Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Lost Champions
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://gretchenatwood.com/
CITY: San Francisco
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://gretchenatwood.com/about-the-book/ *
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL EDUCATION:
Stanford University, B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Worked previously for the SF Chronicle.
AVOCATIONS:Football, civil rights history, American history.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Gretchen Atwood is a writer and former sports journalist living in San Francisco. Atwood’s passion for sports began in her childhood in Cape Girardeau, MO, where she recalls attending St. Louis Cardinal baseball games at Busch Stadium and participating in soccer and tennis in grade and high school. Following high school graduation, Atwood attended college at Stanford University, where she studied International Relations with a focus on 20th century American History. During this time she covered sports for The Stanford Daily and involved herself in issues pertaining to farm workers rights, Anita Hill, faculty diversity, and she headed the Stanford LGBT Speakers Bureau program.
Following college graduation Atwood briefly worked for the SF Chronicle before embarking on a fifteen year long career developing user experience design. In 2016, yearning to return to her passions of sports, activism, and writing, Atwood wrote Lost Champions: Four Men, Two Teams, and the Breaking of Pro Football’s Color Line, a history of the first four black football players that rose to greatness following racial integration in the sport.
Lost Champions explores the lesser known stories of Kenny Washington, Marion Motley, Woody Strode, and Bill Willis, four of the first black football players that came to prominence following racial integration. In her book, Atwood presents the case that despite the earlier onset of racial integration in football than in baseball, baseball hall of famers such as Jackie Robinson have historically received greater recognition. Atwood seeks to fill this gap by providing a history of the four players’ rises and struggles.
According to Mark Levine in Booklist, “there is plenty of valuable material here about the early days of professional football and the game’s role in fostering integration.” Atwood attempts to present the story of the four football players by including details about the political climate at the time, the teams that the men played for, the players’ personal lives, and noteworthy victories on the field. Atwood contextualizes the story within the broader civil rights struggle that was ongoing during the 1940s. She writes about housing covenants, legal battles, and stories of specific civil-rights activists. She also includes details about how the civil rights movement affected the personal lives and experiences of the players, describing how they received death threats and other racist targeting. As stated by John Maxymuk in Library Journal, “there is enough powerful material here to recommend this title to all football fans, although a stronger focused narrative would have heightened the appeal.” Atwood covers a broad range of historical information while attempting to include historical, political, social, and individual perspectives.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist September 1, 2016, Mark Levine, review of Lost Champions: Four Men, Two Teams, and the Breaking of Pro Football’s Color Line, p. 38+.
Library Journal August 1, 2016, John Maxymuk, This Season’s Football Picks: Gridiron Legacies, p. 100.
Publishers Weekly July 25, 2016, review of Lost Champions, p. 61.
About Book/Author
Contact: gretchenatwood@gmail.com
Twitter: @gretchenatwood
(415) 305-2704
Hi-res photos of the book and author
From the book:
Gretchen Atwood is a former sports journalist with a passion for football, civil rights and American history. She lives in San Francisco.
A little more:
I grew up in Cape Girardeau, MO and started watching football with my grandfather at age 6 or 7. We’d throw a nerf football around and sometimes bet oreo cookies or M&Ms on the outcome of games. He took me to the St. Louis Cardinals training camp in St. Charles, MO and I got player autographs and don’t remember much else.
I always loved sports and went to plenty of St. Louis Cardinal baseball games at the old Busch Stadium. But football was my favorite sport and I continued watching it throughout grade school and high school as I myself got involved in sports, soccer then tennis.
Shortly after I got to Stanford University I joined the school newspaper, The Stanford Daily. I covered everything from track to wrestling, women’s soccer to volleyball. I also majored in International Relations with an emphasis on 20th century American History. Outside of the classroom and newsroom I got more involved in activism. First, I ran the Stanford LGBT Speakers Bureau program and later participated in campus actions in support of farm workers rights, Anita Hill, and faculty diversity.
Journalism was my first career choice then, and I did low-level work for the SF Chronicle and other publications before ending up at a tech trade publication. Through that job I rolled into Information Architecture and User Experience Design. It was the 1990s and the worldwide web was just starting to be treated as a commercial medium. I continued in UX work for 15 years while periodically supporting local and statewide movements (against prop 187 and 209 in CA, and later against prop 8).
After more than 10 years in UX design I wanted to return to my first loves: writing, history, social justice. And I wanted to find something I could do that would combine all three. While trying to figure out what that would be I happened to read Michael MacCambridge’s “America’s Game”. He mentions Kenny Washington and Woody Strode integrating pro football in 1946. I had read the names before but didn’t know they had come before Jackie Robinson made it to the major leagues in baseball (April 15, 1947).
I’d always thought I knew so little about the men who integrated pro football because they had come after Jackie. Clearly this wasn’t the case. So if they came before, why is it we know almost nothing about these guys? That question propelled on the path that has culminated in this book.
Gretchen Atwood is a former sports journalist with a passion for football, civil rights and American history. She lives in San Francisco.
Lost Champions: Four Men, Two Teams, and the Breaking of Pro Football's Color Line
Mark Levine
113.1 (Sept. 1, 2016): p38.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Lost Champions: Four Men, Two Teams, and the Breaking of Pro Football's Color Line. By Gretchen Atwood. Sept. 2016.288p. illus. Bloomsbury, $27 (9781620406007); e-book, $18.99 (9781620406021). 796.332.
Sports journalist Atwood deals with a conundrum: despite baseball's pre-eminence, professional football achieved racial integration earlier (in 1946, a year before Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers). And yet, she argues, the breakers of football's color barrier--Kenny Washington, Marion Motley, Woody Strode, and Bill Willis--have received much less attention than Robinson (who played football with Washington and Strode at UCLA). Atwood tells the stories of the four players and the two teams they played for--Washington and Strode for the L.A. Rams, Motley and Willis for the Cleveland Browns)--noting that, like Robinson, the four endured death threats and other forms of racism throughout their careers. Atwood attempts to place her account of the integration of professional football into the larger context of civil rights in the 1940s, and while this approach makes sense, the broader focus leads her in too many directions (housing covenants, legal battles, the role of civil-right activist Pauli Murray), somewhat diluting the main story line. Still, there is plenty of valuable material here about the early days of professional football and the game's role in fostering integration. --Mark Levine
YAJC: Solid curriculum support for high-school classes on civil rights. ML.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Levine, Mark. "Lost Champions: Four Men, Two Teams, and the Breaking of Pro Football's Color Line." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 38+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463755063&it=r&asid=e18553b01727d6a6b5b1b9ee5f4b4190. Accessed 25 Mar. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463755063
This season's football picks: Gridiron legacies
John Maxymuk
141.13 (Aug. 1, 2016): p100.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
The latest football titles reflect a little of everything from the gridiron: iconic quarterbacks such as Brett Favre and Peyton Manning, racial pioneers in Texas and the NFL, great teams such as the 1986 Giants, terrible teams such as the 1976 Bucs, the sledgehammer decade of the 1970s in professional football, and the evolution of passing game strategy. There is much to be gleaned, both fun and serious, from these ten titles.
Anderson, Lars. The Mannings: The Fall and Rise of a Football Family. Ballantine. Aug. 2016.368p. notes, index. ISBN 9781101883822. $28; ebk. ISBN 9781101883846. SPORTS
Archie Manning was a legendary quarterback at the University of Mississippi who spent 16 years on unsuccessful teams in the NFL. He raised three sons including Cooper, whose football career ended with an injury in high school, and two Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks: Peyton and Eli. Peyton, a future Hall of Famer, has been the subject of many books, but the only biography of the family was John Underwood's Manning, which largely consisted of first-person accounts by Archie and Peyton. Here, Anderson (The Storm and the Tide) stresses family life and places emphasis on the mantra of Archie and even his father--be a nice person. The first half of this book deals with Archie's life and playing career, although comparatively little is included about his woeful time as a pro. Later chapters detail the upbringing of Archie's sons. Football heroics are the connecting thread but not the main point, as the book tries to depict the distinct personalities of each of the Mannings. VERDICT An expertly written impressionistic account of the first family of football that will be of wide interest.
Atwood, Gretchen. Lost Champions: Four Men, Two Teams, and the Breaking of Pro Football's Color Line. Bloomsbury. Sept. 2016.288p. notes, index. ISBN 9781620406007. $27. SPORTS
While 1946 is famous as the year Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball, it is also the year that professional football reintegrated after a 12-year ban on black players. Four players were the gridiron pioneers: Kenny Washington and Woody Strode for the Los Angeles Rams, and Bill Willis and Marion Motley for the fledgling Cleveland Browns of the new All-America Football (AFL) Conference. In 1950, the Browns and the Rams competed for the NFL championship. Although both Washington and Strode were gone by then, former sportswriter Atwood uses the play-by-play of that game as a touchstone. Where the author runs astray is in providing context to the ordeal of the four men. She does not tell the story chronologically, but with wavering success, trying to weave vastly disparate threads into a whole. While background about the four principals and their teams is excellent, equal coverage of Willis and Motley would have been a welcome addition. VERDICT There is enough powerful material here to recommend this title to all football fans, although a stronger focused narrative would have heightened the appeal.
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Barca, Jerry. Big Blue Wrecking Crew: Smashmouth Football, a Little Bit of Crazy, and the 86 Super Bowl Champion New York Giants. St. Martin's. Aug. 2016.320p. bibliog. ISBN 9781250071538. $26.99; ebk. ISBN 9781466882676. SPORTS
The New York Giants under Hall of Fame Coach Bill Parcells were one of the best and most colorful teams in the NFL throughout the 1980s, the epitome of physical "smashmouth football" on the field and hard-living off. After they won their first Super Bowl following the 1986 season, six books about the team were soon published. Now, 30 years later, Barca (Unbeatable) draws on those early works and on his recently conducted interviews with several principals to provide the benefit of a broader perspective on how the team was built. Barca begins with the franchise's low point in 1978, a bizarre loss to division rival Philadelphia that Eagles fans still referred to as the Miracle of the Meadowlands, but Giants' fans mourn as The Fumble. That culmination of 15 years of lousy football led to a league-mediated reorganization of the front office between squabbling co-owners, who happened to be uncle and nephew. New general manager George Young rebuilt the organization into one that remains well-run today, two generations later. The book concludes with a focus on the 1986 season and its aftermath. VERDICT An entertaining look back at a popular team from three decades ago. Any football fan will enjoy this book.
Gwynne, S.C. The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football. Scribner. Sept. 2016. 304p. illus. ISBN 9781501116193. $27; ebk. ISBN 9781501116216. SPORTS
This book by Pulitzer Prize finalist Gwynne (Empire of the Summer Moon) is not only about the evolution of football strategy, particularly in the passing game, it also illuminates the challenges and rigors of college football coaching and its effect on family life. The story is told through the experiences of itinerant football coach Hal Mumme, who rose from high school assistant coach in Texas to head coach of University of Kentucky in the vaunted Southeastern Conference to his current position as head coach of Belhaven University after four tumultuous years in Lexington. Mumme, along with his chief assistant Mike Leach who has forged his own nomadic college coaching career, developed the Air Raid offense that is prominent in the present game. Mumme's simple, fast-paced, passoriented attack draws inspirations from plays such as the run and shoot offense, the single-back offense, and legendary football coach Bill Walsh's West Coast offense. Diagrams make the technical aspects clear and understandable. Despite his innovative role in the sport, Mumme now languishes in the lower depths of NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) football, a prophet without honor in his own country. VERDICT This interesting amalgamation of football strategy and biography will interest all fans of the sport.
Miller, Jeff. The Game Changers: The Inspiring Story of Breaking Major College Football's Color Barrier in Texas. Skyhorse. Oct. 2016. 256p. bibliog. ISBN 9781613219379. $24.99; ebk. ISBN 9781613219423. SPORTS
The story of integrating Texas college football usually centers on Southern Methodist University's Jerry LeVias and a few other stalwart pioneers in the mid-1960s. Actually, the first Texas state college to employ black players was North Texas State a decade earlier. In September 1956, prospective freshmen Abner Haynes and Leon King tried out for the North Texas team. Perhaps the most surprising part of the story is that when the two arrived for practice, three white players walked across the field to shake hands and welcome them to the team. While not all teammates and not many opponents were as enlightened, overall, the integration process occurred with little drama owing to both players and coaches who forged lifelong bonds of friendship. Sportswriter Miller (Going Long) relates that story here and contextualizes it by detailing the overall integration of the college itself, as well as the experiences of the more famous football desegregationists of the 1960s at the larger schools in the Southwest Conference. VERDICT Bolstered by the vivid memories of the principals, this moving account provides a fresh view of turbulent times in the past.
* Pearlman, Jeff. Gunslinger: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre. Houghton Harcourt. Oct. 2016.448p. notes, bibliog. index. ISBN 9780544454378. $28; ebk. ISBN 9780544453678. SPORTS
Here, best-selling author Pearlman (Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton) takes on perhaps the most celebrated football player of the last 25 years: Brett Favre. The record-setting quarterback, who spent the majority of his career with the Green Bay Packers, was tough as nails on the field, but his giant talent was hampered by a tendency to make bad decisions and costly mistakes at key moments. The author, who interviewed more than 500 sources for this biography, demonstrates how Favre regularly undermined himself and his family with problems of addiction and serial infidelity, all of which was kept out of the press until his final years when he was implicated in an embarrassing sexting scandal. VERDICT Presenting Favre as a congenial, larger-than-life character, a "gunslinger," who was fun to watch on the field and hard to root against, Pearlman proves to be a good match for his subject and creates a compelling work.
Price, S.L. Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and an American Town. Atlantic Monthly. Sept. 2016.400p. notes, index. ISBN 9780802125644. $27; ebk. ISBN 9780802190093. SPORTS
Price (Pitching Around Fidel) is best known for his work as a writer for Sports Illustrated. In this book, he conveys the history of an immigrant steel town though its changing demographics and a high school football team that has produced such future stars as Mike Ditka, Ty Law, and Darrelle Revis. The author begins with a long, detailed record of the origins of the local steel industry and its conflicting dynamic with organized labor. Once reaching the postwar era, the lives of numerous players and coaches are chronicled, with increasing racial tensions as a backdrop. From the late 1960s onward, the beginnings of the steel industry's decline exacerbated the region's many manifestations of societal dysfunction: drugs, gangs, violence, and corruption. Still, the football team stands as the one source of pride for a town that has been slowly dying for decades. VERDICT While this book is impressively researched and organized, it can be an exhausting read.
Trask, Amy with Michael Freeman. You Negotiate Like a Girl: Reflections on a Career in the National Football League. Triumph. Sept. 2016. 240p. ISBN 9781629371870. $25.95. SPORTS
Trask first worked for the Oakland Raiders as an intern in 1982. By 1997, she was the team's CEO, the first woman CEO in league history. Although this account describes her experience in a male-dominated field, Trask does not complain about the challenges she faced while working for the Raiders, instead listing the positive steps for change she implemented. She is extremely discrete, whether discussing instances of perceived sexism by league officials or incompetence in team matters; she does not name names. This title is primarily about Trask's relationship with controversial and irascible Raiders' owner Al Davis, her boss for more than 25 years in a contentious atmosphere of mutual respect, along with team management issues, including limited anecdotes regarding on-field highlights or player-coach interactions. Trask resigned from her position after Davis's death. He was succeeded by his son Mark, but Mark's name does not appear in the narrative even once, in another display of caution. VERDICT A solid work that presents a unique view of Davis, one of the most important figures in NFL history, as well as Trask's pioneering achievement.
Vuic, Jason. The Yucks: Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History. S & S. Aug. 2016.256p. notes. ISBN 9781476772264. $26; ebk. ISBN 9781476772288. SPORTS
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers joined the NFL as an expansion franchise in 1976, and proceeded to lose 26 games during their first two seasons. The bumbling Bucs, or "Yucks," became a national joke and were a regular part of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show monolog. Coach John McKay added to Tampa's notoriety with his wickedly sarcastic comments on his team's performance. Part of the team's ineptitude was a result of the paltry method the NFL devised for stocking the new team with players, but part of it was the Bucs' determination to go with youth over veterans whenever possible. That hard path eventually led to a division title, but the team could not maintain its good fortune and still has the worst all-time winning percentage of any NFL franchise. Vuic (The Yugo) grew up in Tampa and returns to the team of his youth to account for its putrid beginnings through interviews and historical research. VERDICT The maladroit origins of these lovable losers is given a light touch in this delightful tale of interest to all sports enthusiasts.
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Zagorski, Joe. The NFL in the 1970s: Pro Football's Most Important Decade. McFarland. Jun. 2016.444p. photos, bibliog. index. ISBN 9780786497904. pap. $45. SPORTS
Sportswriter Zagorski considers the 1970s to be the greatest decade in professional football history, making his case in this chronological account of the period. Devoting a chapter to each year, the author describes trends, rule changes, uniform variations, new stadiums, strategic evolutions, union activities, player transactions, coaching changes, on-field controversies, and individual achievements. His primary focus is recounting the most important games in each season's divisional races, and each chapter culminates with a look at that year's playoff games. The book is very dense with information, yet the seasonal narratives flow nicely. This definitive work could almost be considered a reference book. The extensive bibliography is accompanied by a bibliographic essay for each chapter. VERDICT An ideal resource for football historians as well as casual fans seeking to get a sense of a phenomenal decade in NFL history.
John Maxymuk is Head of Public Services, Rutgers University's Paul Robeson Library, Camden, NJ. He is a longtime sports reviewer for LJ and the author of NFL Head Coaches: A Biographical Dictionary, 1920-2011 (McFarland, 2012)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Maxymuk, John. "This season's football picks: Gridiron legacies." Library Journal, 1 Aug. 2016, p. 100+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459805056&it=r&asid=b5e453962ac5dce12f4c73153e4a8622. Accessed 25 Mar. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A459805056
Lost Champions: Four Men, Two Teams, and the Breaking of Pro Football's Color Line
263.30 (July 25, 2016): p61.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Lost Champions: Four Men, Two Teams, and the Breaking of Pro Football's Color Line
Gretchen Atwood. Bloomsbury, $27 (288p) ISBN 978-1-62040-600-7
Focusing on the 1946 Cleveland Browns and Los Angeles Rams, sports journalist Atwood provides snapshots of the pro football game from the days of the old-T and the single-wing offense up to 1950, by which time most NFL teams ran a version of the modern-T offense. Before the early 1930s, many ranked professional football on the same level as pro-wrestling. But in 1946, a string of events challenged segregation. The NFL team Cleveland Rams relocated to Los Angeles and, through some coaxing, signed former UCLA Bruins players Kenny Washington and Woody Strode. At nearly the same time, the Cleveland Browns of the All-American Football Conference (AAFC) signed Bill Willis and Marion Motley. Off the field, both cities had racial roadblocks for their citizens. Los Angeles County had seen a significant increase in anti-black restrictive housing covenants from 1920 up to 1946; in Cleveland, an interracial group launched a protest at Euclid Beach Park over the exclusionary policies that prevented black residents from using public facilities. That same summer, the nation saw a spike in lynching, including a quadruple lynching at Moore's Ford Bridge, Ga. Though these events mostly occurred independently and were spread throughout the country, Atwood succeeds in laying them out like a modern-day pro offense, powering the book's narrative with the march to the 1950 NFL championship between the two teams that integrated professional football. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lost Champions: Four Men, Two Teams, and the Breaking of Pro Football's Color Line." Publishers Weekly, 25 July 2016, p. 61. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460285528&it=r&asid=85bc6e060077d5f13e9f3416254ebdae. Accessed 25 Mar. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A460285528