Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 14, 1993 TAG: 9302140256
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by PHIL HOLLERAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
POVERTY PRODUCES HEROICS, BUT LIGHTWEIGHT LITERATURE
THE RIGHT KIND OF HEROES: Coach Bob Shannon and the East St. Louis Flyers. By Kevin Horrigan. Algonquin Books. $18.95.East St. Louis, Ill., is probably the most messed up city in the United States.
The city is more than $40 million in debt. Its 911 emergency dialing system was repossessed. The police force's health insurance was canceled because the city couldn't pay the premiums. The unemployment rate is 24 percent; about 70 percent of the city's residents receive some form of public assistance. East St. Louis's homicide rate, at 13 times the national average, may be the country's highest. Corrupt city politicians reserve what few resources the city does have for themselves.
The one bright spot is the East St. Louis High School football team, state champions six times in the last 15 years and profiled on "60 Minutes." Kevin Horrigan, a St. Louis newspaper columnist, spent two years with the team's coaches and players, all of whom - like most city residents - are black. He reports that "to the extent that it's possible for a fortyish white klutz who grew up in Texas to feel part of the East St. Louis football tradition, I do."
Coach Bob Shannon is chief among the heroes of the title. Shannon's emphasis on hard work, discipline and commitment stands out in a community of unemployment, violence and single-parent families. But the coach is a strange kind of hero. He's the football coach, period. Shannon doesn't involve himself in community affairs. And for all his philosophy, Shannon's chief concern is all too ordinary; he suspends the team's star player for poor grades and missing practice, but then reinstates him after the team loses a game (although Shannon does feel bad about doing so).
Horrigan clearly sees the players, too, as heroes, for subjecting themselves to Shannon's discipline and sacrificing their bodies on the gridiron, rather than succumbing to the lure of easy drug money on the streets. But it's difficult to tell what kind of heroes the players are, for Horrigan never introduces them to us as people - we see them only as bodies on the playing field.
Horrigan is at his best detailing the lunacy that passes for city politics in East St. Louis. He is less adept at describing the social and economic life of the city; we get a few statistics but we don't get a feel for how the city's bleak economic conditions affect the football players and their families.
"The Right Kind of Heroes" tantalizes but ultimately frustrates. There's some football action, but not enough for the sports fan; there's some urban sociology, but not enough of life in East St. Louis to make a complete case study. Two years ago, H.G. Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights" profiled high school football in another desperate town: Odessa, Texas. That book is both a better football story and better sociology than "The Right Kind of Heroes."