First and Last Seasons: A Father, a Son, and Sunday Afternoon Football

At the beginning of this memoir, McGraw leaves his position as an editor at U.S. News & World Report to spend time with his dying father in Cleveland, and to investigate the resurgence of the city's beloved professional football franchise, the Browns. The book awkwardly encompasses aspects of autobiography, biography, social commentary, history and sports-page analysis, leaving McGraw pondering a range of death-bed emotions on one page and the Browns' depth at linebacker on the next. Though McGraw clearly respects and loves his father, his portrait of a no-nonsense Catholic always ready with a sardonic smirk suggests where McGraw inherited his dislike for cloying sentimentality. His tone is biting and blue-collar, as are many of the old friends he encounters in the neighborhood bars he frequents. He portrays their abuse of drugs and alcohol with no apologies, as if such behavior were a necessary survival skill to overcome the city's cold Lake Erie winds and humiliating losses in all fields of professional sport. The barroom wisdom of his writing is comfortable, though it occasionally grows tiresome, as when McGraw opines that women hold grudges because ""they have never had the experience of fighting hard against each other on the football field and then putting that aside."" But most of McGraw's insights, particularly into Cleveland itself and the Browns' smarmy new management, are funny enough to carry readers through the book's many clumsy transitions. The book's brown-and-orange cover will draw Cleveland fans, but it may not be enough to catch the eye of other football devotees. (Oct.)