Back in the day (pre-1970, say), what passed for Sports Literature was like a cup of extraordinarily weak coffee with way too much sugar – artificially saturated but dreadfully short on substance, more fairly-tale than fact.
Then along came Jim Bouton, Pete Axthelm and most significantly David Halberstam – groundbreakers, all. Bouton’s zany and controversial Ball Four humanized athletic celebrity by opening the doors to the locker room – a few hotel rooms, as well … and Axthelm’s The City Game did the same by juxtaposing the regal manner of a Willis Reed or “Clyde Barrow” swag of a Walt Frazier with the NYC street cred of Goats and Destroyers.