Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs, and How a Once Swingin' Cow Town Chasedthe Ultimate Comeback
June 15, 2023
Can football save a city? In this story from the heartland, the answer just might be yes. By 1920, Kansas City, once just "a tiny trading post on the frontier," was transforming into "a wide-open, freewheelin' river town, a rollicking den of gambling and booze, [and] a second-tier financial center for the cattle and wheat industries." So write native sons and sportswriters Dent and Dodd in this lively and meaningful book. As the authors also note, for all its positive qualities--interesting architecture, vast parks, broad boulevards, and excellent barbecue--the city also has problems ranging from overcrowded freeways to long-standing racist housing covenants, "fueled by booze and beef," with a past checkered by organized crime and political corruption that made of it "a haven for lawlessness, vice, and outsize dreams." Enter the visionaries who brought professional sports to the city as a boost for civic pride: first, the baseball squad that would become the Royals, and then a gridiron team from Texas that took a long time to catch on. Now enter Patrick Mahomes, "unlike any football player Kansas City had seen." A charming young man from a multiracial background, Mahomes displayed a rocket arm, an impeccable football mind, and a willingness "to try shit, even when it seemed unorthodox." A surefire Hall of Famer who will likely finish his career as one of the best ever, Mahomes led the Chiefs to a Super Bowl victory, the first in half a century, in 2019 (and another in 2023), and has become "the single most important person in Kansas City right now," inspiring city leaders, planners, and developers to do better--e.g., to improve inner-city neighborhoods and make homeownership accessible to those often denied mortgages, among many other civic improvements. Chiefs fans will find this a revelation, and urban planners might learn a thing or two, too.
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Starred review from June 26, 2023
Journalists Dent and Dodd’s outstanding debut weaves the story of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes into a warts-and-all history of the Missouri city. The son of a former major league pitcher, Mahomes’s passing skills while playing at Texas Tech University caught the attention of the Chiefs, who drafted him in 2017. He became the team’s starting quarterback in 2018 and brought the franchise to new heights, including Super Bowl titles in 2020 and 2023. The authors, both Kansas City natives, contextualize what Mahomes’s achievements meant to the city with a colorful look at its past, discussing Prohibition-era political boss Tom Pendergast’s corrupt dealings, the racial covenants that segregated the city for much of the 20th century, and downtown’s fight to retain residents and business amid widespread migration to the suburbs beginning in the 1950s and ’60s. Dent and Dodd suggest that Mahomes’s success has reinvigorated Kansas City’s spirit and that his activism in support of Black Lives Matter has drawn attention to how racism has shaped the metropolis for centuries, though the authors are careful to note that problems persist, including a lack of affordable housing and discrimination faced by people of color seeking home loans. It’s a riveting look at the plight of a midwestern city through the prism of a star athlete.
Starred review from July 1, 2023
Sportswriters Dent and Dodd cover three subjects in writing that is lively, vivid, well-organized, understandable to non-football-oriented readers, and up-to-the minute, including the 2023 Super Bowl, a biography of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, a history of the Chiefs, and a history of Kansas City, Missouri, itself. Like a spy thriller, each chapter ends with a cliffhanger and moves, as deftly as a Mahomes play, to a new topic. Mahomes' quarterbacking greatness comes from a photographic memory, allowing him to quickly pick one of many plays in the Chiefs playbook; the ability to see pass or running opportunities that the defense does not; and the gift of making passes that seem to make no sense yet get completed for first downs and touchdowns. The many other individuals portrayed included developer J. C. Nichols, who set Kansas City back by using racial covenants in real estate deeds and advocating for urban renewal, and Mayor Quinton Lucas and activists Diane Charity and Tara Raghuveer who are trying to undo the mayhem Nichols and segregation have caused. Ernest Hemingway, Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Roy Wilkins, political boss Tom Pendergast, Harry Truman, Paul Rudd, Jason Sudeikis, and Calvin Trillin also appear, creating a lively context for this tale of a sports star and a city.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.