Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Verne Lundquist has been a broadcast presence on the American sports scene for more than 50 years. Since joining CBS sports in 1982, he's covered more than 20 sports, including golf, pro football, the Olympics, and college basketball. He is one of the most recognizable broadcast voices in college-football history, and his work at the Masters golf tournament has become the gold standard. As this thoroughly entertaining memoir makes clear, he can also write. His memories of his youth are riveting. The son of a pastor, he recalls going with his dad to a local radio station where his father would deliver a short sermon over the air. Young Verne was mesmerized by the studio's blinking lights, wires, and headphones. His first exposure to TV, in the window of local appliance store, proved equally revelatory. Lundquist peppers his memoir with anecdotes about such sports greats as Terry Bradshaw and John Madden, both of whom became close friends, and others for whom friendship wasn't an accurate descriptor. As an announcer, Lundquist always tried to disappear; it was about the event. He strove to share the event with viewers no discernible ego, no personal agenda. He takes the same approach here, sharing his professional life with gentle humor and insight. Expect plenty of attention from fans across generations.--Wes Lukowsky Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Lundquist's recounting of his 50-year career as a sports broadcaster displays a sweeping scope. Here, he recounts the Green Bay Packers-Dallas Cowboys in the "Ice Bowl" for the 1967 NFL championship as well as Jack Nicklaus, at age 46, on the 17th green in the last round of the 1986 Masters, putting for the lead. Other notable sporting events include Christian Laetner's buzzer-beater giving Duke a 104-103 win over Kentucky in the regional finals of the 1992 NCAA basketball tournament, figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding at the 1994 Winter Olympics, and Tiger Woods chipping in from long range onto an impossibly breaking green on the 16th hole in the final round of the 2005 Masters en route to a playoff victory. Included are many more "greatest moments in sports." -VERDICT Lundquist's comprehensive look at the world of sports from the 1960s through the current decade will be an exciting trip down memory lane for many a fan.-Jim Burns, formerly with Jacksonville P.L., FL © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
If there's a sport to be played, as this amiable memoir recounts, then Lundquist will be there to call it.Recently retired after a long career, the author is known for his contributions to many areas of sportscasting, and so he has been for decadesor, as he puts it with characteristic enthusiasm, "for more than fifty years I've had a front-row seat to some of the greatest sporting events America has witnessed." True, and if he's done commentary on some of the dogs, too, he's done it with good humor, a colorful way with words, and a gelatinously shimmering belly laugh. But yet there are the big games, too, such as the 1979 match between the Dallas Cowboys and their archenemies, the Washington Redskins. Begins Lundquist, setting the scene for his pageslong analysis, "a great comeback is a beauty to behold, but it doesn't climb to the top of my charts if the results aren't of any real consequence." With matching records at season's end and an undying enmity, the two teams put on quite a showand, writes the author, played their hearts out. Writing with the benefit of hindsight, Lundquist takes a moment to worry that Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach may have been an early sufferer of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in a time when "tape an aspirin to your forehead was the league's concussion protocol." Every sport known to humankind, it seems, comes into consideration, for Lundquist is nothing if not versatile; it will surprise many of his viewers to know that he counts among the highest points of his professional career "my unlikely love affair with figure skating." That love affair began once his network lost a pro football contract, but even so, he writes, give him the choice between calling a Super Bowl and announcing the Winter Olympics with Scott Hamilton, and it'll be the latter every time out.A textbook for would-be sports commentators and a pleasure for fans. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
