Word: wilber
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Troy Aikman, 28, who guided the Cowboys to victory in the last two Super Bowls, could be forced into early retirement at any time. In an Oct. 23 game against the Cardinals, he took a terrifying blow to the chin from Wilber Marshall, a freight train of a linebacker. It caused the sixth concussion of Aikman's five-year career, and his second in 10 months. Aikman now says he is symptom free and ready to play, an attitude that worries his agent, Leigh * Steinberg. "Players have a better grasp of the contents of a can of diet soda than...
Tradition should never be confused with perfection, especially in the game of baseball. The former players interviewed in Cynthia Wilber's For the Love of the Game insist, as do many nostalgic fans, that our national pastime reached its greatest heights in the 1940s and '50s, that baseball today cannot compete with the sport during its glory days. They are wrong. Free agency, artificial turf and relief pitchers have changed the game, not destroyed it. And as George Will has noted, change and innovation should be applauded, not derided, as signs of a living, vibrant sport...
Were this a book about politics or culture, such glorification of the past might truly be pernicious, as was the case with Reaganism. Since, unlike politics, baseball will never resurrect the substance of by-gone eras, the effect is merely sad. Wilber has interviewed a few legitimate baseball stars, men whose achievements transcend the decade in which they played. But even subjects such as Ted Williams seem unfocused; they deliver vague platitudes to the glory of their times rather than providing the crisp details of specific experiences that enliven good baseball books. David Halberstam understood this, and this...
...inability to discuss nostalgia critically is what ultimately dooms For the Love of the Game. Wilber, who spent her childhood following her father, Philadelphia Phillies catcher Del Wilber, around the major leagues, begins this book of baseball testimonials with a tired premise--that America's finest moments occurred during the 1950s, a "time in American history when heroes were important and plentiful and American as a nation had dreams...
Making the oft-used parallel between baseball and the national character, Wilber then asserts that the game also experienced some sort of golden age during that decade, that only then did fans see "ballplayers who played because of a passion for the game." To prove her hypothesis, she gathers the baseball stories of a group of players from the '40s and '50s, individuals who understandably view their own era as the game's greatest...