Tough Luck

Sid Luckman, Murder, Inc., and the Rise of the Modern NFL

De: R. D. Rosen

Narrado por: Jonathan Todd Ross

In the long annals of sports and crime, no story compares to the one that engulfed the Luckman family in 1935. As 18-year-old Sid Luckman made headlines across New York City for his high school football exploits at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, his father, Meyer Luckman, was making headlines in the same papers for a very different reason: the gangland murder of his own brother-in-law. Amazingly, when Sid became a star at Columbia and a Hall of Fame NFL quarterback in Chicago, all of it while Meyer Luckman served 20-years-to-life in Sing Sing Prison, the connection between sports celebrity son and mobster father was studiously ignored by the press and ultimately overlooked for eight decades.

Tough Luck traces two simultaneous historical developments through a single immigrant family in Depression-era New York: the rise of the National Football League led by the dynastic Chicago Bears, whose famed owner George Halas convinced Sid Luckman to help him turn the sluggish game of pro football into America's favorite pastime; and the demise - triggered by Meyer Luckman's crime and initial cover-up of the Brooklyn labor rackets and Louis Lepke's infamous organization Murder, Inc.

©2019 Richard Dean Rosen (P)2019 Tantor

Mob meets NFL.

Rich Rosen did some great research on this book. I learned a lot about the NFL and the history of crime in the 30’s & 40’s.
While the narrator was easy to listen to his continuous mispronunciation of names both famous and semi famous was extremely annoying. He had the most bizarre pronunciation of the Illini. Any book about football should be able to handle that one. Blew the pronunciation of Estes Kefauver who conducted famous Senate hearings. Then innumerable other botched names. U would think somebody would correct this before the Audible book goes public. After all people r paying to listen.
The book would easily get 4 stars on it’s own.

Disappointing

Not a good sports story or crime story. Author seems to be reaching to create both.