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'Jim Brown: The Last Man Standing' : A well-researched bio of NFL great fails to explain why he matters

Jen Maler

'Jim Brown: The Last Man Standing' : A well-researched bio of NFL great fails to explain why he matters

Sportswriter Dave Zirin’s biography of NFL Hall of Famer and activist Jim Brown is a solidly researched book with myriad voices regaling readers about Mr. Brown’s athletic, cultural and societal impact during the height of his celebrity. Unfortunately, Mr. Zirin’s voluminous research overwhelms “Jim Brown: Last Man Standing,” making it feel as if one is reading a report about the great running back’s importance without really showing readers why they should know or care about his legacy.


"JIM BROWN: LAST MAN STANDING"
By Dave Zirin
Blue Rider Press ($27).

Because Jim Brown is such a well-known figure, Mr. Zirin had his work cut out for him in trying to mine new information. For those old enough to have seen him play in the NFL and/​or consider themselves a football fan, Mr. Brown is the greatest athlete of all time. Other athletes of Mr. Brown’s era saw him as a black man battling against all those who tried to keep him from being more than just a football player, whether it was starting a black-owned and run business council, having an acting career, becoming a movie producer, or being the mentor of professional black athletes during the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s.

Generation X fans may remember Mr. Brown as being a mediator of gang wars at the height of the 1990s drugs and gang hysteria. Even younger people and athletes may recall him as some sports old-timer who doesn’t have much respect for the latest generation of sports professionals. Then there are those who recognize his name and note that he’s a former player who had a propensity for beating up women.

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But in attempting to serve so many potential audiences, Mr. Zirin satisfied none. Mr. Brown has had an interesting and stormy life, and the author does a decent job of covering his youth and career highlights. Readers will discover interesting nuggets about his activities. Yet, Mr. Zirin flattens readers emotional investment in Mr. Brown by letting others (historians, friends, past colleagues, other journalists who have interviewed or written books about Jim Brown, one of them being “Off My Chest” by Myron Cope) define his subject for us. What adds to the noninvestment is Mr. Zirin’s nonlinear storytelling about Jim Brown’s life.

Dave Zirin’s motivation regarding Jim Brown is to show readers that Mr. Brown was more than just an athlete and that he was a “warrior saint” whose “football life was just the opening salvo to a much more sprawling epic” and that his “legacy ... needs to be understood.” However, “Last Man Standing” doesn’t follow the usual sports bio that starts from birth and ends with the subject’s death, the twilight of his years or the height of his professional career. Mr. Zirin wrote his book more like a transcription of a multipart documentary than as a comprehensive biography.

Mr. Zirin gives short shrift to the running back’s playing days at Syracuse University and with the Cleveland Browns. Confusingly, he adopts a back-and-forth storytelling style when discussing his progression while adding distracting outside commentary. For example, the author discussed Jim Brown’s NFL retirement and business/​community work in Cleveland but immediately talked about his playing days under Coach Paul Brown after his retirement. Then, the author bounced back to Mr. Brown’s community activism, which he topped off with a bit of historical exposition from a sociologist.

Another example of storytelling awkwardness was when Mr. Zirin mentioned Mr. Brown’s clashes with the late Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell over hotel room arrangements for its black and white players. Somehow, Mr. Zirin folded current NFL player Richard Sherman into this conversation.

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There is substantial information and sociocultural commentary in “Jim Brown: Last Man Standing.” Much of it pushes Mr. Brown into the background. In between the exhaustive details about his life, disquieting and powerful comments sometimes squeeze through, such as Mr. Brown recalling his high school years before attending Syracuse: “When I came to Manhasset High School, I was never denied an opportunity. I was living among all these white people, receiving all this warmth and support. It lulled me to sleep. I believed everyone would be as good as the people of Manhasset. I came to Syracuse with my guard down. At eighteen, I wasn’t prepared for their venom.”

There are other topics Mr. Zirin should’ve fleshed out, such as why Jim Brown’s views about today’s athletes and players’ unions haven’t evolved, what his kids think about him, or why he’s never fully addressed his violence-against-women issues. Although Mr. Zirin spent considerable time with Mr. Brown, the book doesn’t feel like it, given its heavy reliance on other sources. This adds to the book’s emotional distance from its subject.

Whether the reader is a sports fan or not, “Jim Brown: Last Man Standing” feels like a summary of the life and times of Jim Brown told by others with some input by the subject. This is what happens when an author’s research drowns out the story he is trying to tell, even if it’s a life as compelling as Mr. Brown’s.

Homewood native and University of Pittsburgh graduate Angelia N. Levy is a researcher and writer who lives in the Washington, D.C., area (angelialevy.com, Twitter @angelialevy).

First Published: August 31, 2018, 4:00 p.m.

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Dave Zirin.  (Jen Maler)
"Jim Brown: Last Man Standing," by Dave Zirin
Jen Maler
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