Where have all the sports books gone?

[Huggy]

The books exist, but many are boxed into a niche.
For example, there is a new book out about the Colorado Rockies ... the NHL team.
Then there is overkill. Staying with hockey, how many books are needed about the 1972 Summit Series? I get last year was the 50th anniversary and it's cool to slice and dice Alan Eagleson, but enough already.

Yes, spot on! Add those to the four-part doc on CBC (which was very good). And of the Summit Series books I read last year, the best one was this one:

Amazon product ASIN B09NW57R9F

 

[Liut]

Yes, spot on! Add those to the four-part doc on CBC (which was very good). And of the Summit Series books I read last year, the best one was this one:

Amazon product ASIN B09NW57R9F

Those crickets are deafening.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

And even Pearlman's next book is on...Tupac Shakur.

Which may have just gotten more interesting.

Las Vegas police search home in connection to Tupac Shakur murder - CBS News

 

[Alma]

people will always read. but there's a reason authors no longer are central to the culture -- like, say, Mailer or Vidal, appearing on talk shows or TIME magazine covers, shocking the world with their insights. we're at the end of the Gutenberg era. consuming narrative is a human need, and will always be, but the great mash of people prefer to consume it visually instead of via text.

1. It's hard to multi-task when reading text, and phone culture has convinced we always need to be doing 2-3 things at once.

2. The insights/personal details sports writers may have once provided are often supplied by the athletes themselves at this point. What could we know - that we'd also want to know - about LeBron or Steph or (God help us) Aaron Rodgers that we don't?

3. Since roughly 2013/2014 - the real rise of Twitter - we've been in a real political moment. Too much of it. Crowds out other stuff. How much great music has there been in the last 8 years? How much great TV (really think about it) in the last 8? How much great TV?

4. There is great writing out there. There is. How much of it is in sports books? I can think of a few. But how much of sports writing has turned into a bottomless pit of detail after detail after detail without perspective? Moneyball ripped through the universe because it was different, controversial, challenging to the ideological status quo at the time. What would challenge the ideological status quo of this moment?

 

[garrow]

Jonathan Eig started out with bios of Gehrig and Jackie Robinson, but two of his last three bios have been Capone and a recently-released one on MLK.

 

[dixiehack]

That's a great point about the anecdote books. I inhaled all those as a kid and still remember random trivia thanks to those. It's like every book now has to be something substantial and in hardback.

What was an anecdote book is now a 42-slide listicle on Facebook that you never finish because some pop-up ad resets the whole thing on item 27.

I think those tended to be impulse buys for people browsing the sports section at the bookstore. And now browsing in the bookstore is itself on the endangered species list.

 

[Alma]

Jonathan Eig started out with bios of Gehrig and Jackie Robinson, but two of his last three bios have been Capone and a recently-released one on MLK.

Capone's enduring stay in pop culture fascinates me. A couple years ago Tom Hardy was excellent as Capone in a movie that might have been one of the most deeply depressing films you'll ever see - sad, boring, ponderous. I'm surprised there's more to say about the guy.

 

[playthrough]

What was an anecdote book is now a 42-slide listicle on Facebook that you never finish because some pop-up ad resets the whole thing on item 27.

I think those tended to be impulse buys for people browsing the sports section at the bookstore. And now browsing in the bookstore is itself on the endangered species list.

True true. Plus the book on the back of the toilet is extinct.

 

[Twirling Time]

Which may have just gotten more interesting.

Las Vegas police search home in connection to Tupac Shakur murder - CBS News

I was about to say. Maybe because I'm a degenerate is why the first thought when I saw "sports books" was Vegas.

 

[HanSenSE]

One of the more intense and scary books I've read lately is "Playing Through The Pain," a biography of Ken Caminiti by Dan Good.

 

[Liut]

I was about to say. Maybe because I'm a degenerate is why the first thought when I saw "sports books" was Vegas.

+1.
Second thought was the sports-talk radio stations I listen to wouldn't be able to pay their light bills without the advertising.
EDIT: Or, now that I think of it, fill out their quarter hours.