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Gary Clark gave me homework over The Bourbon Chase. I had to read LeBron James’ and Buzz Bissinger’s Shooting Stars and start posting to the front again. Here we go.

Shooting Stars tells the story of how LeBron James learned basketball and created lifelong friendships with his fellow players and coaches. Little Dru, Sian, Willie, and eventually the mercurial Romeo. The coming together of “The Fab Four” then “The Fab Four plus One” in high school to the eventual “Fab Five”. The guys started playing together as a travelling AAU team eventually attending Akron’s St. Vincent’s and won three of four Ohio high school championships, including being USA Today’s number one their senior year.

The book consistently glosses over essential details that leaves the reader longing for more.  Things like LeBron’s mom, only 16 when LeBron was born, is absent from his life for months at a time doing “what she needed to do” to get her life together and become more involved in her sons life. LeBron doesn’t see what could have been wrong when his mom, still on public assistance, got the loan for the $50,000 Hummer she “gave” him for his 18th.

Worst is the pages long descriptions of the basketball games won and lost and LeBron’s internal dialogue. I paraphrase here the pages describing the Ohio Championship game their Junior year where they were runners-up:

“Roger Bacon is playing us tough. We’re trading baskets” (Tons of internal dialogue. How did we get here? We’re supposed to be too good. Why didn’t we listen to the coach?). “Roger Bacon makes a three pointer with 20 seconds left. They’re up by seven” (Much more internal dialogue. LeBron blaming himself, the refs, the partying, his sore back, etc.).

I hated this book. It made me sad to be caught reading it. Swampers, runners, fellow air travelers all pitied me. One woman in Lexington asked me if I realized I was reading a book written for nine year old boys. I nodded slightly and averted her gaze. Best for the description of Grant Wahl’s SI cover piece when LeBron turned 18 and the impact of the media pressure that ensued. Worst for everything else.

C minus.

Disclaimer: We received a promotional copy of this book for review.

We all know about Branch Rickey’s role in integrating Major League Baseball, building a Dodgers National League empire, and revolutionizing the minor league baseball system. But I would guess that few people know about his role in trying to start a new baseball league in the late 1950s.

Michael Shapiro’s book, Bottom of the Ninth, is centered around this largely-forgotten movement. This was to be a legitimate third major-league that would challenge the bicameral system of baseball. Don’t forget that this was a time when the leagues were very much their own entities. The respective presidents of the leagues wielded significant power. It was long before interleague play, and the All-Star Game was a relatively recent phenomenon. In his wildest dreams, Rickey envisioned a three-way Round Robin-style World Series between the American, National, and Rickey’s new league: the Continental League.

As ridiculous as that sounds, Shapiro does a wonderful job providing the historical context for us to understand why this league had to be taken seriously by Major League Baseball. Rickey’s most powerful leverage was the fact that the Giants and Dodgers had just moved West and New York only had one team. Rickey’s threat would play a large part in the creation of the New York Mets. In fact, it is widely believed that the Continental League was a ploy to get New York a second team.

But despite the fact that we know the outcome, the information Shapiro has compiled is interesting to any hardcore baseball fan. Not only has Shapiro accessed many of Rickey’s letters – which provide a wonderful glimpse into one of baseball’s greatest minds – but he describes the dirty politics played by the powerbrokers of the game in great detail. The majority of baseball’s ownership come across as glorified criminals. In particular, Yankees owner Del Webb sounds like he would eat George Steinbrenner for lunch.

However, for some reason, Shapiro didn’t think this story was intriguing enough (which it was), and decided to intertwine the life and times of Casey Stengel and the Yankees with the story of the Continental League. The result is a disjointed effort that is often jarring to the reader. It feels forced.

Still, I’ve read countless books on baseball history, and practically all of the stories in this book are new to me. And most of them are downright fascinating. My recommendation is to pick up the book, and skip the Stengel sections.

Dear EA Sports,

I appreciate what you’ve done to the Madden Franchise and everything. It is impressive. The marketing. The product. All that crap. But really, what are we doing with this thing now other than spending $50 on a roster update?

You can add graphics, and have neat little tackle scenes, and annually embed an entire playlist of every song I don’t want to hear this year, but how about some simple things that have never really worked?

For one, draw runs and screen passes are a waste of playbook space. And only because they don’t work. Every time you run a draw play, your running back crashes into a wall of your own offensive linemen. The whole point of the play is to allow the defensive rushers to run themselves past the play. It’s simple enough to fix. Don’t tell all of the offensive line to pass block. Send the guards ahead to push their man out of the way.

Screen passes don’t really work either. Why does it take perfect touch by the quarterback to make that throw? If you hold the pass button too hard, you nail your back in the head with the ball. Too soft, and the ball floats 15 yards straight up. The running backs need to be more aware of what’s going on and the getting a good toss from your QB should not require 4 hours of practice.

On defense, it’s nice to see that fumbles have become more a part of the game. But the 3-4 defenses in this game still are way too vulnerable to the run. It doesn’t matter who you’re playing in the front seven, they are more effective in a 4-3 formation at stopping the run than they are in the 3-4. With the right personnel, that should be the other way around.

And what’s the world record for most consecutive games played without committing a penalty? 156, tied by everyone? There’s still little disincentive to field your team with star rookies without fear of penalties or other stupid mistakes.

I’m sure I’m missing plenty of gameplay related issues that have never been addressed in the game. Feel free to add yours in our madden 08 thread.

So our good friend DJ Gallo from sports satire site deluxe sportspickle.com sends me a copy of his new book The View From the Upper Deck. We love the site, and link it a decent amount, but when I pick it up, I honestly don’t expect to laugh that much because I assume I’ve read most of his stuff already.

I open it up, start reading and, within five minutes, I am laughing so hard that I can barely breathe and tears are coming out of my eyes. Some of the material is the classic stuff I love. But a decent amount is new as well. And it’s all good. Here’s a taste:

“GMs Trade Conversation Somehow Devolves Into Phone Sex

“Talks over the phone between Pirates general manager Dave Littlefield and Phillies GM Pat Gillick about acquiring Pirates pitcher Zach Duke took a dramatic turn late last night when the pair found themsevles engaged in phone sex … ‘I was tired and told him I wanted to get out of my work clothes and put on something more comfortable,’ said Gillick. ‘He asked me what I was wearing. I told him Dockers and a polo shirt and it turned out he was wearing the same thing. And before I knew it my pants were around my ankles.’”

Gallo has always been a friend of the Frog, so it’s good to see him not only write a book, but write a damn fine one. He has even been picked up by The Network. And he’s on a full-fledged book tour, like a real author. In case you want to stop by and chatter, e-mail him at info@sportspickle.com.

The confirmed book tour dates are below:

July 11 – Bridgeport, NJ
July 12 – Baltimore, MD
July 23 – Austin, TX
July 25 – Chicago, IL
August 9 – Harrisburg, PA

We will be doing a contest where we give away a copy of the book shortly.

It’s true. It being what they say about the Winning Eleven Series of soccer video games. It’s actually a bit like soccer itself. You hear people that know it talk about it glowingly, but you haven’t really bought in yourself so its just a thing that those people do. You’re fine , just going along, playing your Fifa series and thinking it’s all cool. Then, you get the opportunity to play the Winning Eleven series and you see it. I recently played the Nintendo DS version of the newest release; a review follows.

Graphics/Presentation

I like to start with the graphics because that’s the easiest way for a game to make an impression. The graphics are solid on the DS, but not outstanding. This is the debut of the game on the console and when you’re dealing with a 2.4″ screen you have to make some sacrifices. The run of play graphics are fine, but it is hard to make out where your teammates are in preparation for the next pass in the default settings. A simple change in the options moves the radar to the bottom screen and voila, your team is all around you. This is the best use of the bottom screen; the default tactics screen is less useful.

The game loads quickly, and on default settings an entire game takes less than ten minutes. This is a bit too quick, but the settings can be modified to extend the game time.

I was skeptical that the game would not translate well on the small DS screen. While it could be better (When a lot of the players are on the screen the game lags a bit) it is well done for a debut.

Gameplay

The Winning Eleven proponents have always said that it more closely represents what soccer it about, and that’s true from the onset. You can’t make bad passes, you have to be in position to win a 50/50 ball, a bad tackle will get you carded and a shot from outside the box will likely go flying over the bar instead of on target. That is more representative than 35 yard screamers on target all day long. Not everyone is Clarence Seedorf.

The gameplay is realistic, and that’s what you want in a simulation, right?

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I’m not much of an early adopter. To me, Blackberry is a pie filling MySpace? Hell I don’t even have a Friendster page yet. Forget GPS, I like maps. But when it comes to iPods I have been ahead of the game. I bought my first many years ago and subsequently kept replacing them as the technology has been refined.

So being an avid runner, and someone who competes in very manageable triathlons, I found the commercials showing the Nike Plus iPod Sports Kit intriguing. When I saw the runner in the ad burst through the raindrops to complete that last mile, I decided to give the product a try. Someone at Nike was nice enough to send me a pair of sneakers and the adapter, and let me borrow a Nano to try it out. One issue I have with the kit is that I can’t use it with my regular iPod. That is going to be a problem for me, because after trying it out a couple of times I have to say I don’t know if I can quit this thing.

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I have been playing Hardball Dynasty on What if Sports for a couple of months now. It truly is “fantasy baseball” as even the players are make believe. You control an entire organization from international scouting to your ML starting rotation. It can be a lot of work, so think about that before you join.

The initial learning curve is large and playing with veteran HBD guys can put one at a disadvantage. After deciding how to spend your annual 105 million dollar budget you then spend time hiring coaches for your organization before proceeding to spring training.

With both NL and AL leagues the make-up of your team can be critical. There are 32 teams in each league with each ballpark having different hitting/pitching factors. Players tire and get injured, but none have been arrested as of yet.

The graphical interface is fairly easy to negotiate and the HBD staff continues to update the game once or twice a month. They have promised that soon we will be able to play live games. If you are a Strat-O-Matic freak-like person (perhaps Mr. Delaware or BF Hood*) you will love playing. The season lasts about 2 months as they sim games every 8 hours.

Perhaps we can set up a Frog League if there is enough interest. The cost is $24.95 per season with a $15 introduction. I highly recommend the game and I have definitely gotten my money’s worth. If you have interest, send me a PM.