Barney Polan's game

the long version

Rosen's new book, Barney Polan's Game, is a fictional account of the college basketball scandals of 1950-51, when players, coaches, bookies, and gangsters conspired to fix the outcomes of games. Their exposure affected the basketball world the same way the 1919 Black Sox scandal affected baseball. For all sports fans, the game was irrevocably corrupted by power and big money. Each principal character in Barney Polan's Game speaks directly to the reader, giving his or her perspective as events unfold. The most prominent voice is that of Barney Polan himself - the veteran sportswriter. Dubbed the "verse of the peepul" by a colleague, he borrows from Shakespeare and Brooklynese for his columns in The Brooklyn Sentinel. Each of the characters - coaches, bookies, players, family members - desperately tries to control the uncertain events around them in whatever way he or she can. Unsettling aspects of postwar America loom in the background: racism, class injustice, fears of nuclear annihilation, and the McCarthy hearings.