Sports books for holiday gifts: Steve Somers, John Madden and Pat Summerall, Long Island Arena and Steve Albert
Pat Summerall, left, and John Madden stand in the broadcast booth at the Superdome before Super Bowl 36 on Feb. 3, 2002, in New Orleans. Credit: AP/Ric Feld
Tis the season to start thinking about sports books as potential gifts. Here are a few for your consideration.
“Me Here, You There,” by Steve Somers
The longtime WFAN host looks back at his life and career as you would expect him to, with a light touch that makes for an easy read as he schmoozes S-P-O-R-T-S.
Some material will be familiar from his three decades on the air, including his childhood and young adulthood in Northern California – people often are surprised he did not grow up in the New York area – his needling of the “Icelanders” and his friendship with Jerry Seinfeld.
But Somers opens up here on other topics, including his alcoholism and his late older brother, Michael, whom he describes as “socially, mentally and physically disabled.”
Most of the book describes positive relationships with colleagues across the radio spectrum, other than some bluntly harsh words for his late-1990s midday co-host Russ Salzberg.
Somers shares email exchanges he has had over the years with Seinfeld, who also wrote a brief foreword that starts this way:
“I know it sounds crazy, but when I moved back to New York City in the summer of 1998 after I finished my TV series in L.A., going on WFAN with Steve Somers made me feel like I was home again.”
“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Broadcast Booth,” by Steve Albert
The youngest of the three sports-announcing Albert boys from Brooklyn tells his story in anecdotal, non-chronological fashion, punctuated with the kind of rapid-fire verbal gags and narrative detours he sprinkles into conversation in real life.
Things do get serious at times, notably when he recalls being on campus as a Kent State student when four fellow students were shot and killed by National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970.
But mostly it’s fun with games. All you need to know about the book’s jokey tone is the blurbs on the back jacket.
Marv Albert, Steve’s older brother: “Swing and a miss.”
Al Albert, Steve’s other older brother: “Airball.”
Kenny Albert, Steve’s nephew: “Read my book instead.”
“Remembering the Long Island Arena,” by Joseph Rossi
This tribute to the long-ago building in Commack that famously hosted the Long Island Ducks hockey team and briefly the ABA Nets, among many other things, is exhaustively researched and provides a detailed log of the arena’s eclectic schedule of events.
Those details can overwhelm the colorful stories at times, but the important stuff is in there for those of us who recall the building, which opened in 1959 after an arduous, yearslong process — all of it covered in its messy details by Newsday — and was razed in 1996.
All sorts of characters turn up, including me on page 331, as a commentator for Northport High School hockey games at the arena. We recorded them and showed them in school the next day. True story!
“Madden & Summerall,” by Rich Podolsky
The author of “You Are Looking Live!” the 2021 book about “The NFL Today,” is back on the classic sports TV beat with this look at the iconic team of John Madden and Pat Summerall.
The seemingly mismatched pair of announcers made for a dream team as they worked together at CBS and later Fox through the last two decades of the 20th century.
Podolsky sometimes gets lost in the insider weeds in chronicling that era, but his access to the movers and shakers behind the scenes provides depth beyond what the rest of us saw on-screen.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
