<div dir="ltr"><div>All, <br></div><div>Please find below and attached Richard Black's review of Matthew Ehrlich's <i>Kansas City vs. Oakland</i>.</div><div>Thanks,</div><div>Duncan</div><div><br></div><div>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Matthew
Ehrlich <i>Kansas City vs. Oakland: The
Bitter Sports Rivalry that Defined an Era</i></span></b><b><i><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span></span></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Reviewed by Richard
Black, Northwest Missouri State University<span></span></span></b></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Two small-market sports cities. A
panoply of legendary and even infamous names.<span>
</span>Charlie Finley. Al Davis. Lamar Hunt. Len Dawson. Hank Stram. John
Madden. George Blanda. Kenny Stabler. Catfish Hunter. Vida Blue. George Brett. Fred
Biletnikoff. Reggie Jackson. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Matthew Ehrlich’s <i>Kansas City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports
Rivalry that Defined an Era </i>is a 2019 addition to the University of
Illinois Press’ Sport and Society series. In narrating his expansive cultural
history, Ehrlich cites and then builds upon a snide, yet telling statement from
Kansas City native Calvin Trillin, that “the United States is divided neatly
into two parts…the part that had major-league baseball before the Second World
War [and] all the rest” (14).<span> </span>The
majority of the book concerns the attempts by these two cities to shed the
Cowtown label, in the case of Kansas City, and the Bay Area inferiority complex
of Oakland by way of professional sport franchises. But the stories on the
gridiron and the diamond only account for part of the study; as indicated in the
title, the book is also invested in the larger contexts of the 1960-1970s era,
not just in terms of sport but also in relating to the larger socio-economic
concerns of race and labor in these two cities and in post-WWII America more
broadly.<span> </span><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The book’s structure alternates
between the NFL and MLB franchises in Oakland and Kansas City to explore both
the burgeoning rivalry between the two cities and also the social, political,
and economic woes that the sports entities were meant, and largely failed, to rectify.
A contextualizing opening chapter entitled “Striving for the Big Leagues,”
acknowledges the rich pre-existing baseball history in Kansas City reflected by
the Monarchs of the Negro Leagues and the minor league Kansas City Blues of the
American Association before addressing the city’s boosters attempts in luring
the Philadelphia Athletics westward in the wake of the geographical relocations
of the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. And Ehrlich reads the
California migrations of these ball clubs as a catalyst for Oakland’s efforts
to enlarge its own profile by way of sports: “Now with San Francisco and Los
Angeles having joined the big time via the Giants and Dodgers, Oakland wanted
to follow suit” (34). <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Throughout, Ehrlich analyzes the reversal
of fortune promised by professional sports on both civic and individual levels:
“If Oakland and Kansas City hungered for respect, so too did the athletes who
played in the two cities” (174).<span> </span>And
while great strides in equity and agency occurred during this period, the cost
of some of its other elements are just now starting to come due. Ehrlich
persuasively reveals how “The heyday of the Kansas City-Oakland rivalry
corresponded with profound changes to professional athletes’ working
conditions;” both to their benefit, such as in the emergence of free agency,
but also to their detriment, such as with the widespread adoption of artificial
turf which “may well have exacerbated the neurological symptoms that many NFL
players would develop later in life.”<span> </span>He
thus concludes that “Many athletes paid a price to be ‘big league’ just as
cities did” (174).<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">One of the intriguing elements of
Ehrlich’s treatment, introduced in this opening chapter, is the way in which he
uses this story from the 1960s and 1970s to comment upon the current state of
sports and society by invoking both a sense of nostalgia for what was, and also
an awareness that past is merely prologue. For instance, he outlines the
immense political power the local press and its newspapers possessed and
wielded in efforts to recruit sports franchises but and to shape public opinion
concerning the financing of these efforts. Ernie Mehl, sports editor of the <i>Kansas City Star</i>, “one of the nation’s
most influential newspapers,” was integral in the campaign to lure the A’s to
Kansas City, and Joseph Knowland, the owner of the reactionary <i>Oakland Tribune</i>, possessed an influence
that “has run through every facet of city life” which, of course, included
fervent support of “Oakland’s efforts to land major league sports” (22,
33-34).<span> </span>For the reader in 2019 who daily
witnesses the slow decay and shuttering of local newspapers and the
proliferation of the media multiverse, the idea of local media possessing such
power seems like a quaint historical footnote.<span>
</span>Such wistfulness stands to reason; Ehrlich is professor emeritus of
journalism at the University of Illinois, and his previous books include the
title, <i>Heroes and Scoundrels: The Image
of the Journalist in Popular Culture</i>.<span>
</span><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In
addition to these nods of nostalgia, Ehrlich also relates the story of these
cities and this period to several contemporary cultural characteristics of
professional sports. In keeping with the iconoclastic character of the period,
Ehrlich quotes from Dave Meggyesy’s tell-all memoir that derided professional football’s
“‘maudlin and dangerous pre-game patriotism’ directed toward the flag and
national anthem” (95).<span> </span>And he addresses
Oakland’s homegrown Black Panther party, founded in 1966, stimulating race
pride and consciousness and their platform that demanded “an immediate end to
POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people” (59).<span> </span><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The
study is at its best when it stays close to the parameters of sports and
culture in this sense; however, the scope is sometimes strained when it colors
a little too far outside of these lines and attempts to weave in other urban labor
histories such as plumbers’ and carpenters’ strikes. The book is meticulously
researched—it contains thirty pages of notes—and although it is apparent that
Ehrlich is interested in linking the sports history to the larger progressive
spirit of the era, these digressions can sometimes bog down the otherwise methodically
paced and plotted structure of his main narrative. <span> </span><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span> </span><i>Kansas City vs.
Oakland</i> provides a compelling, detailed, and exceedingly well-documented
story of big-league aspirations, outsized owners, legendary athletes, and the pitfalls
of considering professional sports as a kind of civic panacea. Such was the
tale of the efforts to lure the Athletics and the Dallas Texans to Kansas City,
only for the authoritarian Charlie Finley to uproot the A’s to Oakland. And as history
would have it, Ehrlich’s story comes full circle in its conclusion with the
owner of an historic but beleaguered franchise, in this case the Oakland
Raiders, making the move to the ostensibly greener pastures of Las Vegas. As
Faulkner famously stated, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” <span> </span><span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Ehrlich,
Matthew C. <i>Kansas City vs. Oakland: The
Bitter Sports Rivalry That Defined an Era</i>. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2019. 256 pp. 16 B&W Photographs, 2 Maps, Notes. Paper, $19.95. <br>
Copyright © 2019 by Richard Black</span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> <span></span></span></p>
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</div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past<br><br>Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.<br>Professor of History<br>Book Review Editor<br><i>AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature</i><br>Ashland University<br>Ashland, OH 44805<br>USA<br></div></div></div></div>