Book Review:The Bases Were Loaded (and So Was I) ,et al; Callahan

A great read even for non-sports lovers

I am not a sports person. Except as sports figures have impacted the
subjects I am interested in-I know Denny McLain was a good lounge
organist who recorded fine albums; Joe DiMaggio was the second husband
of Marilyn Monroe, was destroyed by her death (as was his son, then in
the Marines), and possessed a bigger part of male anatomy than
Secretariat; Thurman Munson was killed in one of the first SP
Citations (earlier, identical ones legally required a two man crew,
ridiculous because copilots were far more needed in light twins with
GTSIO Continentals requiring a flight engineer to manage them than a
"corporate jet" slower than a T-33 and which modified P-51 Mustangs
could outrun at most altitudes)-sports don't interest me.

But Callahan's book did. He covers Larry Bird,Bobby Riggs and Billie
Jean King, Wilt Chamberlain, Boris Becker, many other names (Palmer
and Nicklaus,Pete Rose, and Graf and Seles) even someone like
myself-who really does live under a rock sometimes-cannot not have
heard. He makes them interesting as people, as with the older
generations of sportswriters like Si Burick and Jimmy Cannon ( a name
well known to all Sinatraphiles, as with Jilly and Toots) who have now
passed on. And his brief discussion of "the other Marilyn"-Marilyn
Maxwell, a fine actress in her own right who really was named "Marvel
Marilyn Maxwell" at birth, unlike Mary Ellen Miller and Norma Jeane
Mortensen Dougherty DiMaggio, and who died sadly of a heart attack in
her forties-was fascinating and left me curious enough to look up the
above trivia.

In summation, he fascinates people with sports who don't even like
sports. Like Howard Stern, who can make you laugh in a traffic jam,
that's a singular thing. Bravo!