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Rating: 
Summary: All-star SportsWriter Speaks His Peace
Review: I've always appreciated Lupica for what he does: speaks his mind,not what everyone wants to hear and stay on the bandwagon.Here he sounds off about what some of us at least feel is a tragedy: sports have been taken away from us. The money, the corruption, the trades, the teams moving, no concern for the integrity of the sport. Problem is: culture is too pragmatic and success oriented for guys like us. This all falls on deaf hears, but few will read this and enjoy honesty and love for the sport that this guy has. We're with you Mike!
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Summary: NY Sportswriter "Mad As Hell"....And Just About As Obvious
Review: In "Mad As Hell," sportswriter/ESPN commentator Mike Lupica takes on the costumed criminals in what he calls "the life" - greedy, arrogant professional sports owners and players divorced from sportsmanship and citizenship. The title of Lupica's 235-page screed hints that this is no nuanced look at personalities and philosophies shaping American sports' forced aristocracy. It needed doing, but anger makes Lupica's pen a blunt instrument rather than the needed surgeon's scalpel. His points are broad, well-taken, hard-hitting. His rap sheet of players (the 1990s Dallas Cowboys, Christian Peter, Lawrence Phillips, Albert Belle) and owners (Art Modell, George Steinbrenner, Jerry Jones) ring twice as notorious one after another as among sidebars and corners of Lupica's New York Daily News. But that is all Lupica seems to do - list, vent, take God's name in vain (so you know he means it ), conclude complex problems of objectification and race with obvious, flag-waving answers (don't park or buy hot dogs at the games, contact athlete endorsers when behavior's bad, create Sports Police to punish bad behavior). He builds evidential cases but fails at closing argument. Lupica correctly points out the "Best Available" philosophy as the reason behind sports stars' inflated value, the power twist among player unions, agents, and owners (touching on President Clinton's attempt to end 1994's baseball strike) contempt toward fans, women, opposition, media, authority in general, and the overhype celebrity, especially sports, has in society. (His "dissing" of future LA Lakers Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal are prophetic considering this year's feud after the Lakers' recent championship). His comparing professional sports to New York's legendary Cotton Club (wealthy, mostly white people watch the best black performers) is superb, demanding more insight than the 12 pages given it. The examples from Lupica's life as reporter (a puzzling tale of two columns with basketball's Anthony Mason) and father (his children discussing sports cards' cash value, the ugly tale of a Dallas Cowboys' autograph show in New Jersey) brings this new, harsh athlete/fan relationship to familial bonds that sports should reinforce. (Lupica's later "Summer of 98" is a brighter look at how sports fandom can unite generations). If America's sports fascination is the "abusive relationship" Lupica describes, if his point is accurate that "(Fans) have to take (abuse) from sports, because there is nowhere else to go," than Lupica fails in not indicting America's celebrity-starved culture for misguided hero worship. Fact is, as world events from Olympics (Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan rate mention in a knock on the media!) to the Gulf War prove, America loves winners, fears losing, hates losers. Everybody, from taxpayers to politicans to sports networks give what they have, endure what they must to assure winning records in daily standings, weekly Neilsens, or corporate quarterlies. "Fan" after all, is short for "fanatic," and fanatics have honored more than their share of false gods and scribes. Lupica allows consumer advocate Ralph Nader to comment accurately about building what would become PSINet Stadium while Baltimore's schools crumbled. But he failed to express the city's heartbreak in the 14 years after their beloved Colts left for Indianapolis. That story, including the NFL thwarting its' attempts to regain an expansion team, could have been a metaphor for all that was wrong in sports and its importance to civic pride. (The late Robert Irsay rates no mention in the book while his team-swapping partner, the Rams' Georgia Frontiere, is dissed early and often.) This book could use a update if Lupica has temper for it. Some among the villified (Modell, Steinbrenner, Frontiere) won titles or may soon do so. His insight into 2000's Baltimore Ravens winning its city's loyalties, the failures of big-spending owners (the Tribune Company's Cubs, the Redskins' Dan Snyder), the Ray Lewis and Rae Caruth murder trials could heat and purify his arguments (as would omitting commentary from Keith Olbermann, as much a TV nomad as any Lupica hand-picked Hessian, who today languishes weekly on Fox SportsNet.) For now, "Mad As Hell" is an organized, well-written but incomplete reinforcement of all that sports fans knew was wrong with their favorite player, team, sport. Just remember that Lupica knows little better than anyone else how to change it.
Rating: 
Summary: For the fans
Review: MAD AS HELL is a great book for those of us (the fans) who know of an owner or who thinks the salaries of players have gotten to high. Being a Clevelander myself I loved the excerpt where Lupica rips on the owners, specifically Art Modell and Marge Schott. Mike Lupica has this uncanny ability to put into words all that I've felt was wrong with players, owners, agents, front offices, and the way the fans still pay the outrageous salaries. Lupica doesn't limit his critism to only baseball and football. He lets into all professional sports and even hits college sports with vengence. It isn't hard to get past the fact that the book is slightly dated. The themes transends time. I really enjoyed the book.
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Summary: very inlighting on the true state of sports
Review: One more great book for Mr. Mike Lupica, the one great thing I remember about this book was how it truely states the truth about how sports is working the wallet over very well from each, and every true sports fan in America. Maybe these players need to all go get real job's, and no what it feels like to worry about paying the price of liveing in the real life world.
Rating:
Summary: not quite a masterpiece
Review: This is a powerful polemic against sports corruption and greed.The egomaniacal and often crinimal athletes, the fraudelent college idea of student athletes and ultragreedy owners are well documented here. The quibbles I have with the book are the unnecessary profanity and Lupica's unwillingness to attack the media in creating this mess by fueling an obsession with sports that puts the people involved on pedestals so tha they think they can engage in the fan abuse Lupica rails against. It is still a worthy book.
Rating:
Summary: not quite a masterpiece
Review: This is a powerful polemic against sports corruption and greed.The egomaniacal and often crinimal athletes, the fraudelent college idea of student athletes and ultragreedy owners are well documented here. The quibbles I have with the book are the unnecessary profanity and Lupica's unwillingness to attack the media in creating this mess by fueling an obsession with sports that puts the people involved on pedestals so tha they think they can engage in the fan abuse Lupica rails against. It is still a worthy book.
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