Next Man Up

Next Man Up by John Feinstein

Category: Sports Grade: B

When it comes to in depth writing about sports, there's nobody better than John Feinstein. You probably won't enjoy his books unless you're a sports fan which is kind of a shame. His books are typically about 30% hard core sports and the rest good stories about the people and the politics of sports. If you non-sports fans can get yourselves to skim the game details in the book, you'd probably enjoy the rest.

What makes Feinstein's books interesting is his approach. He typically spends a long period of time - usually a season - focusing on a particular sport, team or, occasionally, a rivalry. When he decided to write this book about the professional football, he started by asking a bunch of teams if they would give him total access to the team - not just sitting on the sidelines for practices and games, but sitting in on business and player personnel meetings. Nobody had ever done that before so, understandably, he didn't get a lot of interest from the teams. Fortunately, in one of those friend-of-a-friend circumstances, he was able to make contact with Steve Bisciotti, the Baltimore businessman who had just taken majority ownership of the Ravens from Hall-of-Fame owner Art Modell. Bisciotti like the idea and after securing agreement from the coach, Brian Billick (enthusiastically) and the general manager, Ossie Newsome (reluctantly), they had a deal.

Luckily for Feinstein, this turned out to be a narratively interesting, if ultimately unsuccessful, year (2004) for the Ravens. They had a new owner who was trying to figure out what it meant to be an owner. The Ravens had been successful over the past few years and thought they had a serious chance at making a run for the Superbowl. There were two off-the-field dramas during the year - the ultimately dismissed murder charge against Ray Lewis and a fairly bogus drug charge against Jamal Lewis. There were a slew of injuries to key players requiring the coaches and personnel people to do some fancy dancing with replacements. Finally, there were the ups and downs of the season itself. That year the Ravens were the last team eliminated from the playoffs.

As I said above, about 30% of the books is hard core with 3-5 pages devoted to the details of each game of the season. Even for a football fan, these are actually the least interesting parts of the book. What makes the book fun to read is the focus on the people and relationships. We get a lot of backstories about how the coaches and players got to where they are. You get to really know some of the marginal players who don't know from week-to-week whether they'll be playing football in front of 80,000 people or flipping burgers somewhere. You feel the agony of the players who get cut and, surprisingly, of the coaches who have to cut them. You get to see players near the end of their careers working to convince everybody around them that they can still play.

Did I convince any of you non-sportsfans? Didn't think so.