The Captain Class

April 10, 2017
Walker, former global sports editor of the Wall Street Journal, set out to identify the world’s all-time greatest sports teams and determine the common factors that united them. This daunting search for the “DNA of greatness” required scouring dozens of newspaper and obscure websites. Walker settled on 16 elite teams from around the world, including baseball’s New York Yankees (1949–1953), hockey’s Montreal Canadiens (1955–1960), and soccer’s Barcelona (2008–2013). As Walker points out, the common denominator was a captain who possessed at least one of seven key leadership attributes; scoring points and basking in the spotlight are not among them. Walker backs up his assertions with anecdotes from the field, the court, and the locker room, often focusing on captains whose names are not immediately recognizable (Carla Overbeck of the U.S. women’s natonal soccer team, Maurice Richard of the Montreal Canadiens, Wayne Shelford of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team). Written for serious sports fans in lively language that also speaks to aspiring athletes and business professionals, this book offers a compelling argument for the value of inspired leadership.

Starred review from May 1, 2017
From the rugby pitch to the baseball diamond, a riveting analysis of greatness in sport.Following the end of one of the greatest streaks in history, the Connecticut women's basketball team's 111 consecutive wins, comes a timely study of what made sports' most successful teams so dominant. Walker (Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball's Lunatic Fringe, 2006), the founding editor of the Wall Street Journal's daily sports coverage, admits that what propelled him into "this all-consuming project" was witnessing the "transformation" of the 2004 Boston Red Sox "from a half-assed bunch of jokers to legitimate contenders," as well as his lifelong "ache to be part of a great team." Diligently establishing the parameters of what sports he would and would not consider and the objective criteria used to analyze a team's success, Walker arrived at a short list of "the top 10 percent of the top 1 percent of teams" from across the globe since the 1880s. In this illustrious company, the author includes recognizable groups such as the 1949-1953 New York Yankees, the only team in history to win the World Series five consecutive times, but also some unknown to U.S. readers--e.g., Espectaculares Morenas del Caribe (1991-2000) from Cuba, who won "every major women's international volleyball tournament for ten straight years." Though having had no expectation of finding a common denominator when he began scrutinizing what enabled these disparate paragons of victory to dominate their respective sports, Walker reached an intriguing conclusion: "the most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it"--not the coach, the management, a franchise's wealth, or overall talent. Combining statistics with epic stories from the playing field, Walker compellingly makes his case that captains possessing traits not usually assumed as shared among leaders are what make empires. A fascinating sports study with much wider-reaching application, featuring page-turning tales of personal triumph and cogent analysis.

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April 15, 2017
Walker, who helped create the Wall Street Journal's sports section in 2009, begins his study of leadership with a selection of the 16 greatest teams of all time, worldwide, among them the New York Yankees (194953), the Montreal Canadiens (195560), the Boston Celtics (195669), the Brazilian men's soccer team (195862), the Soviet men's ice-hockey team (198184), the Cuban women's volleyball team (19912000), and the San Antonio Spurs (19972016). The list itself is grist for animated sports conversation, but Walker then gleans the often-surprising qualities found among all the captains of such dissimilar teams: doggedness, aggressive play up to and beyond the rules, taking on thankless but necessary tasks, shunning big speeches, displaying commitment nonverbally, speaking truth to power, and possessing an ability to shut off strong emotions when they're not useful. Not included, interestingly, is athletic talent. As theoretical as his book might sound, Walker fully backs it with stats, names, games, even specific plays. Profitable reading for any sports organization; pleasurable reading for any casual fan.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)