Description:
If there's a sports tale ripe for the telling, it's George Steinbrenner's stewardship of the Yankees. But where to center? On the tumult, the terror, the absurdity, or the glory? In All Roads Lead to October, Maury Allen refracts the broad spectrum. Wandering genially from story to story and era to era, he scatters anecdotes and observations like a spray hitter in a book that reads like a long evening on a barstool beside an old sportswriter (which he is). He may stray at times, but he never gets lost. Still, it's hard to go too off the track given the situations that have arisen and the personalities that have revolved through Steinbrenner's stormy tenure. Writers can't make up stuff like pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson trading families, Reggie Jackson proving "the magnitude of me" with his bat, the zaniness surrounding Billy Martin's hirings and firings, the humiliation of Dave Winfield, the exile of Yogi Berra, the sentimental melodrama of Joe Torre, and Darryl Strawberry's bottomless second chance. Well-covered stuff? Sure. But Allen's not shy about inflicting his personal prejudices and assessments on them--they give old stuff new spin. Of course, even in that Bronx Zoo, there's no animal quite like Steinbrenner himself. With insights finely tuned over time, Allen paints the Boss with brush strokes nuanced enough to capture the complexities and contradictions Steinbrenner wallows in--is anyone else in sports so fascinatingly arrogant, egotistical, unbridled, passionate, terrifying, astute, silly, sappy, able, and goodhearted all in one? Allen doesn't think so, which isn't surprising. What is is his ultimate appraisal: "Imagine," Allen submits, "the Boss as a Cooperstown bust." Given the record, it's really not that big a stretch. --Jeff Silverman
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