Elliott Kalb

Books of sports lists can be exasperating, this one especially so. To begin with, like sports anthologies, their content's interest level for a given reader will be only so great as their interest in the sport under discussion at the moment. This book complicates that problem with the peg on which it stands, viz., the author's rating each conspiracy on a scale of one to five "Oswalts" (as in Lee). This undoubtedly seemed like a good idea at the time, but the ratings too often don't match his narration of the affair; for example, after going on for twenty pages about how the first NBA draft lottery was rigged, with nary a dissenting voice, he gives it his lowest rating for credibility. All of the words are spelled correctly, but the names are butchered, start to finish, often to the point of multiple spellings on the same page. And, oddly, the final five chapters are written (and much better) by somebody else. This book is entertaining, and at times informative, but for the most part if you were interested in these scandals beforehand, you've probably read as much as you need to to form your own opinion anyway.… (more)