Bad break in this game
When I heard of the death today of David Halberstam, I looked to my bookcase to find my copy of "The Breaks of the Game." And I realized I'd made the same mistake as most of society. I'd shelved it downstairs, under Sports.
I must have been about 17 when I read "The Breaks of the Game," just off a couple of years as a cub reporter covering high school basketball. In it I found sports journalism that wasn't just thrown away with yesterday's newspapers. It was preserved as a book -- in part because it addressed bigger questions of economics, race, and character.
I had not then heard of Halberstam, had not read the books on Vietnam or the media establishment, but understood him to be an important and powerful figure. So I was stunned that he spent an entire season following a pro basketball team in the pre-Bird and Magic era, then writing a long and well-received book about it. Especially since I myself hadn't seen Bill Walton's TrailBlazers play. The book made me wish I had.
I re-read it several times through the 1980s, and even used it as a model in trying to write my own novel about basketball. (My manuscript, needless to say, was a miserable failure.) But beyond what it did for my early futile attempts to write, the biggest impact this book had on me was simply the fact that somebody so famous had bothered to write it. Something that fascinated me -- that seemed so commonplace and anti-literary -- could be worthy of nationwide publication.
"The Breaks of the Game" has not aged well. In its opening quote a famous athlete discusses the importance of character, and unfortunately that famous athlete is O.J. Simpson. Its topics -- the fate of several individual TrailBlazers, and the way their sport represents the changing national culture of the 1970s -- don't seem terribly compelling all these years later, not compelling enough to push me through Halberstam's notoriously wordy prose.
But the book deserves credit for what it did to at least this reader (and I suspect thousands more). It legitimated sportswriting. It proved that thoughtful analysis of these "mere games" was as valuable as thoughtful analysis of any other games people play, from politics to careers.
I just wish I had followed through on that lesson and shelved the book where it belongs, next to all the other inspirations adjacent to my desk.
I'm always interested in feedback, in comments below or via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
I must have been about 17 when I read "The Breaks of the Game," just off a couple of years as a cub reporter covering high school basketball. In it I found sports journalism that wasn't just thrown away with yesterday's newspapers. It was preserved as a book -- in part because it addressed bigger questions of economics, race, and character.
I had not then heard of Halberstam, had not read the books on Vietnam or the media establishment, but understood him to be an important and powerful figure. So I was stunned that he spent an entire season following a pro basketball team in the pre-Bird and Magic era, then writing a long and well-received book about it. Especially since I myself hadn't seen Bill Walton's TrailBlazers play. The book made me wish I had.
I re-read it several times through the 1980s, and even used it as a model in trying to write my own novel about basketball. (My manuscript, needless to say, was a miserable failure.) But beyond what it did for my early futile attempts to write, the biggest impact this book had on me was simply the fact that somebody so famous had bothered to write it. Something that fascinated me -- that seemed so commonplace and anti-literary -- could be worthy of nationwide publication.
"The Breaks of the Game" has not aged well. In its opening quote a famous athlete discusses the importance of character, and unfortunately that famous athlete is O.J. Simpson. Its topics -- the fate of several individual TrailBlazers, and the way their sport represents the changing national culture of the 1970s -- don't seem terribly compelling all these years later, not compelling enough to push me through Halberstam's notoriously wordy prose.
But the book deserves credit for what it did to at least this reader (and I suspect thousands more). It legitimated sportswriting. It proved that thoughtful analysis of these "mere games" was as valuable as thoughtful analysis of any other games people play, from politics to careers.
I just wish I had followed through on that lesson and shelved the book where it belongs, next to all the other inspirations adjacent to my desk.
I'm always interested in feedback, in comments below or via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
