For the more scholarly of folk

I began reading Breaking Back: How I Low Everything and Won Back My Life, the autobiography of Tennis Star James Blake, this week, and I have to say I'm very impressed. I'm going to venture out and say that it is one of the best sports autobiographies that I have read (a short list probably confined to just Idiot and Yao: A Life in Two Worlds) What's more impressive is that, unlike the other two, I don't think that Blake had a co-writer, so the words are all his own. I guess his writing ability shouldn't come as a surprise, since I recently discovered that he went to Harvard before going pro and as such is not the "Idiot" that most athletes are.

[edit]Upon closer inspection of the cover (read: I'm dumb), I noticed that there is acutally a co-author. Oh well, all the better.

One of the more interesting things that was revealed to me in the book was that Jason Kidd towers over tennis stars (word used loosely) Andy Roddick, James Blake, Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras (OK, the last two are probably undisputed stars) by maybe about 4 inches. Point guards seem so small on the court, especially since head coaches are usually former ballers too, that we often forget that they are still big guys by most rubrics. Well, I'm going to say that AI and Chris Paul are still probably pretty average sized, and I will believe it until Paul comes out with an autobiography with a picture of him standing 6 inches taller than Tiger Woods.

But joking aside, it is a great read and is recommended to everyone who either a. enjoys books, b. enjoys tennis, c. enjoys taking recommendations.




On a somewhat related note (in that they both involve athletes venturing out of the world of sports), I downloaded Tony Parker's rap album the other day, and after a quick listen through (very quick), I have come to the conclusion that he should be happy he got married to the Longoria before it was released. I mean some tracks are passable-- supposedly "Balance Toi" is a hit in France -- but overall, it is very lacking in the way that basketballers' attempts at musicality usually are. Now to move onto some vintage THUD.



One last note: I have realized that the overwhelming majority of the new traffic (first-time visitors) to this site comes from people clicking through the google image search of the cow picture in the post, "Ahhhhh, Free Cow!" I don't know why this is, or why that picture attracts so much traffic, but I thought it was something to be noted because I guess the world just loves cows.