fair since this was a big part of the prime of his great career.

Although Gretzky's seasons did indeed span both decades, Rose also had much of his career take place in the 70's, so that is no argument on Rose's side. My selection would have been for Gretzky over Rose, so that #99 would have gotten the equal coverage to Jordan that he truly deserves. Rose's scandal could have easily been given an aside, while giving him the same space provided other legends such as Montana, Bird, Johnson, and Payton. Simply put, Gretzky set 61 records and transcended a sport, while Pete Rose did not, and this slight is one that cannot be overlooked.

Nonetheless, this is still a very good book overall, the kind that I found myself locking myself in my room for hours on end to enjoy as a kid. This has always been the type of book that I cherish going back to time and again, attempting to somehow burn all the images into my mind and cram each piece of information and statistic into my head, and to put everything that I have ever known or heard about sports into better chronological perspective.

Easily, for the money this is one of the better sports pieces out there. I recommend each and every sports fan who lacks a great tale of the century's sports events take a long hard look at adding this one to their collection.

Rating:
Summary: Professional and a Joy
Review: Michael Mac sure can put together a great coffee-table book. This is a Joy to peruse. Glorifies our National Pastimes. Bought this as a Gift to Myself. Thank you!

Rating:
Summary: Now ESPN needs is a Video to go with this!
Review: Over the past several months their has been an abundance of books about the sports century, ranking people and each list is very subjective. ESPN has put together some of the more interesting highlights of the last century and this book is one of a kind.

In just over 280 pages there is more sports memories than just about any other book I have read. Packed with photos, and some of them rare, laced with stories and filled with memories, there is something in this book for every sports fan, both young and old.

ESPN has made a name in the sports world as the leader in sports coverage, not with this book they proved themselves right. You'll read about Babe Ruth, Joe Louis, Joe Dimaggio and Ted Williams, Johnny Unitas, Pete Rose, Ali and Jordan.

For the true sports fans this book makes the perfect addition to the library. About the only thing book needs now is a video to compliment the writing. Excellent work and congratulations ESPN on a job well done.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book to Read and To Have!
Review: This book is great to look facts up in, it is great to find out about the best players of the century, it is great for everything! If you want to know what sports movies came out and were popular in the 40's it has it. If you want to know who won the 1913 college football championship, it has it. If you want to know what big sports periodicals came out in the 60's, it has it. This will be a great book to be able to look back on in the future, and it is a great book to read now! This is a great book or collectors item for any historian or sports lover!