T. Lipton Baggs was an ordinary sports fan. He loved to watch football, baseball and boxing on TV. But every time he tuned in he saw Howard Cosell. Howard talked and talked and talked. At first, Lipton could tolerate him, but, like a steady drip of water, Cosell took his toll. Lipton tried every way he knew to cope with Howard -- meditation, voodoo, excorcism. Nothing worked. Finally he quit watching sports cold turkey.
But the worst had only begun. He couldn't sleep. He saw Howard in his dreams. When he awoke, Howard was everywhere--at the bus stop, on his personal computer, at his favorite bar.
Now truly desperate, Lipton suddently realized that there was only one way to survive. He had to stop Howard Cosell.
How will he do it? Does he succeed? All sports fans still want to know.
Heavy handed, yet delicate......

After seeing Monday Night Mayhem I bought the Hardcover version of the book. I bought it used, but it was in like new condition.

It was a good read. Cosell was at a point in his life where he could afford to be especially candid. The title "I never played the game" incidentally refers to both that he never played sports but also he never played the game with ABC executives or the sports hype.

Cosell is right in that he never got the respect he deserved from the public and the other sports commentators. Cosell was just the type of guy people loved to hate, but deep down I think most people loved cosell. He always brought out the emotion in any sporting event. He always had the uncanny ability to draw people in without hyping. Monday Night Football was never better when Cosell was the announcer in the early 70's.

After recently watching the Howard Cosell HBO documentary, I felt compelled to read of Howard in Howard's words. I graduated from high school in 71 and my interest in sports overlaid Cosell's rise to prominence.

This book is good and bad. The bad part is that Howard writes it and therefore Howard covers only what he wants. He picks out about 5 themes and covers the story from his perspective while overlaying his importance and how these events may have led to his eventually leaving network sports. For example, the first quarter of the book is an in-depth analysis of the Raiders leaving Los Angeles and Al Davis' fight with the NFL. Howard does a good job covering this issue from an intelligent standpoint but feels compelled to consistently drop names and inform you of his importance in the story. The most compelling part of this subject, which is further covered later with the section on the Jets and Giants leaving New York, is how it plays out in today's culture of sports franchises still successfully blackmailing cities and states. At least in that perspective, Howard was correct.

In addition to NFL franchise moves, the other big story is NFL Monday Night Football. Fans today have no idea how big this was for football to be carried on the weeknight. Howard Cosell was perfect for the role. He was clearly the most hated man in America. Brass, cocky, controversial but always wanting to open his mouth and have everyone listens to him. My fondest memories of Monday Night Football is Don Meredith and his comedy. It was worth watching just to listen to Don. Frank Gifford was the ballast, the middleman compromise between Frank and Don who made everything run smoothly. Howard was like the nerd who never fit in but felt like he needed to lead the show. And actually he was pretty good at it at times. Eventually Howard self-implodes. Struggling because all the print media hates him, his partners don't like him, but self-delusionally believing it's everyone else's fault, he asks to be removed from the show. And with this change, Howard leaves the spotlight but doesn't seem to ever get comfortable without the light on him.

Howard was an intelligent, complex man who had a huge desire to be loved. Probably what he should be known for most is his complete devotion to his wife. When she died in the mid-90s, Howard was just lost. Basically his life was over except for dying.

Other stories covered in this book are his reason for walking away from boxing coverage as well as his personal history with Ali, Ray Leonard and O.J. Simpson. In summary, this is a book of stories that are interesting to Howard, not a biography. But it does give good insight into the man. I recommend this book for anyone with interest in sports, the 70s, or television history.

I never heard Howard Cosell do a broadcast. If it is anything like he reads this book, then I truly missed out! This is an excellent addition, especially for anyone who enjoyed the recent film "Monday Night Mayhem", depicting the rise of Monday Night Football and Cosell. This fills in much of what the movie may have been unable to cover. Plenty of signature Cosell lines, said by the man himself!

Being a little too young to remember live broadcasts of Howard Cosell, I read this book in an attempt to gain insight into why this sports figure was so controversial. Whether you love or hate him, it seems that there are very few people without an opinion about Howard.

And rightly so. The man clearly has a huge ego, and his self-aggrandizement oozes off every page, often with hollow qualifiers like "I don't mean to brag, but..." He claims to be a close friend of nearly everyone. And he makes weighty accusations and statements in the name of telling it like it is. One particularly egregious one (though correct, in my opinion), regarding the toll a baseball superstar's gambling scandal took on the late baseball commissioner and good friend of the author- "There's little doubt that Pete Rose was a factor in the death of Bart Giamatii." Ouch.

Kudos to Cosell for attacking sacred cows. It really was refreshing to read someone put athletics' big-mouths and butt-kissers in their places; I just wish I could have seen and heard Cosell do the same live. Cosell was a champion of a lot of important aspects of sports and sports reporting that are resolved nowadays, unpopular, or foregone conclusions. For example, Cosell advocated that sports reporting is as important as other news reporting, and demands the same scrutiny and lack of bias. He was a tough critic of college sports programs and coaches, particularly those which turn a blind eye to the delinquency of their players, and those whose reverence of sports undermines their institutions' dedication to academics. He was a staunch promoter of minority representation in sports management and ownership. He believed boxing suffered from a lack of consolidation of leagues, and from the influence of crooks like Don King. He squawked about the mob's influence in professional sports.

I wish Howard was around today to give the world his take on the current state of sports, but- alas- he passed away not long after this book came out (1991). That this book is so dated is a sad commentary on today's sports scene- everything Howard lamented more than 10 years ago in print (outrageous sports salaries, gambling and numbers in sports, sports figures engaged in criminal pursuits, biased reporting) exists tenfold today. Heck, Mike Tyson alone is enough to make any sports enthusiast wince and long for the good old days... [Incidentally, in Howard's words re. the biting one circa 1991, "I think [Tyson] needs professional help from persons expert in the field of mental health."]

Anyone interested in sports beyond the scores should read WHAT'S WRONG WITH SPORTS, the last(published 1991) of four books by the late great journalist Howard Cosell. It's almost as good as his COSELL (1973) and I NEVER PLAYED THE GAME (1985), two others you should seek out. For as much impact as Cosell had in his sports broadcast career, does anyone have tapes of his radio and TV announcing? You've got to read Howard Cosell's books, as they are pretty much all we have left of the man's courageous commentary.

I picked up a few J. N. Williamson horror novels on the cheap several years ago, but it is only now that I decided to read one of them. The covers are awfully cheesy, and Williamson does not seem to get a lot of respect or acknowledgement in the horror community, so I did not have high expectations as I entered the "doors" of Horror House. Part of the plot did indeed seem intriguing, namely the inclusion of Thomas Edison in this story. This novel is, to some degree, based on fact, at least insofar as the past events related in the novel are concerned. Edison did work on a machine he hoped would enable him to contact the dead, and apparently there was a house in Pittsburgh whose dark legacy served as the starting point for the Horror House of Williamson's story. The early parts of the novel are not bad, detailing the first acts of grisly murder that took place in the house, then detailing Edison's secret visit there to test his new device and the results he obtained when the machine actually worked. Then we are transported to the present and introduced to our three main characters. Laura Hawks is a struggling writer who takes a job working for a small publishing house run by Ben Kellogg, and the two of them begin work on a book based on the hauntings at Horror House; they are joined by parapsychologist and former Antichrist-defeater Martin Ruben, who quickly discovers that his friends are in over their heads on this one. Oddly enough, none of the ensuing action takes place anywhere near the haunted house. Instead, the story involves the discovery and reactivation of Edison's machine and the dire consequences of this action. Shedding logic and believability all along the way as it meanders to a conclusion, the story boils down to an entrapment of all of the world's evil in a localized area and the decision that must be made by our triumvirate of heroes as to how to proceed in a fight against a seemingly unbeatable foe of Evil with a capital E.

Logic aside, the plot moves along fairly well, and I would not consider Hell House a bad or unreadable book at all. That being said, however, the dialogue often sounds quite forced, and more than once I found myself saying "Oh, for Pete's sake," as a particular debate ran on and on with characters repeating the same arguments ad infinitum. I can't say the characters weren't reasonably well developed, but some combination of their descriptions and the commonly stilting dialogue combined to forestall my efforts to suspend my disbelief and let myself really be drawn into Williamson's story. The relationship between Laura and Ben also holds no real spark, making Williamson's occasional use of love scenes seem somewhat annoying and out of place. This novel could be considered ghost-like itself because there really is little of substance here upon which the reader can take hold. Horror House can serve as a nice diversion, but in the long run it proves quite forgettable.