When I was in junior high, growing up in upstate N.Y., I was a rabid Mets fan. I watched every game that was televised, yelled at the screen, wrote fan mail to the players. My mood rose and fell with the team’s success. Then, one day, the Mets traded away my favorite player and it my beloved baseball became nothing more than a business. I would never be a follower of pro sports again.
In spite of this (or because of this?!), I ended up marrying a sportswriter who constantly surfs between any and every sport that’s on. He also introduced me to ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, a collection of documentaries about moments and people in sports history that the network began to celebrate its 30th anniversary. At first glance, I had no interest in watching more sports. But I quickly learned that the series is about so much more than players and games. It shines a light on our culture, through the lens of the athletes and teams we follow. I’ve learned so much about the value, and pressure, we place on team sports at every level and about the role sports play in different parts of the world. How we play, worship, market and demonize sports reveals a lot about who we are. I would recommend the series to everyone, “sports fan” or not.
Here are a few episodes I really enjoyed:
Playing for the Mob:
This episode comes from our backyard and deals with the point shaving controversy at Boston College in the late 1970s that found
basketball players tangled up with the mob. This was a riveting story of wiseguys, including Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke, made famous by the movie Goodfellas. It’s also an example of how young athletes can be tempted by big bucks, whether it’s through recruiting incentives or, in this case, payoffs for keeping the score down in a game.
Of Miracles and Men: If you think you know the full story of the U.S. Olympic hockey triumph over the powerhouse Soviet team in 1980, this episode will make you think again. The classic moment in sports history has always been categorized as a battle between good and evil, democracy and communism. Yet, as the show reveals, the members of the Soviet hockey team were outstanding players molded into a formidable squad by a legendary coach. The Russian team routed the Americans in an exhibition the week before. Perhaps that makes the “Miracle on Ice” even more powerful. But I was saddened by the stories of the Russian players, who returned home not as heroes but in shame. No matter how many games they won in the rest of their careers, their defeat in the Olympics overshadowed it all. If you’re a real hockey fan, you’ve got to feel for them.
Doc & Darryl: This one hurt. Pitcher Dwight “Doc” Gooden and outfielder Darryl Strawberry were the stars who led the New York Mets to the 1986 World Series championship. Fans expected that both players, young and seemingly unstoppable, would be part of a dynasty for the next decade. But their battles with addictions derailed what should have been Hall of Fame careers. When I was a kid, I’d heard about their problems, but looking back on the years they lost due to drugs and alcohol — and seeing Gooden, more than 20 years later, still struggling — was devastating. So much wasted potential. Was it the pressure of playing in the spotlight? Too much money and fame too young? Regardless, it’s heartbreaking, and all too common.
The Best that Never Was: From a small, impoverished town in Mississippi, Marcus Dupree was one of the best high school running backs that the country had ever seen. Colleges went to great lengths to recruit him, and when he signed with Oklahoma in 1981, it was predicted that he was on his way to being the youngest winner of the Heisman Trophy and a star in the NFL. But things didn’t work out that way; a series of injuries derailed his path and he wound up back home and demoralized at only 24. His struggle to redeem himself and make another try for the NFL is inspiring.
Pony Excess: Southern Methodist University was caught in a recruiting scandal in the 1980s that led to the yearlong suspension of the football program and more than a decade of repercussions. Even today, the program struggles to be successful. Hearing about the lengths that college coaches and boosters went to secure top recruits – cars, cash, girls – and realizing that SMU was far from the only offender made me think again about college sports. It’s big business, with football and basketball especially raking in major revenue for schools. Is it fair to put this value, and pressure, on young athletes? Or do they deserve a piece of the pie that they’re bringing in?
The Two Escobars: In Colombia, soccer was a national pastime but didn’t become an international success until Pablo Escobar and other drug kingpins lent their financial support. The episode details the rise and fall of Escobar, the country’s national team, and a star player, Andres Escobar, who was killed in the crossfire of the drug wars. The show gives a lot of insight into the drug trade of the 1980s, how it affected Colombia as well as the United States. It also highlights how sport can be a lifesaver for poor and hopeless youth.
Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez: Inspired by a true event, the 1937 explosion of an East Texas school that killed 300 people, this novel follows the experiences of a Mexican-American girl and an African-American boy whose growing love crosses racial barriers and risks another kind of eruption. Extremely well-written, riveting and heartbreaking.
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys: No, this is not a sequel, prequel or related in any way to the Fifty Shades of Grey series. This novel is about the killings, imprisonments and deportations of thousands committed during Josef Stalin’s “reign of terror.” When Stalin’s Soviet Union invaded the Baltic nation of Lithuania in 1939, he ordered attacks on doctors, lawyers, professors, political activists and pretty much anyone he thought could pose a threat to his rule. Lina’s family was among them, enduring hard labor, starvation and unimaginable abuse in Siberian prison camps.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman: Don’t be embarrassed if you’ve never heard of the Hmong. I’d mistakenly grouped them with the Vietnamese refugees who came here after the fall of Saigon. They’re a different culture, from an entirely different Southeast Asian country. But the lessons learned from this book — that doctors must be culturally sensitive, that medicine is not always stronger than spiritual beliefs — could apply to any interaction between different ethnic groups. The book follows a young girl with epilepsy and how stereotypes and misunderstandings nearly cost her life.
made, there always seem to be another story to tell. To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino recounts the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. Most of us know the basic details, which are often wrapped up in whether the US was right to unleash the nuclear age in an effort to end the war. This book doesn’t get bogged down in that debate. Instead it paints – in vivid scientific, physical and emotional detail – the impact on the cities and people devastated by them, that day and in the months and years since. The stories of Japanese survivors are heartbreaking, especially those who fled after the first bombing and sought safety in the city that became the second target. Can you imagine living through one bomb – a bomb that incinerated your family on the spot, flattened entire neighborhoods and left thousands with horrific burns and radiation poisoning – only to endure it again a few days later? For many people, survival was a matter of inches: a person shielded by a wall or tree may have survived while someone standing steps away was vaporized. The author follows a handful of survivors, much as John Hersey did in his 1946 book Hiroshima, as well as other notable participants such as the pilots who dropped the bombs. While Hiroshima is a powerful book, To Hell and Back goes farther and digs deeper. The 2015 edition uses modern language, making it feel less dated than Hersey’s book, but it also has the benefit of following up with eyewitnesses who lived into the ’90s and 2000s. It was powerful to read how the bombings continued to haunt the survivors, many fighting until old age for a ban on nuclear weapons and an end to war.
The Hawk 