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What: Talk Sports Like a Pro: 99 Secrets to Becoming a Sports Goddess

Author: Jean M. McCormick

Publisher: Perigree Press, $13.95 (soft cover)

As a child, I knew the top 15 home run hitters’ totals. I can still recite the uniform numbers of the 1969 New York Mets, 1970 New York Rangers and 1973 New York Knicks. Which years which team won the Stanley Cup comes to me as readily as my address (most days).

If I’m not a sports goddess, I think I can at least claim membership in the Goddess’ court. And I can smile and wince at this book’s attempt to educate women about sports, for while it’s well-intentioned it tends to be too condescending to women with a passing knowledge of sports.

McCormick, a Bostonian, dedicates the book to Bobby Orr--automatic points for that. Among her credentials are stints as a researcher for ABC News, a producer at ESPN and an executive at CNN/SI. Perhaps her TV background explains why, in gathering comments from women in the sports industry, she leaned heavily on TV people and ignored women primarily known as newspaper reporters. Newspapers were the first branch of journalism to accept female reporters, and to omit them and their insights is a glaring error.

McCormick has organized the book well. The chapter “A Sports Goddess Starts Talking” explains the length of various sports’ seasons and lists the towns and nicknames of prominent professional teams. Football, basketball (men’s and women’s), college sports, baseball, hockey, golf, tennis, boxing, horse racing, auto racing, soccer and sailing are studied in chapters that explain basic terms and provide brief biographies of key athletes or executives. I just wish she had avoided the constant mention of the term “Sports Goddess,” or “Sports Goddess in Training.” Explain and be done with it. No one needs to be treated like a child.

The hockey section explains the rules well, but it goofs in saying the Canadiens rule the NHL and misspells Guy Lafleur’s name. Maybe that’s quibbling, but the Goddess herself shouldn’t be above criticism.

All in all, a decent effort--including a list of resources in the back--but a bit too frothy. Women will respond to good writing on its own merits and need not be pandered to.