Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitas
by Tom Callahan
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tom CallahanEdition: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2006-09-05
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Crown
Book Reviews of Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitas
Book Review: A wonderful, warm, and compelling . . .
Summary: 4 Stars
. . . biography of what many football fans would consider the best professional quarterback of all time.
I was given this book last fall by by brother-in-law, and recently completed it while on vacation. I was raised in Baltimore, but after the Johnny U. years. The Colts broke my heart when their owner shipped them out in the middle of the night in 1984, and I've not been a fan since. Nevertheless, I have always held a warm spot in my heart for Unitas.
This book, written by veteran sports writer Tom Callahan, provides more than the basic background material found in any decent biography. After all, important dates and vital statistics can be found anywhere -- but dates and stats don't necessarily tell the full story of an individual.
What Callahan does, is really tell the story of professional football in the 1950's and 1960's, through the experience of Johnny Unitas and his team-mates. It is a story of hard work; of grit and determination; of both success and failure; of a time when football players were more of the blue-collar "guys next door" than the overpaid prima donnas so often seen today.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.
Summary of Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitas
In a time ?when men played football for something less than a living and something more than money,? John Unitas was the ultimate quarterback. Rejected by Notre Dame, discarded by the Pittsburgh Steelers, he started on a Pennsylvania sandlot making six dollars a game and ended as the most commanding presence in the National Football League, calling the critical plays and completing the crucial passes at the moment his sport came of age.Johnny U is the first authoritative biography of Unitas, based on hundreds of hours of interviews with teammates and opponents, coaches, family and friends. The depth of Tom Callahan?s research allows him to present something more than a biography, something approaching an oral history of a bygone sporting era. It was a time when players were paid a pittance and superstars painted houses and tiled floors in the off-season?when ex-soldiers and marines like Gino Marchetti, Art Donovan, and ?Big Daddy? Lipscomb fell in behind a special field general in Baltimore. Few took more punishment than Unitas. His refusal to leave the field, even when savagely bloodied by opposing linemen, won his teammates? respect. His insistence on taking the blame for others? mistakes inspired their love. His encyclopedic football mind, in which he?d filed every play the Colts had ever run, was a wonder.
In the seminal championship game of 1958, when Unitas led the Colts over the Giants in the NFL?s first sudden-death overtime, Sundays changed. John didn?t. As one teammate said, ?It was one of the best things about him.?
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