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Collection Is One To Treasure

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By BOB D'ANGELO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 6, 2008

The late David Halberstam wrote 21 books during his career, covering a broad cross-section of society: politics, history, social change - and sports.

He shared the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for his early reporting on Vietnam, and he wrote memorable books about the Vietnam War ("The Best and the Brightest"), the Korean War ("The Coldest Winter") and the media ("The Powers That Be").

Sports books were his outlet, a way to let off steam.

"It is a world that is, for me at least ... generally more pleasant and less adversarial than that of politics," he wrote in a 1994 piece for The Sporting News.

Halberstam's sports books brought readers closer to the NBA ("The Breaks of the Game") and examined exciting pennant races ("The Summer of '49" and "October 1964"). He was working on a book about the 1958 NFL championship game when he was killed in an automobile accident on April 23, 2007.

A great writing voice was silenced that day. But a marvelous collection of short stories, essays, columns and magazine pieces brings his vivid style back in "Everything They Had: Sports Writing From David Halberstam" (Hyperion, $24.95).

"The Basket-Case State" is a tutorial on Indiana basketball, starting with Bob Knight and offering a deft, concise history of the Milan High basketball team that inspired the movie "Hoosiers."

"The Education of Reggie Smith" showcases a clash of cultures. Smith, a veteran major-leaguer, is forced to adapt to a different, frustrating pace when he decides to play baseball in Japan.

While Nolan Ryan and Steve Carlton were waging a battle for the all-time strikeout record, Halberstam writes, "Reggie Smith was in Tokyo, looking vainly for a fast ball."

"In Admiration of Iverson" has Halberstam confessing that even though he and Allen Iverson come from different worlds, "just to admire him is good enough."

In this essay, Halberstam asserts that the media "does not always get the business of who is a good guy and who is not a good guy exactly right."

"The media wants good guys to win and the bad guys to lose, and tends almost, without knowing it, to award an edge in being a good guy to the winner for merely winning," he writes. "Inevitably, it thereupon tends to search harder for the warts of the losers than the warts of the winners.

"Sometimes, because of this, it tends to blow the call."

In "Homage to Patagonia," Halberstam recounts a fishing trip he made to Argentina on the day the Giants and Ravens played Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa. When he settled into the hotel bar to watch the game, he noted that there was "something absolutely charming about watching the ultimate football game from so great a distance in an environment in which no one else seemed to care."

There are times when Halberstam repeats himself in columns written several years apart - walking into Fenway Park, for example, was like "walking into a Hopper painting." But the repetition does not detract from the overall effect.

"Everything They Had" is like finding an heirloom in the attic. It is an artifact to be treasured.

RIVETING READ: "Running For My Life," by Warrick Dunn, will hit the bookstores in early November. It is a highly personal, riveting story told by the Bucs' running back, who has dealt with the tragedy of his mother's murder since she was killed on Jan. 7, 1993. It is a story of courage, perseverance and determination. The first chapter alone will be worth the price of the book.

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