Both Sides of the Line

June 15, 2016
Hit the quarterback. Hit the mook. This tale of crime and penalty focuses on a local antihero who did plenty of both.Kelly, a member of the conference-winning Saint Don Bosco Technical High School team of 1974, tells two stories. The first is a fairly ordinary football memoir: the team owes it all to God and coach, and it's made up of stock types such as "the guy who always talked the talk because he knew he could back up every word" and the boy who, "easy to talk to...is quiet, intelligent, and dependable." In this case, the coach, Jack Clyde Dempsey, was an upstanding fellow who had an unusually sophisticated way of reading the field and the stances of the opposing players: "The offensive lineman knows when the ball is being hiked," he says. "You don't. Picking up on these clues helps you to neutralize his advantage." Pop Warner or pro, a player can learn a thing or two from Kelly's pages when Dempsey talks. There are fine turns in this aspect of the book, as Kelly reveals the scarifying effect of his mother's suicide and the grit required of a kid growing up motherless and Catholic on the edge of a very bad neighborhood. Less successful is the second story, built on the revelation, mired in mounds of cliche, that Dempsey later moved on to being a hit man for hire, eventually a fugitive and a fixture on the FBI wanted list. There's not much drama in what ought to be a tense, frightening situation, and the best words here again belong to the now coked-up yet eminently reasonable Dempsey and not the author: "If I hurt someone right away, then we'll never get our money," he explains. "But if I'm coming to visit someone three, four times, and they haven't made a payment, well...things might get a little rough." Well-intended but best read by 60-something fans of Boston ball.

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May 1, 2016
The members of the 1974 Don Bosco Tech football team in inner-city Boston were undersized and lacked the facilities of other teams in the Catholic Conference, but they had one thing the other schools lacked: a demanding, charismatic coach named Clyde Dempsey, who taught his players to rely on quickness, technique, and desire to overcome opponents, regardless of size. Dempsey's coaching helped fuel his team to an unlikely championship. However, Dempsey was also feared as a street fighter rumored to work for the Mob, and in 1990 he was apprehended on murder charges after appearing on America's Most Wanted. Kelly, a defensive tackle on that championship team, recounts his playing days and his relationship with a coach who inspired kids to succeed in football and life, but who couldn't control his own demons. This memoir will have strong regional appeal, but the combination of an unusual personal story with plenty of detailed football technique, a close look at the tough-love motivational style of an inner-city coach, and a fascinating true-crime element suggests that it just may reach a much broader national audience, even extending beyond sports fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)