Chumps to Champs by Bill Pennington

Why I Read It: Morbid Curiosity. I'm a Red Sox fan.

Summary: How the Yankees rebuilt in the early 1990s while the Boss was away and achieved greatness once more.

My Thoughts: I like to get these things out of the way first. I really liked this book, but the author had me for exactly 301 pages, Then, he lost me, with one simple line.

"The franchise desperately needed a twenty-third championship."

There is no North American sports franchise, no North American city, that ever "desperately" needed a twenty-third championship. I'm sure that Yankees fans all over the world would be perfectly happy holding 22 World Series championships over the heads of all other baseball fans. Think about it. Even today, the Cardinals are a distant, poor second, with 11 championships. The Yankees were never desperate for another title.

OK. Purged. Onward.

This was a fun read, Red Sox fan or not. It reminded me a bit of Mike Shropshire's Seasons in Hell in that it covered not a championship season, but those in-between years when a plan is put in place and a million things have to go right for a team to reach the ultimate goal. Unfortunately, for Shropshire's Texas Rangers, it never happened. For the 1990s Yankees, it all worked out in the end.

This was the era of growth for the Core Four (Posada, Jeter, Williams, Rivera), who should have been the Core Five (had Brien Taylor made it). But, more importantly, it was the era of Gene Michael as general manager and Buck Showalter as manager, an they are really the stars of this story. Michael sought players with the best on-base-percentage and Showalter forged a new Yankee identity and culture.

The author pulled from a wide array of interviews and other sources, some contemporary and some recently recorded. In the end it's a rags to riches tale complete with good guys and bad guys, tragedy and comedy. And for baseball fans from any city, the list of names provide a time machine within itself, offering safe transport back to the mid-90s, mostly pre-steroid era.

Somebody to Love by Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne

Why I Read It: I think my interest was piqued by the recent Queen movie (which I haven't yet seen).

Summary: "The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury," as stated in the subtitle.

My Thoughts: One of the first album covers I ever really examined was A Night at the Opera, back when I was a child, at a friend's house. Rock music was new to me, my parents having been born in the '40s and firmly entrenched in late '50s, early '60s safe, clean music. The giant robotic-looking creature on the cover was enough to make me want to know more. The needle hit the vinyl.

Queen was definitely part of the background soundtrack of my youth.

I bought their greatest hits 1 & 2 compilation on cassette as an early teen. I knew all the songs, and can still sing them to this day, even learned to play a few on the keyboard. I was 14 when they blazed a new star across the sky at Live Aid, and in college when Freddie died. I remember the fact that he was a Zoroastrian being delivered in a history class discussion lab as a tidbit of information I should know. For some reason, it was one of the few facts that stuck with me through the years about his life.

I didn't know the deep story. The authors of this book bring it to light. What we basically have is a confluence of three major forces. We have the arrival of a deadly virus at the moment that gay promiscuity is at its zenith in hotspots around the world, during a time when governmental leaders are slow to respond with research funding. Freddie Mercury was unfortunate to catch the disease when there was no cure, and when world leaders weren't interested in stopping the spread of "gay cancer."

It's hard to know how to react to Freddie. The authors attempt to connect the dots from his adult lifestyle - the constant search for love, the excesses of drugs, drink and sex, the need for control and power - to his boarding school upbringing, and perhaps they have something. He reveled in the power that his status as a stadium-sellout rock star afforded him, used it and abused it. He had a deeply caring side, but was quick to shun those around him he no longer wanted around.

Nobody could ever say he "had it coming to him," at least not in the specific sense of AIDS draining his lifeforce away at a young age. Aside from being a cruel thought, it's not as if he, or anyone else, ever thought sex-borne diseases could kill; Freddie was in his zone in the gay clubs of New York, Munich and elsewhere as the disease was first being passed around, yet nobody knew "it" existed. There is, though, the sense that the drugs and drinking were going to catch up with him some day. I think it's this sense of invincibility that others exhibit that rubs me the wrong way. It's made me think a little bit less of Freddie, unfortunately.

But Freddie was masterful when in the studio and on stage. If I balance out my personal feelings for his excesses - which I can see now as related to his own inner demons - with my sense of the great, wonderful years of enjoyment his music has brought me, I think there is no competition. I wish Freddie had figured it out and found that somebody to love before it was too late. So many bands of that era are still performing live today. Can anyone imagine another thirty years of original Queen music?

Legacy? He and the generation of people lost to AIDS in the 80s directly led to me sitting in an auditorium at UMASS Amherst for a mandatory "safe sex" lecture with 500 of my classmates in 1991. The world changed in those days.

La Passione by Dianne Hales

Why I Read It: Sono Italiano...

Summary: The subtitle is "How Italy seduced the world," through the arts, architecture, food, etc.

My Thoughts: I've had the pleasure. I know the Italians. I'm related to them.

Although I'm a few generations removed from "the boat," through most of my youth I worked, ate, lived and did everything else with "real" Italians. And I've visited Italy, seen the passion in person, so I get what the author is talking about.

And she's got a great point. Italians do pour their hearts into what they do, seeking perfection in everything. She brings the point home with one simple sentiment, that whether it's a major commissioned work of art or his grandmother's sauce, an Italian will pour his soul into making it just exactly as it should be: perfect.

That pursuit of excellence comes with raw emotion. While many of the early examples in this book come with tales of debauchery, or just plain old randiness, many Italians that I know have a brashness and outspokenness that is endearing; they want what they want out of themselves, and if they don't get it, they throw emotion at it.

I remember my great uncle, a butcher, who once gave me two small steaks and told me that if they weren't the greatest steaks I'd ever tasted, well, then, I didn't deserve to call myself Italian. I told my wife the story as we prepared them, and we laughed. "Silly old fool," I said. "I'm sure we'll enjoy them anyway." Then we bit into them. As the kids say today, O.M.G.

I remember one night at a friend's house, at a going away party for him as he was returning to his olive trees back in the old country. He had my go with him to pick up the pizzas that he ordered: one large cheese, nine large anchovy. The room was raucous, in two languages. At one point, someone said to me, "Hey, America and Italy, always good friends, right?" Stupidly, I put my history degree on display, stating, "Well, not always. Remember when Socialists were blowing up bombs on Wall Street back in World War I. Even Mussolini..." That did it. The whole room fell silent as the oldest member of the group put has hand high on my wrist, looked me in the eye, paused, and said, "What you say about Mussolini?" The room erupted. Yelling and screaming came from all corners as opinions flew, my dad and I wondering whether or not we would escape alive. In the midst of the furor, our friend looked over at us, big beaming smile on his face, and winked. The very craziness of it all was making his heart explode with joy. Now this was a sendoff.

And I could go on, through aunts, uncles, grandparents, even my great-grandmother. As I read this book, I flashed back to all of them, as the author discussed all of the passions of the Italian people. I nodded my head as I went, and at one point thought to myself, "My god, she hasn't even gotten to wine yet. Or opera. Or cars!" By that point the point of the book was well taken. It's not just one or two things, it's everything. If it's worth doing, for an Italian, it's worth doing perfectly.

I tried to consider another nationality that matches this passion. I feel like the Japanese have the same pursuit of perfection, but that they are much more reserved in their emotional expressions attached t it. I'm sure there are plenty of others, but, boy, could I identify with this book. It made me want to go back "home" and see it all again.