The Baseball Guru - Book Review: Ali and the Fifth Street Gym by Harvey Frommer

Sports Book Reviews

By Harvey Frommer

A couple of years back my wife Myrna and I were interviewing for our oral history IT HAPPENED IN MIAMI. We were taken aback by the many wonderful stories we heard about Muhammad Ali and his time spent at the Fifth Street Gym where he trained and entranced so many people.

There was a moment that we thought how wonderful it would be to do an oral history of the boxing legend. That moment passed and instead we created a singular chapter in our book - -http://frommerbooks.com/it-happened-in-miami.html “Ali and the Fifth Street Gym”.

Muhammad Ali

Now along comes the very talented Jonathan Eig and his blockbuster book Ali A Life (HMH, $30.00, 623 pages). There have been many books written about the famed Ali but none at this level, with this depth, of this importance. Ali and Eig will forever be intertwined in sports literature. The book about the “Greatest” is the greatest.

Divided into three parts, spread over 56 chapters or sections, the result of more than six hundred interviews with more than 200 individuals, Ali: A Life is anecdote upon anecdote, points of views, considered comments, a master lode of data, detail, stories about one of the most important figures in sports. Eig gives us the good, the bad and the points in between. Most importantly, he brings Ali to life again. BELONGS ON YOUR BOOKSHELF

BOOKENDS: The Chicago Cubs by Rich Cohen (Farrar, Straus Giroux, $26.00, 273 pages) is as its sub-title states: “Story of a Curse.” A must for Cubbie fans, filled with stories and observation, the book is a winner.

--Harvey Frommer is one of the most prolific and respected sports journalists and oral historians in the United States, author of the autobiographies of legends Nolan Ryan, Tony Dorsett, and Red Holzman, Dr. Harvey Frommer is an expert on the New York Yankees and has arguably written more books, articles and reviews on the New York Yankees than anyone.

A professor for more than two decades in the MALS program at Dartmouth College, Frommer was dubbed “Dartmouth’s Mr. Baseball” by their alumni magazine.

His ULTIMATE YANKEE BOOK debuts this fall. PRE ORDER from AMAZON: http://www.frommerbooks.com/ultimate-yankees.html.