Charley Rosen – författare

"Delightful and insightful." —John Thorn, author of Total BaseballBaseball is the only sport where the defense has the ball, and there is no lonelier in the world of sports than the pitcher''s mound. Which makes Yankee relievers among the most scrutinized and intriguing group of athletes in the game. In Bullpen Diaries, Charley Rosen, lifelong Yankees fan and co-author of the bestseller More Than Just a Game, delivers a fun, insider''s look at this rare breed of player. With one-of-a-kind stories about Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Mariano Rivera and teammates, as well as behind-the-scenes interviews and fascinating trivia (including the origin of baseball''s secret mud), Rosen hits a grand slam with this indispensible volume of baseball history—featuring players and teams from across the MLB as well as predictions for 2011.

Commentator, analyst, author, and all-around pro basketball presence, Charley Rosen may seem like a natural, sprung upon the sports scene with the NBA in his blood. Phil Jackson, Rosen's longtime collaborator, might agree; after all, he attributes the statement on a plaque on his desk to Charley: "Basketball isn't just a metaphor for life—it's more important than that!" And yet how Rosen arrived at his present position comfortably overseeing basketball at its finest is a story as unexpected as it is delightful, documenting basketball travels as unlikely as they are nomadic and eclectic.Rosen's story begins during his undergraduate days at Hunter College, where his basketball exploits were equally triumphant and embarrassing, including a pickup game against Wilt Chamberlain. Things really got interesting when he made his way into the Continental Basketball Association (CBA), the breeding ground for nothing less than the second-best gathering of basketball players in the world. In the circus that was the CBA, Rosen found his place alongside Phil Jackson, then the newly hired coach of the Albany Patroons. Life in the CBA, as Rosen tells it, was never dull, with players doing illegal substances on van rides through snowstorms and teams financed by porn producers. His journey from the CBA to a desk at Fox Sports is a one-of-a-kind basketball story—only to be believed in the words of the guy who actually lived it.

During the 1972–1973 basketball season, the Philadelphia 76ers were not just a bad team; they were fantastically awful. Doomed from the start after losing their leading scorer and rebounder, Billy Cunningham, as well as head coach Jack Ramsay, they lost twenty-one of their first twenty-three games. A Philadelphia newspaper began calling them the Seventy Sickers, and they duly lost their last thirteen games on their way to a not-yet-broken record of nine wins and seventy-three losses.Charley Rosen recaptures the futility of that season through the firsthand accounts of players, participants, and observers. Although the team was uniformly bad, there were still many memorable moments, and the lore surrounding the team is legendary. Once, when head coach Roy Rubin tried to substitute John Q. Trapp out of a game, Trapp refused and told Rubin to look behind the team's bench, whereby one of Trapp's friends supposedly opened his jacket to show his handgun. With only four wins at the All-Star break, Rubin was fired and replaced by player-coach Kevin Loughery. In addition to chronicling the 76ers' woes, Perfectly Awful also captures the drama, culture, and attitude of the NBA in an era when many white fans believed that the league had too many black players.

A few years after its invention by James Naismith, basketball became the primary sport in the crowded streets of the Jewish neighborhood on New York’s Lower East Side. Participating in the new game was a quick and enjoyable way to become Americanized. Jews not only dominated the sport for the next fifty‑plus years but were also instrumental in modernizing the game.Barney Sedran was considered the best player in the country at the City College of New York from 1909 to 1911. In 1927 Abe Saperstein took over management of the Harlem Globetrotters, playing a key role in popularizing and integrating the game. Later he helped found the American Basketball Association and introduced the three-point shot. More recently, Nancy Lieberman played in a men’s pro summer league and became the first woman to coach a men’s pro team, and Larry Brown became the only coach to win both NCAA and the NBA championships.While the influence of Jewish players, referees, coaches, and administrators has gradually diminished since the mid‑1950s, the current basketball scene features numerous Jews in important positions.Through interviews and lively anecdotes from franchise owners, coaches, players, and referees, The Chosen Game explores the contribution of Jews to the evolution of present-day pro basketball.

Players and Pretenders tells the story of the flip side of basketball's "March Madness," where the game is played by average players for love, not for money. At the end of the 1970s at Bard College, where there was no pretense of institutional support, Charley Rosen gathered his hoops hopefuls and put together a basketball season whose impact reached far beyond the court. Writing with a humorous touch, Rosen details the Running Red Devils' season, simultaneously examining the lives of those who made it so memorable and providing a glimpse of how the team members existed off the courts as both players and pretenders. His book playfully depicts the 1979–80 basketball season at Bard College and the "sports for fun" side of the game.

Jason Lewis is a star college basketball player just back from World War II. He’s a hero, missing two fingers on his shooting hand. He can’t play any longer, so he makes the ultimate ballplayer’s sacrifice: he becomes a referee. Set in postwar New York during the founding of what will eventually be the NBA, No Blood, No Foul is the story of a man who must come to terms with a debilitating injury and chase after dreams of perfection in a decidedly imperfect world. Charley Rosen gives us not only a lovingly faithful insider’s look at the game of basketball, but a passionate story about what it meant to face life in an America that had lost its innocence.

In The Wizard of Odds, renowned and best-selling basketball writer Charley Rosen brings us for the first time the full life story of Jack Molinas, one of the greatest basketball players of his era, a man whose gambling addiction and hubris caused his ultimate demise. Drawing on numerous, previously unavailable first-person accounts, including Jack Molinas’s own journal and trial transcripts, Rosen presents the true saga of a man who perhaps better than anyone around him understood the weaknesses of the system in which he lived—so much so that he convinced himself that he could manipulate that system to his advantage with total impunity, in a life’s journey that took him from NBA play to the Mafia and the pornographic film industry, and to an ultimate tragic destiny.

A New York Times Notable BookHere is the story of an all-Jewish basketball team traveling in a hearse through Depression-era America in search of redemption and big money. A hilarious road novel, The House of Moses All-Stars is also a passionate portrayal of a young Jewish man struggling to realize his dreams in a country struggling to recover its ideals. Charley Rosen gives us basketball as a metaphor for life.Aaron Steiner, the protagonist of The House of Moses All-Stars, is a man very close to the edge. The former college basketball star has watched his dreams of being a successful player fall apart, his marriage disintegrate, and his baby die. In desperation he accepts his friend’s offer to join a Jewish professional basketball team—The House of Moses All-Stars—which is traveling on a cross-country tour in a renovated hearse. Aaron’s teammates—a Communist, a Zionist, a former bank robber, and a red-headed Irishman who passes for a Jew—are, like Aaron, trying to escape their own troubled pasts. As the members of this motley crew travel west to California through an anti-Semitic land that disdains and rebuffs them, they discover a nation grappling with social and economic collapse and fear of foreigners, in conflict with its own democratic ideals of tolerance and opportunity. Told with a rueful eye, The House of Moses All-Stars looks critically and lovingly at what it means to be an outsider in America.

More than a Game is the odyssey of Jackson''s journey—from New York Knick and world champion, to CBA coach, to six-time Chicago Bulls world champion, to this year''s L.A. Lakers world champion—and the lessons in leadership he learned each step of the way. It is the tale of Rosen''s journey as well, carrying the torch for the game of basketball through careers as star college player, CBA coach, and preeminent novelist of the game. It is also the story of the system jackson coaches, the powertriangle, as put forth by Lakers assistant coach Tex Winter. The triangle can be understood as a philosophy of basketball and life—one that values role players almost as much as star players, and where fundamentals rule. More Than a Game is also a story of the friendship between Jackson and Rosen, forged in the sacred brotherhood of the hoop.

A New York Times Notable BookHere is the story of an all-Jewish basketball team traveling in a hearse through Depression-era America in search of redemption and big money. A hilarious road novel, The House of Moses All-Stars is also a passionate portrayal of a young Jewish man struggling to realize his dreams in a country struggling to recover its ideals. Charley Rosen gives us basketball as a metaphor for life.Aaron Steiner, the protagonist of The House of Moses All-Stars, is a man very close to the edge. The former college basketball star has watched his dreams of being a successful player fall apart, his marriage disintegrate, and his baby die. In desperation he accepts his friend’s offer to join a Jewish professional basketball team—The House of Moses All-Stars—which is traveling on a cross-country tour in a renovated hearse. Aaron’s teammates—a Communist, a Zionist, a former bank robber, and a red-headed Irishman who passes for a Jew—are, like Aaron, trying to escape their own troubled pasts. As the members of this motley crew travel west to California through an anti-Semitic land that disdains and rebuffs them, they discover a nation grappling with social and economic collapse and fear of foreigners, in conflict with its own democratic ideals of tolerance and opportunity. Told with a rueful eye, The House of Moses All-Stars looks critically and lovingly at what it means to be an outsider in America.

Sammy Wong, All-American tells the tale of an Asian basketball player’s rise and stumble. American basketball may be among the most international of team sports, yet until recently Asians were unwelcome. On his high school, college, and professional teams, Sammy isn’t given much of a chance. Then when he does get into games, he turns out to be the kind of player who can turn a losing team into a winning one. Wong’s career turns on chance opportunities and unexpected twists as much as on talent, persistence, and hard work. There are great scenes that describe pivotal plays on the hardwood floor as only Charley Rosen can. Like all Rosen’s novels, this is about basketball as experienced from the inside.

Sammy Wong, All-American tells the tale of an Asian basketball player’s rise and stumble. American basketball may be among the most international of team sports, yet until recently Asians were unwelcome. On his high school, college, and professional teams, Sammy isn’t given much of a chance. Then when he does get into games, he turns out to be the kind of player who can turn a losing team into a winning one. Wong’s career turns on chance opportunities and unexpected twists as much as on talent, persistence, and hard work. There are great scenes that describe pivotal plays on the hardwood floor as only Charley Rosen can. Like all Rosen’s novels, this is about basketball as experienced from the inside. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Elliot Hersch is given a basketball on his tenth birthday and cuts a deal with his disapproving father: if he makes straight As, he is allowed to play. Modeling his game on the basketball heroes of his time--Clyde Frazier, Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson, and especially Larry Bird--Elliot becomes one of the finest high school basketball players in New York.      Trying to steer clear of the corruption and sleaze in the big college programs, Elliott signs with the seemingly clean-cut University of Southern Arizona (USA), partly to fulfill his promise to his father, whose one piece of advice about life is: Tell the truth, always. A quote from Chaucer, his father's favorite writer, guides both father and son "Trouthe is the hyest thing that man may kepe."      What he finds at the USA and then the NBA is a far cry from untarnished "trouthe." Elliott is challenged at every turn, tangling at the end of the day with what is most true: the game. Can Elliott truly play basketball? And if not, what is left of his life?      Trouthe, Lies, and Basketball is an epic comic tale--structured somewhat like a gripping basketball game, completely with literary "time-outs"--of a basketball player coming to terms with the world as it is, his talents as they are. Rosen's characters, even the mostly unseemly, are all heart, and by the end they leave those hearts on the hardwood.

Elliot Hersch is given a basketball on his tenth birthday and cuts a deal with his disapproving father: if he makes straight As, he is allowed to play. Modeling his game on the basketball heroes of his time--Clyde Frazier, Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson, and especially Larry Bird--Elliot becomes one of the finest high school basketball players in New York.      Trying to steer clear of the corruption and sleaze in the big college programs, Elliott signs with the seemingly clean-cut University of Southern Arizona (USA), partly to fulfill his promise to his father, whose one piece of advice about life is: Tell the truth, always. A quote from Chaucer, his father''s favorite writer, guides both father and son "Trouthe is the hyest thing that man may kepe."      What he finds at the USA and then the NBA is a far cry from untarnished "trouthe." Elliott is challenged at every turn, tangling at the end of the day with what is most true: the game. Can Elliott truly play basketball? And if not, what is left of his life?      Trouthe, Lies, and Basketball is an epic comic tale--structured somewhat like a gripping basketball game, completely with literary "time-outs"--of a basketball player coming to terms with the world as it is, his talents as they are. Rosen''s characters, even the mostly unseemly, are all heart, and by the end they leave those hearts on the hardwood.

A bildungsroman and the most autobiographical yet of Charley Rosen's many works of fiction, nonfiction and reportage on the subject of basketball, Dribbling a Basketball on the Road to Damascus tells the story of the life of Chazz Klein, a power forward and elite scorer who starts at Metropolitan College and ends up on the Knicks by way of the Detroit Pistons. Klein loves the game that helped him survive his childhood and find meaning. But his awkwardness early in life also stays with him, as both love and long-lasting meaning elude him except in small doses. And yet he does achieve, across the journey represented in these pages, that rarest of gifts, a kind of humility, an acceptance of himself, and the peace that goes with that. Along the way, Klein shaves points and helps us understand the appeal of doing so even though it goes against his love of the game that is pure and life-affirming. So why act against all that? Because everything good in this story is transient, including that joy in playing, and there is a sense here that nothing ever really changes. Different kinds of power converge, and a player who prizes the pure game of hoops above all else can at the same time be someone who breaks the rules and helps corrupt the competitive sport. These are some of the qualities that make Dribbling a Basketball on the Road to Damascus a wise novel as well as an adventurous one.

Here is Peter Jackson, a free-born Black tradesman and boxer from the island of St. Croix who KO'd the white boxer Tom Leeds in the thirtieth round to win the Australian Heavyweight championship in 1886. Most white fighters refused to get into the ring with Jackson. 'Gentleman' Jim Corbett was one of the few who not only fought him, but said of him afterwards that Jackson was the most intelligent fighter he ever faced and could beat any heavyweight that Corbett ever fought or ever saw. Here too of course are boxing legends Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, but also the dozens of outstanding Black boxers who fought from the late 1800s to the end of the 20th century, overcoming their opponents and facing discrimination in an array of forms, from being disqualified unfairly after winning fights to being mobbed and injured in the ring by white assailants while referees and judges looked on impassively, to having mobster managers who gave them only a minute portion of their winnings. Here is Joe Gans, the first American-born Black boxer to win a world championship, in 1902, and who dominated the sport throughout the first decade of the 20th century. Here too is Sam Langford, who became heavyweight champ in 1923. But through most of the first half of the twentieth century Black boxers were separated into Black leagues and there were Black champions rather than world champions who were Black. That all began to change in the 1930s with Joe Louis. A new generation of Black boxers would come up after him, standing on Joe Louis's shoulders, Floyd Patterson, George Foreman, Sonny Liston, Archie Moore, Larry Holmes, Ken Norton, Joe Frazier, and finally the young Cassius Clay, who would rename himself Muhammad Ali and come to dominate the sport for decades, and after him, though not a heavyweight, the great Sugar Ray Leonard. Scott's unique perspective brings fresh insight and passion even to well-known stories about the fight game, and every time he adds something new.

A New York Times Notable BookIn Barney Polan's Game, Charley Rosen takes on the legendary point-shaving scandals of 1950 and '51, when the best of the college basketball players took money from gamblers in return for affecting the outcomes of games, never knowing that in the process they were trading in their innocence and love of the game-until they were caught, and the scandal moved them from the sports pages to the news pages across the nation. No one will walk away from the scandals unscathed; many of the guilty will have their lives and careers ruined, others among the guilty will end up in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

The Cockroach Basketball League follows the tribulations of hard-driving coach Bob Lassner of the Savannah Stars, a team in the Commercial Basketball League—a fiction drawn from Rosen's own nine years experience coaching in the minor-league Continental Basketball Association. Lassner is an aging hippie and divorcé who hails from a Bronx tenement. His obsession with the game of basketball animates this kinetic, gritty ramble through the sport's minor leagues. Lassner is either red with rage or soft with compassion as he struggles to deal with his wayward players. His top scorer is selfish and arrogant; another player faces a grand jury for a point-shaving scheme; still others are drinking and taking drugs. Lassner also faces a meddlesome team owner, racial tension, and the threat of losing his job if he doesn1t produce victories. With The Cockroach Basketball League, Rosen provides a poignant portrait of men—both players and coaches—who may not ever make it to the NBA. Through this look at life in the minors, Rosen offers a unique perspective on college and pro basketball, media hype, and the psychology of dreams deferred.

The college basketball scandals of 1951 were to basketball what the 1919 Black Sox scandals were to baseball—a loss of innocence, after which the game would be permanently tarnished, its relationship to power and big money firmly established. In Scandals of '51, Charley Rosen identifies all the major figures—including players, coaches, gangsters, clergymen, politicians—that made up the elaborate network that controlled the outcomes to many games or protected those who did so. Rosen shows who got caught and who didn't, and what role class, race, and religion played in determining this.

More than a Game covers the years that follow the one featured in the ESPN documentary series "The Last Dance." After leaving the Bulls at the end of the 1997-1998 season—the year featured in the new ESPN documentary series "The Last Dance"—Phil Jackson had one year off and started to write this book—together with his old friend, fellow player and coach, the basketball novelist Charley Rosen. Then Phil took the LA Lakers coaching job, Rosen followed him there, and by the time they finished writing this book it was 2000 and Phil had won yet another NBA championship, the first of five he would win with his new team.      In More than a Game, Jackson and Rosen look backward to their origins as players and coaches, forward to the future of the game of basketball, and linger in the moving target of the present—lavishing page after page on the Triangle Offense and all the ways it reveals the essence of the game of basketball they both love so much. This is Jackson in his prime, transitioning from the Bulls to the Lakers, a master of the art of winning, who would go on to claim more NBA championships, eleven, than any other coach in NBA history. As he writes in More than a Game of his newest championship team: "We won because our fundamentals were sound, because Shaq was so dominant and Kobe was so creative, but we also won because we developed a certain confidence in our ability to win."

Renowned and bestselling basketball writer Charley Rosen brings us the long-awaited life of Molinas, one of the greatest basketball players of his era, and one of its most notorious cheaters. Drawing on trial transcripts as well as numerous, previously unavailable first-person accounts, including Molinas's own journal, Rosen presents the saga of a man whose manipulation of organized basketball and involvement with the Mafia culminated in his greusome murder. A dark testament to the terrible human power of self-destructiveness. '...a wonderful bit of good writing' - Booklist

In The Wizard of Odds, renowned and best-selling basketball writer Charley Rosen brings us for the first time the full life story of Jack Molinas, one of the greatest basketball players of his era, a man whose gambling addiction and hubris caused his ultimate demise. Drawing on numerous, previously unavailable first-person accounts, including Jack Molinas’s own journal and trial transcripts, Rosen presents the true saga of a man who perhaps better than anyone around him understood the weaknesses of the system in which he lived—so much so that he convinced himself that he could manipulate that system to his advantage with total impunity, in a life’s journey that took him from NBA play to the Mafia and the pornographic film industry, and to an ultimate tragic destiny.