Assist Of A Lifetime
Published: Jan 24, 2008
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It's an uplifting theme that has become a Hollywood staple: a no-nonsense, intense coach or teacher arrives at an inner-city school and transforms a group of cynical, streetwise kids into a winning team and model citizens.
Neil Swidey saw that when he featured the Charlestown (Mass.) High basketball team in The Boston Globe Magazine. But he sidestepped the celluloid cliches and expanded that piece into his riveting first book, "The Assist: Hoops, Hope, and the Game of Their Lives" (Public Affairs, $26).
It would have been easy for Swidey to write a clone of "Freedom Writers" or "Hoop Dreams" - or even a modern-day version of "The White Shadow," the television drama (1978-81) about a white basketball coach who wins over inner-city players at a predominantly black school.
Here's the difference. At times, "Assist" is a feel-good book, and the reader will soar along with the players as each goal is achieved. And yet, it is tinged with crime, death, drugs, teenage pregnancies and other issues. Charlestown, an upscale Boston neighborhood, was the battleground for desegregation in the mid 1970s, and the scars remain.
Swidey, who spent three years following the "Townies," writes about real people, not saints. There's hard-boiled Coach Jack O'Brien, a product of the white "Bah-ston" suburbs with four state championships under his belt, who drives his players during practice and is equally driven in his devotion to them.
Swidey also follows the paths taken by Charlestown co-captains Ridley Johnson and Jason "Hood" White during their senior season and beyond. The pair led Charlestown to another state title in 2004-05, and both won scholarships - Johnson to Toledo and White to Adelphi.
Swidey brings the reader right into the conversations. White, miffed he had only received one scholarship offer, hesitates about accepting it. His father, Willie Barnes, gives him some simple advice.
"If you're baking a cake and you need two eggs and you only got one, you gotta bake that cake with just the one egg," Barnes tells his son. "Your next cake, you can go to Stop & Shop and get a dozen eggs."
White heeds his father's advice this time. The next time, his failure to listen will alter his life dramatically.
O'Brien plays the role of surrogate father easily, but again, the lack of parental support is disconcerting.
"Suburban coaches have to contend with meddling parents furious when their kids don't get playing time," Swidey writes. "They wish the parents would just go away. City coaches get to see what it's like when that wish comes true."
One does not have to be from Boston to appreciate Swidey's writing skills. His characters are real and have a story to tell. It's a tale that pulsates with the intensity of a full-court press.
DEADSPIN ZONE: Irreverent, profane, outrageous. And that's just the impression one gets from looking at the cover of "God Save The Fan," (HarperCollins, $24.95), Will Leitch's view of the sports world.
Leitch, who runs Deadspin.com, combines salty wit, funny lists and occasional sophomoric humor to drive home the point that sports is something that should not be taken seriously - it's a game, after all, despite what the pundits and advertisers say.
Leitch takes aim at ESPN (he claims the sports network has blackballed him), players, owners, media and fans. There's an interview with John Rocker, a chapter titled "You're With Me, Leather" (a reference to a pickup line by ESPN's Chris Berman in a bar), and Leitch's reasons for rooting for the Arizona Cardinals.
If you can get by the heavy sexual references and locker-room humor, it's not a bad book. Just don't let the kids use it for their book report.
