But it's not a perfect book. Some of the parts drag for a while. Channeling one of his trademarked KSK routines, the celebrity fake soliloquy, Magary writes fake essays in the character of sports figures like Patriots coach Bill Belichick and basketball icon Charles Barkley. But unlike his other timely parodies of Wade Phillips and Jerry Jones, the soliloquies in the book don't have the same punch. Maybe it's because they were generic and didn't pertain to a specific event in sports. Maybe it's because they were inset with the chapters much like those blue boxes in our third grade social studies books. And nobody ever read those. So maybe you can just ignore them and move on with the engaging parts. They're clearly marked with pretty borders.
In the end, Men With Balls finds a niche not exactly filled anywhere else. The premise and delivery is something badly needed in a world where sports are sometimes taken rather seriously. If you discover a funnier book about football this year, you somehow got ahold of Eli Manning's diary.
Article comments