Kipling A Brief Biography Book

Tremendously exhaustive and detailed look at the cocky renegade quarterback who led the Jets to victory in Super Bowl III and whose rebellious, laid-back charm perfectly epitomized the impact of the turbulent Sixties in the world of sports.

Joe Namath is unique among sports legends. Like Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle, he was adored by multitudes, many of whom had no idea how talented he was or how much suffering he endured off the playing field. But unlike Mantle and Ruth, Joe in private was actually a very different man from the hero of the public eye. The author works patiently with hundreds of friends and family members to reveal the real truth about Joe, which is far more compelling than the easy legend of endless victory, endless charm, and endless sexual conquests.

Joe's image was that of an easy-going good-time guy who loved bending the rules and teasing authority figures. A whole generation of aging, alcoholic sports writers hated him for being a cocky know-it-all who "guaranteed" victory over the other team. They saw him as a creepy long-hair who undermined the values of conventional masculinity. In actual fact Joe was a very disciplined, private man who endured an enormous amount of pain and kept his emotions in check, not because he was pursuing a paycheck but because that was his understanding of what a man did.

The boozed up clowns in the press box wanted an icon of Sixties decadence they could hate. (Because they could never confront their own decadence, natch!) So they invented the idea of Broadway Joe, the decadent good-looking guy who breaks the rules and sneers while he gets away with it -- just like Jamie Lannister only sexier! But the irony is that the real Joe Namath was closer to Ned Stark -- the battered warrior who refuses to back away from what he thinks is right even when his enemies are sacking him on every play.

As a kid I knew Namath had bad knees and played hurt but until I read this book I had no idea what that really meant. Joe's ability to tolerate unbearable pain game after game, year after year, is impossible not to admire and even revere. At the same time, Joe's problems with alcohol become a lot easier to understand when you realize the level of sheer physical discomfort he had to live through every single day, minute, and year of his life. And when you watch him in old age, desperately trying to hustle gullible senior citizens on cable TV, you have to ask, what happened to Joe? What happened to Joe's money? He sacrificed so much and ended up like this? Why? Was it worth it?

I took off one star because the book ends around 2004 and doesn't really explain what Joe has been up to the last fifteen years -- and how his money problems have driven him back onto TV in the most demeaning circumstances possible. Also, Kriegel as a writer is nothing special. His style runs to sentimental sports writer cliche, like saying Joe is "the strong silent type" or that his ability to take punishment is "in the blood."

It's in the blood? Why not just put on a Hungarian accent in honor of Joe's roots, and go completely Bela Lugosi and say, "the blood IS the life, Mr. Namath!"