Sheldon Hirsch

The book has three sections, baseball, basketball and football. I'm a big baseball fan, and loved the baseball section. There's a good discussion of some of the new baseball stats like BABIP, and the weakness of stats like WAR. Asking questions like "Who was the better player Mantle or Mays? or how to compare a player from the 1930s to a current player are the stuff of baseball and may never be answered satisfactorily. But Hirsch shows some different ways of looking at such questions, which show more at least, point out why such comparisons are difficult.

Basketball is my least favorite sport and I don't know much about it. The baseball and basketball sections are about the same length and I ended up skipping most of the basketball section as it was getting technical and I don't know the players or situations he was writing about. There was some interesting stuff. I never heard of the controversy concerning 2002 NBA Finals, that the league conspired to fix the 6th game of the Lakers-Kings series to force a 7th game. This seems absurd on the face of it, for any and all the reasons Hirsch describes.

The football section was the shortest, and more general in tone, and an interesting read for a casual football fan like me. Hirsch spends little time on football injuries, such as concussions. As a medical doctor I'd have expected more. He seems to think that the data isn't in to conclude that long term injuries are a problem with football.

I'm giving this 4 stars because I thought the baseball section was excellent. I don't know enough about the game to evaluate the basketball section but if it was as good as the baseball part, then the book deserves 4 stars. The football section was comparatively weak, so I can't give 5 stars. show less

Sheldon Hirsch would be a good person to hang out at a bar with and talk sports. This book is a collection of short essays about baseball, basketball, and football controversies. In each essay (usually lasting between 1-2 pages, rarely more than 3), the author lays out conventional wisdom on the controversy and then argues against it, usually using a mixture of statistical evidence and logic. He takes strong positions and I found myself disagreeing with him frequently, but that didn't show more detract from my enjoyment of the book. It would have been better if the book was a little more cohesive, as the essays have very little relationship with each other, but overall this is a fun book. show less

This book his entertaining, thoughtful and informative. Sheldon Hirsch sets out to debunk many sports myths, such as, Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak being one of the great sports records. He discusses a very wide range of topics with the greatest emphasis on baseball and basketball but also covers football and touches on other sports. Some of my favorite sections include who is better Mantle or Mays, the one-and-done college basketball experience, how good a coach John Caliper is, would Wilt show more chamberlain dominate in todays pro game, the value of the pro football draft. There are just too many stories to describe and each one is interesting.
I agree with Hirsch's view of who should get into baseball's Hall of Fame and thought his views on how to handle players involved in the steroid era were well thought out. Hirsch changed my mind in several of his essays or at least made me consider alternatives to my opinions. The author obviously is well educated on sports statistics and gave me a greater understanding of the use and shortcomings of sabermetric statistics.
This book will entertain the casual and serious sports fan and would be an excellent addition to anyone's sports library. The book is packed with good stories and one of the few books that has footnotes that are a must read. show less

The subtitle for this book, Debunking America's Favorite Sports Myths, says it all, as the author offered, at times, an interesting way of looking at well-settled myths in baseball, basketball, and football.

I found the book to be very uneven. My favorite sport, baseball, was probably the worst of the lot. For quite some time, I was soured on the book by the factual errors. On page 9, for instance, Babe Ruth did not allegedly call his shot in the 1932 World Series by pointing at the St Louis show more Cardinals dugout as the game was played in Chicago's Wrigley Field. That whole section felt weak to me.

However, I'm not all that interested in basketball but the middle section of the book offered up a lot of interesting information on both pro and college hoops.

I have an average interest in football and the final section seemed excessively short and, well, average, to me.

It was very disappointing to me that hockey and other major sports were not covered at all.

Overall, I'd recommend this book to sports fans but could not highly recommend it. Some good material, though I was expecting better, and some very dry portions. Not bad but it could've been much better. show less