The Worldwide Reader

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN is an inside-baseball look inside baseball, football, basketball, and all the other sports covered by the self-branded Worldwide Leader in Sports. The book details ESPN’s history through the words of its on-air and behind-the-scenes personalities. The network’s story unfolds chronologically through interview transcripts of its deep bench of talent, hacks, malcontents, occasional nice person, and perverts. The interview-timeline format worked well for the authors’ 2003 book about Saturday Night Live, and their return engagement is a success by and large.

ESPN’s presence/dominance in the sports world is unavoidable. Even its biggest critics—take Deadspin, for instance—depend on the network’s elevated status for their own business model of critique, scorn, and mockery. Try as I might to resist being sucked in, there are times in my chaotic life when I’m drawn back to the channel of my youth. Perhaps this urge to flip on channel 140 on my satellite package is born of sentimentality, but I’d like to think that my discerning palate is able to separate the wheat from the boo-yahs.

I can’t seem to pry myself from their coverage of the Barclays Premier League (the voices of Ian Darke and Steve McManaman dance around in my head, even while I sleep), 30 for 30 documentaries (The Two Escobars was beyond incredible), and Pardon the Interruption gabfest. The latter is as constant in my diet as bubble teas. I miss nary a show, and I’m an acolyte of Tony Kornheiser’s radio show, where devotees are affectionately dubbed “the Littles.”

And so my favorite parts of the book were when I learned more about the ways ESPN broke into broadcasting soccer, the emergence of Bill Simmons and his various enterprises, and the ways the curmudgeonly Kornheiser got himself in trouble with the brass and colleagues. But you might enjoy reading about how much people dislike Keith Olbermann, or just what a cesspool of debauchery the place was in the early and middle years. The book is 700-plus pages, and so it’s not always compelling, but I do recommend it to any diehard sports fan.