The Bases Were Loaded (and So Was I): Up Close and Personal with the Greatest Names in Sports

For ex-Time magazine and Washington Post sportswriter Callahan, it's not the action or the score that counts; it's the athletes, revealed most candidly in their moments of downtime, inattention and frailty. In a series of loose-jointed profiles and shaggy-dog stories organized by sport, Callahan presents punchy, profane, often heartbreaking vignettes from five decades or so of reporting--in tennis, for example, he considers everything from the hoopla of the Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs match to a random encounter with John McEnroe as the famous player sits necking with a woman in a car on a secluded country lane. His vivid, acerbic writing delivers pungent thumbnail sketches of such luminaries as Pete Rose (""he had a gap-toothed grin and was given to flinging himself flat and breaststroking like a gopher into bases""), Jack Nicklaus (""occasionally, he would attempt to acknowledge other people with a horribly synthetic wink that always put me in mind of a love letter marked 'Occupant'"") and legendary football coach Paul Brown (he""paced the sidelines in a wide-brimmed hat and a long overcoat, looking like the homicide inspector viewing the body""). He also has a clear and sympathetic eye for matters of race in sports, and for the ravages that age visits upon the once majestic bodies of sports heroes. Sports and writing fans alike will be enchanted.