Bookshelf review: Mike and Mike’s Rules for Sports and Life

by Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, with Andrew Chaikivsky. ESPN Books, 2010

A caveat and a confession: While “hate” may be too strong a word, I “intensely dislike” sports-talk radio. The idea of (supposedly) grown men and women getting apoplectic on the air over Oliver Perez or Ron Artest or Bill Belichick, et al…not my cup of tea.

I have never listened to Mike and Mike in the Morning, a staple of ESPN Radio. I did do an interview with “Greeny” once for the NJ Jewish News a few years ago following the release of his 2007 book, Why My Wife Thinks I’m an Idiot: The Life and Times of a Sportscaster Dad, but that’s the extent of my knowledge with the program.

That said, if their show is anything like their Rules for Sports and Life, I might have to reconsider.

Reading the dialogue between this “odd couple” is as enlightening as anything Plato might have written in his Dialogues. Their conversations are totally philosophical as they discuss everything from the use of illegal PEDs (which Golic admits to using while playing in the NFL), to athletes behaving badly to the proper way to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a major league game. That Golic is a former NFL player and Greenberg is totally, well, not an athlete, adds a special perspective to the mix.

Once in awhile one or the other will go off on a diatribe about some aspect of sports that needs fixing. One I found particularly interesting, and spot-on when you think of it, is Greenberg’s strong suggestion that current players should be allowed into the Hall of Fame:

Each sport’s Hall…is nothing more than a museum. Do you think the Louvre and the met had to wait five years after Picasso died before they could hang his stuff?…

Would election to the Hall of Fame diminish a player’s desire to perform? Of course not. No player worthy of induction would ever let that happen. You think Derek Jeter is going to start coasting because he has a plaque hanging in Cooperstown?

Greenberg and Golic argue like siblings (or perhaps an old married couple?) with lots of name-calling (“idiot” is a popular term of endearment here). But beyond the banter, they challenge a lot of convention wisdom here, not to be contrary, but because when you think about it, their ideas make sense. Answer me this, MLB execs: Why does a baseball manager have to wear a uniform?

Rules is a typical ESPN product in that it is well-produced, with strong visuals that break up the pages (since we all now that anyone who watches ESPN has ADD and couldn’t handle too many pages of full text). And while it’s not wholly about baseball, there’s enough national pastime time material to allow me to bend the rules (my blog, my rules).