Striking Gridiron

June 23, 2014
The Braddock Tigers, a high school football team based in a Western Pennsylvania steel town, garnered national attention in 1959 as it enjoyed unprecedented undefeated streak. Head coach Chuck Klausing was a stern but benevolent father figure to his players, most of whom faced a life short on amenities and long on hardships, such as abusive fathers and hunger. When Braddock’s steel workers participated in the United Steelworkers’ lengthy labor union strike, the team became the lone ray of hope in the sleepy, depressed town. Veteran journalist Nichols errs critically in failing to intertwine the team’s season with the strike’s progression, which prohibits readers from seeing how one historic event affected the other—and eliminates any dramatic sweep. What remains is a feel-good sports story punctuated by bland labor updates.

August 1, 2014

Against the backdrop of the longest steel strike in history, the multiracial Braddock High School football team attains what is believed to be the longest unbeaten streak in the nation. This current work of narrative nonfiction re-creates scenes and dialog from participants' memories to retell the tale (the basics of which were originally featured in a Sports Illustrated piece called "A Town and Its Team" in 1959). The characters are well developed, especially head coach Chuck Klausing, who later coached in the college ranks, and the book teems with game action and local color. Ultimately, the unbeaten team makes out better than the ill-fated strikers. Although high school football could pull the town together during that trying time, it could not prevent the inevitable decline of another rust-belt industrialized area. VERDICT Nichols offers a nice bit of Americana with dark undertones; the story speaks to all readers.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2014
In 1959, there were parallel dramas developing in the small Pennsylvania steel town of Braddock, just outside Pittsburgh. The United Steelworkers were on strike, crippling the town's economy, and the Braddock High Tigers entered the season with a 45-game winning streak and a chance to set a national prep record for consecutive wins. Amazingly, the Tigers who graduated in the spring of 1959 had never lost a football game in their high-school careers. Chuck Klausing, the team's head coach, was feeling the pressure. He was chasing a football legend, Paul Brown, who led Massillon (Ohio) Washington High to 52 consecutive wins 17 years earlier. Klausing would go on to a distinguished career in college coaching, but in 1959, it was all about the streakand the strike. Many of the players had to work part-time jobs to help support their families, and the only diversion for the town in the midst of hardship was the football team. Nichols, an award-winning journalist, picks up the tale in the summer of 1959 as Klausing attends a coaching clinic and breaks bread with Boston Celtics head coach Red Auerbach, who knew a thing or two about championships and streaks. The narrative then follows the team through preseason training and into the season, filling in the details based on numerous interviews with players and Klausing. Nichols captures the pace of life in a late-fifties, single-industry town, and also integrates the progress of the strike and its implications for the nation as well as Braddock. An excellent book on a number of levels.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)