With an innate ability to spot pretense and hypocrisy Daugherty is the sporting landscape's anti-snob, an ideal companion on the next bar stool, if (in addition to buying), this companion were possessed of extreme clarity, inside information, and an original mother tongue.

This collection spans the rich sporting life of Cincinnati in essentially the last decade of the twentieth century, beginning with the joyous and eccentric Super Bowl run of 1988. Through these essays, the reader replays the World Series win of 1990, the fall of Pete Rose and the rise of UC basketball, the demise of Ickey Woods and the comeback of Boomer Esiason. Transported by Daugherty's witty, fluid essays, a constellation of stars -- famous, infamous, and obscure -- forms the Cincinnati cluster: Tough guys (Tim Krumrie and Marge Schott), fiery guys (Lou Piniella and Bob Huggins), little guys (James Brooks and Bret Boone), and just plain characters (Rob Dibble and Deion Sanders), all bound together by the fleeting nature of sporting mortality.

Daugherty, too, is a tough guy; his aggressively democratic-with-a-small-d pieces have a no-nonsense, blue-collar sensibility, spiked with a subtle streak of irreverence. He even manages to hold onto his Populist leanings while playing golf. "Don't be embarrassed", he tells the reader. "Golf humbles everyone. And no matter how bad you play, there is always someone worse".

Reaction of his readers runs the gamut from highpraise to the occasional death threat. "I am fortunate", Daugherty says, "to work in a polite town". His best fans, however, embrace what is perhaps any columnist's best virtue -- no agenda. This in no way suggests he is not t