Chicago's Big Teams: Great Moments of the Cubs, Bears, White Sox, Blackhawks and Bulls

The city of Chicago has seen its share of highlights and lowlights in sports history, so it takes a daring author, armed with a superb collection of historic photos, to try to tell 100 years of stories in one volume. For the most part, veteran sportswriter Freedman (Football Stadiums) succeeds in profiling the five major teams in four major sports (baseball, hockey, basketball, and football), highlighting significant moments such as accusations of fixing World Series games in the Black Sox scandal of 1919, the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup victories, and the Bulls' reign in the early '90s. While detailing the yearly ups and downs of the franchises in broad strokes, Freedman occasionally focuses on individual stars, such as Michael Jordan and Bobby Hull. He uses short sidebars to tell anecdotes about an owner, a consecutive game streak, or an on-field brawl. Some readers will wonder where their favorite player is, or whether there will be a separate volume for the sporting legacies of the many universities in town, but the book still makes a fine celebratory gift for Chicago fans, even as they hope that it will soon be rendered outdated by a new triumph from one of their teams. (Oct.)