Newsham, Gavin

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Newsham, Gavin

PERSONAL:

Male.

CAREER:

Writer and journalist. Cofounder and former associate editor of Golf Punk and formerly chief features writer for FHM magazine.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Best New Writer, National Sports Center (NSC), 2004, for John Daly: Letting the Big Dog Eat: The Biography.

WRITINGS:

John Daly: Letting the Big Dog Eat: The Biography, Virgin Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Go Golf, DK (New York, NY), 2006.

Once in a Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos, Grove Press (New York, NY), 2006.

The Treasures of Muhammad Ali, Carlton Books Ltd. (London, England), 2008.

Contributor to English and American periodicals, including Maxim, Observer (London, England), Observer Sport Monthly (London, England), and the Sunday Times (London, England).

ADAPTATIONS:

Once in a Lifetime was adapted for documentary film and released by Miramax Films, 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gavin Newsham, cofounder and former associate editor of Golf Punk magazine, is a sports writer who has authored several books on prominent sports figures, golf, and soccer. The author's first book, John Daly: Letting the Big Dog Eat: The Biography, focuses on how the early promise of golf professional John Daly, who won the British Open, was crushed. Daly turned into an example of immense talent gone to waste due to outside influences, including alcohol, weight problems, and several marriages. In a review of John Daly in Sports Illustrated, Jeff Silverman wrote that the author "paints a broad picture in this engaging biography, which is fun to read in the way disaster movies are fun to see."

In Once in a Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos, Newsham writes about the rise of the New York Cosmos, America's first great soccer team, and its larger-than-life superstar, Pelé, during the summer of 1977. The author contrasts the team's rise in 1977 with the tumultuous and decadent summer in New York that saw blackouts, riots, the Son of Sam serial killer scare, and the dawn of Studio 54. "In recounting the team's rise to prominence, Newsham mixes in numerous pop culture and historical references that help place this moment in time," noted Thomas Scott McKenzie in a review for the Pop Matters Web site. "Quote-heavy and detail-rich, this unlikely drama … is a revealing footnote to the greater saga of American athletics," noted a Publishers Weekly contributor.

Once in a Lifetime details how a team owner who knew nothing about soccer brought together "an odd collection of faded stars, mid-table mercenaries and university misfits" and produced a soccer team that amazingly garnered the fanatical interest of the New York public, Sarah Hughes wrote in the Observer. For a brief time, the team became so popular that tickets to their games were cherished more than tickets for the New York Yankees baseball team or the New York Knicks basketball team. In addition to describing how the team won the short-term love of New York residents, the author details many of the off-field antics of the team's players, from their wild parties at Studio 54 to the many celebrities who attached themselves to the team, including former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

"This … was never meant to be a book about the myriad reasons why the North American Soccer League collapsed or why the game of soccer failed to take its opportunity in the United States," Newsham writes in Once in a Lifetime. The author also notes: "Instead, it was simply designed to chronicle the inconceivable peaks and all too predictable troughs of the phenomenon that was the Cosmos."

The author begins his book with a look at the creation of the North American Soccer League (NASL) and its failure to attract crowds. However, as the author writes, Warner Bros., Inc., president Steve Ross took an interest in the league and decided to form the Cosmos, believing that a popular New York team would introduce soccer to a wider audience in the United States. When Ross signed soccer great Pelé to a contract, the team immediately began to attract huge crowds to its games. The author also recounts the Cosmos' fortunes and how, after winning the 1977 NASL championship, the Cosmos and the NASL began to lose their appeal until they were both eventually disbanded.

"Football books live and die by their subject matter and … the tale told here—of the ambitious but ill-fated mission to sell soccer to the Americans—is a corker," wrote Alan Rutter for the Time Out London Web site. A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted: "It's [Newsham's] incontrovertible love of the game, the team and all the hoopla surrounding the Cosmos that make this story compelling."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Newsham, Gavin, Once in a Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos, Grove Press (New York, NY), 2006.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 2006, Keir Graff, review of Once in a Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos, p. 19.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2006, review of Once in a Lifetime, p. 278.

Observer (London, England), May 7, 2006, Sarah Hughes, "Manhattan Transfers," review of Once in a Lifetime.

Publishers Weekly, May 1, 2006, review of Once in a Lifetime, p. 51.

Sports Illustrated, September 8, 2003, Jeff Silverman, "No Role Model: Young Athletes Who've Burst onto the Scene Would Be Wise to Read the Cautionary Tale of John Daly," review of John Daly: Letting the Big Dog Eat: The Biography, p. Z9.