BAUGH TO BRADY by LEW FREEDMAN, *Review* Lone Star Book Blog Tour
BAUGH TO BRADY
The Evolution of the Forward Pass
by
LEW FREEDMAN
Genre: Sports History / Football
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Date of Publication: December 15, 2017
Number of Pages: 296
There are three things that can happen when you throw a pass, and two of them are bad. –Woody Hayes
The quarterback pass is one of the leading offensive components of today's National Football League and college football's top level of play. This was not always the case. In early American football, the strategy focused entirely on advancing the ball one running play at a time, with the player tucking the then-roundish ball on his hip and sprinting ahead until tackled by a swarm of defenders. The revolution that transformed the sport began in 1906, when passing was first legalized. The passing weapon made the game safer, altered strategy, turned the quarterback into a key offensive player, and made possible the high-scoring games of today.
Lew Freedman traces football's passing game from its inception to the present, telling the tale through the stories of the quarterbacks whose arms carried (and threw) the changes forward. Freedman relies especially on the biography of "Slingin' Sammy" Baugh--who hailed from Sweetwater, Texas--as a framework. Baugh, perhaps the greatest all-around football player in history, came along at just the right time to elevate the passing game to unprecedented importance in the eyes of the sports world.
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'"Gentlemen," . . . "you know far more about the game of football than me. But, gentlemen, the game you are playing is not entertaining. It is dull, uninteresting, and boring. This is how I look at it. We are in show business. And when the show gets dull, you throw it out. You put another one in its place. I want to give the public what it wants. I want to change the show."'
This passage is the epitomy of what this book taught me. There is so much I don't know about football, including the passing game. Baugh to Brady tells the history with a fast-paced, sparsely-worded style that is gripping in a way that kept me turning the pages, wondering, but what next, and, but what about Baugh?
It is hard to imagine that a sport whose main stat used to be deaths and injuries could have ever been boring, but I love the above quote, which is one of the many teasers leading up to the Sammy Baugh era. It was also interesting to learn that in order to stop those deaths, one of the rules of the game that changed, albeit slowly, was the passing rule.
It has been many years since I saw my first grand scale "Hail Mary" pass - in 1984, while watching a "small" quarterback from a team that I had discounted against then power house Miami, fighting it out in a near blizzard to the bitter end. This book brought back that happy memory and fed me with many more images. I learned more of both the big moments and the smaller ones, like Arnie Herber's favorite career memory when he came back from retirement during WWII.
This is a great football book for fans and bystanders, I highly recommend. Thank you, Lew Freedman and Texas Tech University Press for the chance to read the book and post an honest review.
'"Gentlemen," . . . "you know far more about the game of football than me. But, gentlemen, the game you are playing is not entertaining. It is dull, uninteresting, and boring. This is how I look at it. We are in show business. And when the show gets dull, you throw it out. You put another one in its place. I want to give the public what it wants. I want to change the show."'
This passage is the epitomy of what this book taught me. There is so much I don't know about football, including the passing game. Baugh to Brady tells the history with a fast-paced, sparsely-worded style that is gripping in a way that kept me turning the pages, wondering, but what next, and, but what about Baugh?
It is hard to imagine that a sport whose main stat used to be deaths and injuries could have ever been boring, but I love the above quote, which is one of the many teasers leading up to the Sammy Baugh era. It was also interesting to learn that in order to stop those deaths, one of the rules of the game that changed, albeit slowly, was the passing rule.
It has been many years since I saw my first grand scale "Hail Mary" pass - in 1984, while watching a "small" quarterback from a team that I had discounted against then power house Miami, fighting it out in a near blizzard to the bitter end. This book brought back that happy memory and fed me with many more images. I learned more of both the big moments and the smaller ones, like Arnie Herber's favorite career memory when he came back from retirement during WWII.
This is a great football book for fans and bystanders, I highly recommend. Thank you, Lew Freedman and Texas Tech University Press for the chance to read the book and post an honest review.
Lew Freedman is a veteran newspaper sportswriter and experienced author of more than seventy-five books about sports as well as about Alaska. He spent seventeen years at the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska and has also worked for the Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer. Freedman is recipient of more than 250 journalism awards.
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Baugh to Brady
By Lew Freedman
December 11-December 20, 2017
(updated 12/7/17)
12/11/17
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Promo
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12/12/17
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Author Interview
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12/13/17
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Review
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12/14/17
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Promo
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12/15/17
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Review
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12/16/17
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Excerpt
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12/17/17
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Promo
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12/18/17
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Review
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12/19/17
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Audio Interview
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12/20/17
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Review
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