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Regular price:$25.00
NSMN discounted
price :$17.50
In his diverse, exciting, and very active forty-five-year
legal career, spent mainly in the world of professional
sports, attorney Robert O. Swados has worn many hats-owner,
league executive, counsel, and franchise builder. In
this wide-ranging and good-humored memoir, Swados offers
many behind-the-scenes insights into the players, coaches,
executives, and owners who have created today's sports
entertainment industry.
Swados describes his early involvement in professional
sports through his efforts in the 1960s to bring a
Major League Baseball franchise to his hometown of
Buffalo, NY. The deal was so close that a New York
Daily News headline announced (Swados still owns a
copy) that new franchises would go to San Diego and
Buffalo.
But things really got interesting when in 1969 Swados
helped Seymour Knox III and Northrup Knox to establish
the Buffalo Sabres. Thus began an exciting thirty-year
journey through the ups and downs of the National Hockey
League. As part owner, vice chairman, and counsel of
the Sabres, Swados has had many opportunities to "score
from the crease," and sometimes the action behind the
scenes is just as rough and tumble as that on the ice.
He tells many fascinating tales about his dealings
with winning coaches including Scotty Bowman, with
General Managers Punch Imlach and John Muckler, with
owner John Mcmullen, and Commissioners John Ziegler
and Gary Bettman, among others. He also talks frankly
about the impact of Adelphia's bankruptcy on the fate
of the Sabres and about the obsessions and frustrations
of the 2004 NHL lockout. Perhaps no one in professional
sports has had such an engaging and productive view.
For hockey fans in the U.S. and Canada, especially
Buffalo Sabres fans, and anyone interested in the business
of bigtime sports, Robert Swados's entertaining and
informative story is a must read.
Table
of Contents
Book
Foreword
About the Author:
Robert O. Swados (Buffalo,
NY) is presently counsel of Phillips Lytle Hitchcock
Blaine & Huber, a leading Buffalo law firm, and
an officer for the Buffalo Sabres Hall of Fame and
Foundation. He has been a member of the Hall of Fame
since 1995 and chairman of its selection committee
since 2001.
What they are saying:
"Reading attorney Swados's fascinating if overlong
autobiography of his half-decade of legal battles is
rather like reading the full transcript of federal
prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's recent indictment of
vice-presidential aide "Scooter" Libby. Initially,
both seem interminably meticulous accounts of relatively
simple events, yet readers who stick with them until
the end are greatly rewarded, since each author uses
an obsession with detail in a sophisticated way to
reveal the complexity behind his subject - fans of
[the Buffalo Sabres] will thoroughly enjoy Swados's
insider views of the Sabres and its various owners.
General hockey fans will be enlightened by Swados's
insights into the sport's various financial and legal
imbroglios."
-Publishers Weekly, December
5, 2005
"In early 2006, hockey fans, especially Buffalo
Sabres fans, should watch for Counsel in the Crease
(Prometheus), in which Robert O. Swados, a lawyer instrumental
in the founding of the Sabres in 1969, offers an account
of his experience in the game, especially with respect
to its legal and financial sides."
-Toronto Globe and Mail
(Ontario Canada), Saturday, December 17 in Hockey
book round-up in Book Review Editor's regular column, "Shelf
Life"
"Sabres fans looking for a fresh inside look on the
organization under the Knox family will appreciate "Counsel
in the Crease." It was written by Robert Swados,
a former minority owner and lawyer for the Sabres who
was involved in almost every major decision until the
Rigases took over."
-The Buffalo News "Inside
the NHL" column, Sunday, January 8,
2006 |
