Play It Again Sam

Rating:
Summary: Doing His Homework
Review: Stan Friedland is a retired high school principal who had a highly successful and satisfying 34-year career in education with a doctoral degree from Columbia University. In 1998 he published, along with Phil Craft, "An Orphan Has Many Parents."
Since Stan, throughout his lifetime was interested and active in athletics and sports, it was not surprising that his next literary work would be a biography of a famous sports figure of the mid-20's through the mid-50's; i.e. Sam Schoenfeld--teacher, basketball player, coach, radio and TV commentator! What is interesting is how this new work came into being. Certainly, it was serendipitous to say the least.
Dr. Robert Schoenfel, Stan's personal physician of the past 15 years, following a physical exam in early 2003, asked Sam about the book he had co-authored. He learned that the orphanage was in the East NY/Brownsville section of Brooklyn; that Stan had attended Thomas Jefferson HS where Schoenfeld (Bob's father) had been the Phys.Ed. Director; that Friedland had him as a teacher; and when he majored in PE at Brooklyn College he came back to Jefferson to student teach, Sam Schoenfeld was one of his mentor-teachers!
When Friedland opined that it was unlikely Dr. Schoenfeld could be successful in his campaign to have his dad enshrined in the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame (alongside the likes of Nat Holman and other "Jewish Sports Greats")merely on the basis of his coaching career, Dr.Schoenfeld enlightened him of the wide spread of his dad's accomplishments--as teacher, basketball player, coach, collegiate basketball official, sports
commentator,etc.He revealed that he had over 700 news clippings about the career of Sam Schoenfeld and offered to lend them for Stan to peruse. When Friedland brought them back a week later, he observed that only a book could fulfill "the full magnitude of your dad's accomplishments." It was then that the book was born!
But Stan Friedland did not rely soley on 700 news clippings. In his Acknowledgements he writes; "A good biography requires ample documentation, authenticity and accuracy,plus a plentiful number of eye-witness sources to provide the human and colorful elements of a particular individual."
Friedland interviewed each of Sam Schoenfeld's three sons, Bob, Ed and Peter and "each is well represented in the book..." Sam's "kid-brother, Jack,83 years young, was a tremendous
historical resource" and "delighted to be part of this project that honored a brother." And other members of the family were like-wise contacted, had their recollections recorded and duly acknowledged.
"Then there was the vast contingent of alumni from Jefferson." The author either spoke to each of them in person or over the phone, but in any event "were they ever so impressive!"
So, there is no question that Stan Friedland did his homework and fulfilled his own description of what constitutes "A good biography." The work is decidely that--a good biography of a notable sports figure who died at too young an age ("not even 50 years old" as son Robert laments in his Foreword in the form of a "letter to his Dad" in which he further laments "I never knew about most of your achievments. You were always a modest man."
And while the focus is always on Sam Schoenfeld and his climb from obscurity to acclaim, Stan Friedland takes the time to describe Schoenfeld's milieu and the social forces at work at the time. My favorite is Chapter 7:"Basketball; The Jewish Sport--a Cultural Phenomenon." Perhaps because I personally was witness to much of what he was describing about the 20' to the 40's. I grew up during the fame of Nat Holman and the CCNY "Cinderella Teams."
If there is any criticism that might be levied at the work, it could be that, in his eagerness for "accuracy and veracity" Stan Friedland presents his readers with a surfeit of quotations from the news clippings attesting to the achievements and accomplishments of Sam Schoenfeld. And even though each such presentation is for a new set of achievements and accomplishments on the part of Mr. Schoenfeld, it creates for the reader a sense of redundancy. Still, one may well ask: "is the redundandcy in Sam Schoenfeld's accomplishments--or the reporting of them?"
Sam George Arcus 1-11-05