David A. F. Sweet

NEW YORK -- Before Bob Bowman explains why he took the top job at Major League Baseball's new-media arm, the sound of a toilet flushing seeps through the cinder-block wall in his tiny office.

It's a long way from corporate behemoth ITT, where Mr. Bowman served as president -- and even enjoyed a private bathroom -- until the company's 1998 acquisition by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.

In front of Northwestern University professor Tim Calkins sit two dozen students, armed with three-ring binders and surrounded by bottled waters. Calkins eyes the class and asks them to describe a negative brand. The answers come quickly.
“Britney Spears!”
“Pit bulls!”

It's amazing how an ABA team who didn't make it into the NBA still gets money from the league.

This excerpt was adapted from Three Seconds in Munich: The Controversial 1972 Olympic Basketball Final by David A.F. Sweet by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. © 2019 by David A.F. Sweet.

The 1972 Munich men’s gold medal basketball game unfolded against a bitter Cold War backdrop. What happened on the Olympic court between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was undoubtedly controversy. But could it also have been conspiracy?

As the kickoff to the season approaches, they pick out their running lanes. Having researched the competitors and concocted their strategies, they go over their plan of attack one more time. Unflinching in their desire to be first, they are willing to be bloodied to get what they want.
Players during National Football League games on Thanksgiving Day? Far from it. Rather, they’re shoppers on Black Friday.

For the past few years, it's been hard to turn on the television during the NFL season without seeing Peyton Manning — in a commercial. Whether encouraging a poor-throwing paper boy in a MasterCard spot or getting decked out as a mustachioed Peyton Manning fan for Sprint, the Indianapolis quarterback, on any given Sunday, has often pitched more products than touchdown passes.

The job candidate had barely introduced himself when Alcorn State University president Walter Washington posed the critical question.

"What would you do to promote Steve McNair for the Heisman Trophy?" Washington demanded of Derick Hackett, an applicant for the university's sports information director position three years ago.

To the head of a school with fewer than 3,000 students, Hackett's best answer may have been: Let the star quarterback transfer to Florida. Or Ohio State. Or Tennessee.

...

Still in high school in 2002, LeBron James appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated — right in the middle of the Winter Olympics, when skiing gold medalists might’ve expected to land there instead. Duncan Robinson didn’t quite get the same publicity when he was playing basketball at Phillips Exeter Academy, the elite prep school that has never been confused with a basketball factory.

By David A. F. Sweet

Back in 1975, when Michelle Hirschfield was born, the odds of a pregnant woman having quintuplets was rather large – as in 85 million to one. It was so rare that Walter Cronkite announced the birth of Hirschfield and her four siblings on the CBS Evening News. But the Lake Forest resident -- who works at the Gorton Community Center and who served as the president of the Newcomers Club of Lake Forest and Lake Bluff -- may have topped those odds later in life.

It was a day that churned the stomachs of sports apparel and shoe executives.

By David A. F. Sweet

“That’s my life on the walls,” says Paul Natkin, sitting on a chair in the living room of his Chicago apartment.

He’s referring to a handful of framed photos to his right. One is a black-and-white portrait of Keith Richards. Natkin served as his solo tour photographer more than once — the same job he held with the Rolling Stones, where he flew on their private jet and enjoyed big bowls of Godiva chocolates backstage.

After Robert Israel played the organ for five silent movie comedies at a UCLA film class this spring, a sophomore confided her initial surprise to him. “I was expecting an old man to be sitting there,” she said. “I was shocked to see how young you are.”

By David A. F. Sweet

On a winter Sunday, in the tower of a former fire station where hoses used to hang, Graham Thompson smokes a pipe below a photo of Compay Segundo, a renowned Cuban singer who’s wearing a hat. Down the stairs there’s a black-and-white picture of blues icon John Lee Hooker sitting backstage, bedecked in star-spangled socks with his arms crossed; he’s also donning a hat.