Four recent releases including one of the best baseball books I've ever read

All Sports Books #5 of 2025

This edition I take a look at four recent releases covering basketball, baseball and …. shoes. Enjoy.

⚾ The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented & Reinvented Baseball by John W. Miller

In a game, and an era, packed with interesting characters, longtime Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver managed to command attention in a way no baseball manager has before or since. His combination of brilliance as a manager, antics with umpires and flair for a great one-liner resulted in a remarkable level of fame for a functioning alcoholic who never made the major leagues as a player. Perhaps nothing better reflects the respect Weaver had in the game than the fact he was the last person saluted on the field when the Orioles shut down their old ballpark before moving to Camden Yards.

Miller has done an incredible job speaking to almost anybody who could share an insight into Weaver’s personality and approach to his job. The book is packed with funny observations and insightful comments.

Weaver emerges as a complex character - a man obsessed with winning, smart enough to figure out how to use stats to improve the team’s odds but reckless enough to risk it all with constant drinking. Miller presents his failure to make it to the major leagues as the central turning point in his young life - one that led him to self-destruct before rebuilding himself as a manager in the minor leagues. The early years that Earl managed in the minors are among the best chapters in the book as we see how Weaver’s philosophies and approaches formed.

This is a bio very much focused on Weaver the baseball manager. His personal life is covered, his flaws as a parent and husband are not glossed over but they also aren’t central to the book’s narrative. Great research, compelling subject, brilliant writing. This is a funny, insightful, entertaining slice of baseball history. I absolutely loved it - book of the year contender.

🏀 A Soaring Season: The Incredible, Inspiring Story of the 2003-04 Saint Joseph’s Hawks by Aaron Bracy

As March Madness is upon us, the eyes of American sports fans will be glued to college basketball these next few weeks. Every season has a Cinderella story of a team making the tournament against the odds. Some years, a smaller team even has a season that puts them among the higher seeds. In 2004, the small eastern PA college of St Joseph’s were that team but remarkably they were a undisputed number 1 seed with the best record in the country (27-0 before losing their conference final).

A Soaring Season tells the story of that St. Joe’s team and that remarkable season. Bracy does a fantastic job of introducing the key characters and finding those key pivotal moments on which the team was ultimately built. A coach appointed despite not being an alumni, a star point guard (Jameer Nelson) considered too small by some blue chip schools and a wonderful job of team building - finding players that complemented each other and became more than the sum of their parts.

It’s a fascinating story told excellently by Bracy who covers basketball in the region on his site Big5Hoops.com and managed to speak to everyone involved (more than 90 people) to tell the complete tale. On a personal level, I love that Bracy long dreamed of writing a book, never managing to find time with work and family, before biting the bullet and writing a very good one. As someone who’d love to write a book, but has never managed to find time with work and family, I say Bravo!

🏀 The Wonder Boy: Luka Dončić and The Curse of Greatness by Tim MacMahon.

The Wonder Boy is a well-written and deeply reported account of Dončić's career at the Dallas Mavericks which benefits from MacMahon's detailed knowledge of the team and the various characters. The book was finished prior to the surprise blockbuster trade that saw Dončić move to the Lakers last month. This gives a slightly surreal feeling - I read it before it was released but the facts had changed dramatically. A lot of lines and quotes take on a new relevance.

The book, however, falls short of being a comprehensive bio of Dončić. It's excellent at explaining how he is as a basketball player but a lot about the person is left unexplored - broad questions, like how fatherhood impacted him, go largely unexamined. It also suffers a bit by comparison to the recent Jokic bio which went deeper on who Jokic is as a person or to the excellent bio of Dirk Nowitzki, his predecessor as the Mavs star. I assume Dončić wasn't interested in facilitating a deeper look and perhaps being a child prodigy who always seemed destined for the NBA is just less interesting!

A real dislike of mine is when a book's title or subtitle overpromises or misleads what the book will be about. I feel like sports books do this a lot pretending a book will explore or shine a light on some universal topic but never actually go there. This is usually the fault of the publisher rather than the author. In this case, the 'Curse of Greatness' was a very poor choice - Luka is a happy chap who is very much uncursed and seems to enjoy life! (The 'curse' seems to be the challenge of building a team around Luka I think but that is a problem the Lakers are now happy to have!)

Had it been titled Luka Dončić and the Mav's quest for NBA glory, then I'd been saying what a great book. It's probably the best book that could be written about Dončić unless he decides to open up to a writer. It's very good but it isn't quite what it promised on the cover.

🏀👟Legends and Soles: The Memoir of an American Original by Sonny Vaccaro with Armen Keteyian

Vaccaro was a sports marketing executive who managed to turn himself into a celebrity - or at very least the most famous sports marketing executive around. He’s best known for being the brains behind Nike putting the company’s full weight behind a rookie NBA player named Michael Jordan.

Legends and Soles is a perfect combo of subject (a unique character who helped shape modern sports marketing) and co-author (a great writer and storyteller). Sonny certainty has a story to tell and Keteyian does a great job of zooming in the key parts of Sonny’s life to paint the picture of a determined, creative and friendly guy who leveraged his talent into a career he never dreamed possible.

I had been worried that the book would be part of (what I had imagined to be) Vaccaro’s life long self-promotion and myth-building but it’s a balanced and fascinating account of his career. He shares the credit with those executives he built a great relationship - and in beautiful, effusive and meaningful language. However, he pulls no punches when describing his dislike of Nike founder Phil Knight and others who he feels wronged by.

The final chapter was the most interesting for me as it focused on Vaccaro’s role in the O’Bannon court case that led the way to college athlete being allowed to cash in on the value of their name, image and likeness. Vaccaro had driven the case from the beginning largely motivated by a desire to enact change (and definitiely some vengance against the NCAA for constantly questioning his compliance with their shamateurism rules).

Loved it.

That’s all for this edition - Happy Reading!