Crazyball

Barry Wilner has been a sportswriter for the Associated Press since 1975. He has covered virtually every major sporting event, including 13 Olympics, 9 World Cups, 30 Super Bowls, the World Series, and the Stanley Cup finals, and has written 51 books. He is also an adjunct professor at Manhattanville College. He lives in Garnerville, New York.Ken Rappoport is the author of 68 sports books for adults and young readers. While working for the Associated Press in New York for 30 years, he has written about every major sport. His assignments have included the World Series, the NBA Finals, and, as the AP’s national hockey writer, the Stanley Cup Finals and the Olympics. He lives in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey.

Sports seem to be more fertile territory for off-the-wall events, people, etc., than, say, accounting. Here, Wilner and Rappoport, two Associated Press writers with a combined total of almost 70 years covering virtually all sports and over 100 books written between them, take advantage of that fertility. They present their harvest in a series of vignettes covering all the madness from superstitions to bizarre plays, from great and not-so-great players and teams to Stengelese and Berraisms. Sports fans will recognize much of what the authors present, but there will also be something new for everybody. (How many are familiar with the All American Red Heads, a Globetrotters-like touring women’s basketball team that crisscrossed the country for 50 years, beginning in the mid-1930s, metronomically defeating men’s teams?) . . . Sports buffs will take delight in the craziness.