What do you think?
Rate this book
Fathers & Sons & Sports: Great Writing by Buzz Bissinger, John Ed Bradley, Bill Geist, Donald Hall, Mark Kriegel, Norman Maclean, and others
Powerful stories about the way sports can bring together fathers and sons, to work out their differences and express their love for each other.
Fathers & Sons & Sports presents a powerful lineup of real-world stories about fathers and sons playing one-on-one in the game of life, written by such great sportswriters and authors as
Henry Aaron, as told to Cal Fussman • Michael J. Agovino • Buzz Bissinger • Jeff Bradley • John Ed Bradley • James Brown • Darcy Frey • Tom Friend • Bill Geist • Mike Golic • Donald Hall • Paul Hoffman • Mark Kriegel • Norman Maclean • John Buffalo Mailer • Ron Reagan • Peter Richmond • Jeremy Schaap • Lew Schneider • Dan Shaughnessy • Paul Solotaroff • John Jeremiah Sullivan • Wright Thompson • Steve Wulf
The unforgettable accounts here include the stories of a professional football player passing on his father’ s secrets to his own sons, a severely disabled boy discovering joy on a surfboard, a wealthy NFL player taking his coddled children back to the mean streets that made him, and a major league manager who must face the hard fact that nothing, not even unconditional love, can save his son.
Anyone who has ever been a father or a son will see himself in these moving snapshots of family life at its most emotional. Whether the stories take place on a diamond, a court, a gridiron, a fairway, or a chessboard, they’re all about the same fatherhood, one of the world’s most intriguing sports.
Fathers & Sons & Sports presents a powerful lineup of real-world stories about fathers and sons playing one-on-one in the game of life, written by such great sportswriters and authors as
Henry Aaron, as told to Cal Fussman • Michael J. Agovino • Buzz Bissinger • Jeff Bradley • John Ed Bradley • James Brown • Darcy Frey • Tom Friend • Bill Geist • Mike Golic • Donald Hall • Paul Hoffman • Mark Kriegel • Norman Maclean • John Buffalo Mailer • Ron Reagan • Peter Richmond • Jeremy Schaap • Lew Schneider • Dan Shaughnessy • Paul Solotaroff • John Jeremiah Sullivan • Wright Thompson • Steve Wulf
The unforgettable accounts here include the stories of a professional football player passing on his father’ s secrets to his own sons, a severely disabled boy discovering joy on a surfboard, a wealthy NFL player taking his coddled children back to the mean streets that made him, and a major league manager who must face the hard fact that nothing, not even unconditional love, can save his son.
Anyone who has ever been a father or a son will see himself in these moving snapshots of family life at its most emotional. Whether the stories take place on a diamond, a court, a gridiron, a fairway, or a chessboard, they’re all about the same fatherhood, one of the world’s most intriguing sports.
336 pages, Paperback
First published May 6, 2008
15 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Mike Lupica
111 books1,217 followersMichael Lupica is an author and American newspaper columnist, best known for his provocative commentary on sports in the New York Daily News and his appearances on ESPN.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 10, 2010
Picked up this title as a not-so-serious read that was recommended by a colleague at work. Great sports writing and (most are) great father/son stories! There are a few stories that I prefer over others, but good book overall.
April 20, 2023
RICK “SHAQ” GOLDSTEIN SAYS: “FATHER & SON SHORT SPORTS STORIES: SOME GREAT-SOME NOT.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ESPN has put together twenty previously published “short” stories built around the FATHER & SON dynamic with sports as the stage and or backdrop. Some stories are twenty plus pages and some are one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half pages. And unlike the old saying “size doesn’t matter”, in this collection of stories, coincidentally, the diminutive stories are the ones that noticeably do not pack the knockout punch the reader is hoping for. Two of the best stories were excerpted from previously published complete books. The two books, which I have both previously reviewed on Amazon are: “PISTOL: THE LIFE OF PETE MARAVICH” by Mark Kriegel and perhaps the most beautifully and intelligently written book about playing college football and the missed emotional opportunities looking back years later: “IT NEVER RAINS IN TIGER STADIUM” by John Ed Bradley.
The sports imbedded in these twenty stories range from football to baseball to boxing to fishing to swimming to wrestling and even (?)chess. There are some tear jerker’s involving a Father’s love for his autistic, epileptic son who has an IQ they can’t measure “because he can’t, or won’t, follow instructions.” (“A Father’s Small Hope”) And a sad and eloquently transcribed remembrance of a son’s missed wish of taking his golf loving Father to the Master’s Tournament. The son had finally got passes for him and his Father to attend, and then his Dad passed away before they could live out the dream, and the son writes: “The funeral week was a blur. When we picked out his favorite Zegna sport coat, I went into his bathroom, holding those Masters credentials in my hands. I took them out, slipping them into the jacket pocket. If there was an Augusta National in heaven, I wanted him to get in. I’m sorry, Daddy, I said to the air, you didn’t get to go. Seven months later, I was back at Augusta. It was a hard week. I wore a pair of his shoes around the course, trying to walk it for him. I wrote a column about it for my newspaper and, as I’m doing now, tried to find some closure. Then, I believed my grief ended with the catharsis of the last paragraph. I was naïve, as I found when I returned to Augusta in the coming years, finding my pain stronger each time.” (“Holy Ground”)
One of the other stories is about Tommy Lasorda and his deceased son Tommy Jr. It catches the reader off guard as it is written from the point of view of the people that knew the Lasorda’s rather than by the Lasorda’s. The senior Lasorda denies that his son was gay, despite the cause of death on the death certificate, and all of the son’s friends celebrate the lifestyle that Jr. chose.
I rate this book as 3 ½ stars, because even though there are some real literary gems in this collection, there are also a few strikeouts.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ESPN has put together twenty previously published “short” stories built around the FATHER & SON dynamic with sports as the stage and or backdrop. Some stories are twenty plus pages and some are one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half pages. And unlike the old saying “size doesn’t matter”, in this collection of stories, coincidentally, the diminutive stories are the ones that noticeably do not pack the knockout punch the reader is hoping for. Two of the best stories were excerpted from previously published complete books. The two books, which I have both previously reviewed on Amazon are: “PISTOL: THE LIFE OF PETE MARAVICH” by Mark Kriegel and perhaps the most beautifully and intelligently written book about playing college football and the missed emotional opportunities looking back years later: “IT NEVER RAINS IN TIGER STADIUM” by John Ed Bradley.
The sports imbedded in these twenty stories range from football to baseball to boxing to fishing to swimming to wrestling and even (?)chess. There are some tear jerker’s involving a Father’s love for his autistic, epileptic son who has an IQ they can’t measure “because he can’t, or won’t, follow instructions.” (“A Father’s Small Hope”) And a sad and eloquently transcribed remembrance of a son’s missed wish of taking his golf loving Father to the Master’s Tournament. The son had finally got passes for him and his Father to attend, and then his Dad passed away before they could live out the dream, and the son writes: “The funeral week was a blur. When we picked out his favorite Zegna sport coat, I went into his bathroom, holding those Masters credentials in my hands. I took them out, slipping them into the jacket pocket. If there was an Augusta National in heaven, I wanted him to get in. I’m sorry, Daddy, I said to the air, you didn’t get to go. Seven months later, I was back at Augusta. It was a hard week. I wore a pair of his shoes around the course, trying to walk it for him. I wrote a column about it for my newspaper and, as I’m doing now, tried to find some closure. Then, I believed my grief ended with the catharsis of the last paragraph. I was naïve, as I found when I returned to Augusta in the coming years, finding my pain stronger each time.” (“Holy Ground”)
One of the other stories is about Tommy Lasorda and his deceased son Tommy Jr. It catches the reader off guard as it is written from the point of view of the people that knew the Lasorda’s rather than by the Lasorda’s. The senior Lasorda denies that his son was gay, despite the cause of death on the death certificate, and all of the son’s friends celebrate the lifestyle that Jr. chose.
I rate this book as 3 ½ stars, because even though there are some real literary gems in this collection, there are also a few strikeouts.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews