The Crowd Goes Wild: The high five

NZ Herald

9 Oct, 2014 10:40 PM7 mins to read

Kevin Pietersen has offered readers some great insights into the England cricket team in his autobiography. Photo / AP

Mark Richardson and Andrew Mulligan from the Crowd Goes Wild look at the best sporting biographies and make their weekend picks.

In light of a couple of anticipated autobiographies released this week from Kevin Pietersen and Roy Keane our list today is of sports whose stars penned lines that are some of the most entertaining and revealing of all time. As always this list isn't definitive and can be used in the court of public opinion.

1 Cricket
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin ... oh Mr Pietersen thank you for the insights into the state of the England cricket team and for giving us "Mr Cheese" (keeper Matt Prior) and how people would dare challenge you if England failed. Ian Botham (My Autobiography) had all the rock star qualities you knew he experienced. On the flip side our own Jeremy Coney's Playing Mantis is one of the best our little country has produced. That fine arts degree in English was always guaranteed a masters degree in English. Oh, and Mark's Thinking Negatively is a wonderful insight in a mad man's plight against self-doubt and redemption.

2 Football
We'll leave behind the bland dross of Wayne Rooney's effort, brilliantly titled My Story published when he was 22 in 2008 or how Ashley "Cashley" Coles almost lost it when he was offered the measly sum of $122,500 a week at Arsenal to instead trumpet Sir Alex Ferguson's self titled second autobiography released last year. It reveals the time he kicked a boot into David Beckham's face (not the face, Alex!) to the management of Roy Keane who has revealed when he was asked to return his company car after the bitter falling-out with Manchester United, he kept it for another three months, and tried to drive it into the ground because "every victory is vital". So many great football autobiographies, so many maniacal stories to be told. (Favourite Ferguson fact - he scored a hat-trick in Auckland when a Scottish XI toured here in the '60's.)

3 US Sport
George Plimpton's 1996 Paper Lion is in here on a technicality for the simple fact he was an NFL player for the Detroit Lions but he was technically a journalist sitting on the bench taking it all in. This is way before HBO's Hard Knocks gets you inside an NFL team with issues each NFL season. The insight of the locker room in celebration and angst is revealing. So is Ball Four from Jim Bouton, a pitcher who decided to write a bit and he wrote a whole lot about the Seattle Pilots (one season of existence) and the Houston Astros who he was traded to. It was so good/bad for baseball the then commissioner of the Majors try to make Bouton sign a letter saying it was all pure fiction. You can't make this stuff up. Neither could Bouton. Special mention to the NBA's North Korean unofficial ambassador in Dennis Rodman, who turned up in a wedding dress to promote his book, Bad As I Wanna Be in 1996.

4 Boxing
Mike Tyson. What a mind that man has in a good way and a bad way. His book opens up about pretty much everything he has done from the rape trial and conviction, doing time, biting Evander's ear and using a fake penis, known as a "whizzer", to beat a drugs test. It's all in there. Unlike some autobiographies, Tyson comes out looking worse than all of the people mentioned. For a look at the old school days of boxing and racist America Joe Louis' My Life is excellent. It also has a revelation he had a relationship with a porn star who got him hooked on drugs.

5 Tennis
We all know about Andre Agassi's Open and the startling revelations that he wore a wig that he'd fear would come loose during a match. Oh and he hit the pipe a little bit and channelled his inner Walter White. John McEnroe's autobiography You Cannot Be Serious is a great read but it may not have had such startling revelations as Agassi's although he did admit to unwittingly taking steroids meant for horses a couple years after publishing and then appeared in the Adam Sandler flop Don't Mess with the Zohan (which now all makes sense). You probably won't need a horse tranquiliser to get through Pete Sampras' book as A Champion's Mind so do it and last year's award winning effort The Outsider from Jimmy Connors is a great read too.

Back chat

Mark:

I told you so ... I told you we were going to lose the rugby against South Africa. And you know what, this was a really bad loss because we were beaten by a better team ... as in, we didn't beat ourselves. This is concerning because it means another team may be as good as us and this is totally unacceptable.

Andrew:

To quote

Scotty Stevenson's column on Wednesday

: "Meh". Listen, Chicken Little, there's always a silver lining to that permanent cloud that hangs above you. South Africa beat us, yes. But a loss is good and to quote Ted it can only make us (Graham Henry voice) "better". You see Sam Burgess play on? What a hero!

Mark:

First of all, it won't make us "better" because we weren't bad ... it was them that were "better". I know! How much did Sam Burgess resemble Officer John McLean at the end of

Die Hard

1,2,3 and 4. Bet Sonny Bill Williams wouldn't play on with a broken cheekbone ... he'd leave the field just like he walked out on the Bulldogs.

Andrew:

Did he walk out on the Bulldogs? I hadn't heard that? Mustn't have been recent. Alway, the plan to play ITM Cup for Counties Manukau is good to hear ... so why say they were going to bend the rules for him? Not a great move there, although gave us fodder for the radio for days. Cheers NZRU!

Mark:

I didn't have a problem with the NZRU declaring they'd change the rules for him because I could see exactly where they were coming from ... I'd change my rules for him too ... In fact I'd "turn" for him.

Andrew:

Don't make Kelly Slater jealous, now. He's more than happy to get amongst 10 days after an NRL season whereas no one really wants to play for their country in the Four Nations. Sports are funny. What would England wicket keeper Matt Prior, "The Big Cheese", make of all this?

Mark:

He'd possibly go back to South Africa where he came from ... Oh, didn't Pietersen and Andy Flower come from Africa too? Go figure.