When winning also means losing

Six Good Innings: How One Small Town Became a Little League Giant
By Mark Kreidler
Harper, 247 pp., $24.95

A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL
By Stefan Fatsis
Penguin, 340 pp., illustrated, $25.95

Olympic Industry Resistance: Challenging Olympic Power and Propaganda
By Helen Jefferson Lenskyj
State University of New York, 182 pp., $56.50

When the members of his all-star baseball team were 11 years old, Coach John Puleo scheduled practices for 56 consecutive days. Sometimes the team practiced twice a day. Some of the practices lasted four hours. According to Mark Kreidler, who made the acquaintance of Coach Puleo in connection with Kreidler's attempt to chronicle the many triumphs and occasional disappointments of the Little League teams in Toms River, N.J., those practices were "heavy on repetition and devoid of flair."

Fifty-six consecutive days of baseball practices "devoid of flair" for a team of 11-year-old children will strike some readers as a fine idea for several reasons. To begin with, apparently the routine works, at least as measured by results on the field. The kids in Toms River play baseball so well that the town has become known as "a baseball factory." According to Kreidler, that's a distinction many of the adults in Toms River cherish. Beyond that, these kids don't have time to get in trouble. They're either playing baseball, or they're asleep. On the other hand, they also don't have time to go on family vacations or play other sports. In the winter, they spend their after-school hours in the indoor batting cage.

"Six Good Innings" supports the contention that some adults are fine with the notion that their kids should specialize very early in one sport, especially if success at that endeavor means the shutouts their kids pitch and the home runs they hit will be nationally televised. How you feel about those adults may depend on whether your children are accomplished athletes.

In the subtitle of "A Few Seconds of Panic," Stefan Fatsis contends that he played in the National Football League. He didn't; the NFL wouldn't let him. But after he'd had many kicking lessons and spent lots of hours trying to kick field goals, he convinced the Denver Broncos to let him hang around with them. He got to wear a uniform and stand on the sideline during a few exhibition games, too, and on a couple of occasions during practices he attempted field goals.

His contention that this exercise enabled him to understand the pressure a kicker faces in a game is goofy, but Fatsis wasn't faking it. He became, by his own account, a reasonably competent kicker, given that he was a 43-year-old novice.

But all that is pretty much beside the point. The best parts of "A Few Seconds of Panic" have nothing to do with Fatsis the kicker, and everything to do with Fatsis the reporter. If wearing a uniform and agreeing to be humiliated by authentic players helped him earn the trust of his temporary comrades, fair enough. Among his intriguing discoveries is that an NFL locker room is more likely to be segregated by intelligence and curiosity than by position, race, or age. He also found that a lot of the humor among pro football players is "crude, sexist, or homophobic," which is not surprising; and that some of the players regard what they do as not only dangerous but demeaning, "manic-depressive," and kind of stupid, which is a little surprising, given the awe with which NFL players are regarded by many of the people who watch them on TV.

Reading "Olympic Industry Resistance: Challenging Olympic Power and Propaganda" before the Beijing Games might have tainted two weeks of entertainment, so I'm glad I didn't. Now that the Olympics are over, I can recommend Helen Jefferson Lenskyj's book to anyone curious about the impact of the Games on the cities that have hosted the extravaganzas. It is lovely to dream that the citizens of host cities benefit from the construction of housing and infrastructure improvements that can come with the Olympics, but Lenskyj demonstrates that preparation for the Games invariably leads to the rousting of the poor and the suspension of such basic rights as free speech and freedom of the press and association. Some Beijing residents may not have noticed the difference, but that can't be said of the million and a half of them who were "relocated" by Olympics-related construction.

Some readers will find "Olympic Industry Resistance," Lenskyj's third book about the Games, slow going. The author is an academic given to citations and footnotes. But even a cursory reading of this earnest study will convince readers that "sport is only a minor component" of the gigantic corporate show the modern Olympics has become. In a world where an increasing number of people lack not only homes but bread, the Games provide circuses. Then the people running them have the brass to claim their enterprise can help solve social problems. Lenskyj demonstrates that if you invite the Games, accomplished con men (and women) will lie to you and exacerbate the difficulties of your most vulnerable citizens. In a culture given to the celebration of athletic achievement, Lenskyj's voice provides a powerful indictment of the dishonesty and irresponsibility of the Games.

Bill Littlefield hosts National Public Radio's "Only a Game." His most recent book is also titled "Only a Game."