When Buffalo Sat Atop the Sports World

The Book that Buffalo Sports fans have been waiting for thirty years. Anyone who grew up in Western New York and is a sports fan in the 1970's will love this book. Sal does a great job telling the story of the Golden Age of Buffalo sports when all three teams not only made the playoffs regularly but were led by superstars that would all make their prospective Hall of Fames. How lucky were Western New York sports fans to watch OJ Simpson and Gilbert Perreault and Bob McAdoo all playing in Buffalo and winning rushing and scoring titles and MVP's at the same time. Sal does a great job detailing the rise of all three franchises and then the sudden demises in the case of the Bills and the Braves. This book will return you to the times of plaid pants, bad haircuts, and listening to Braves & Sabres games on transistor radios at night with earphones so your parents don't know. I highly recommend this book to all Western New York Sports fans and all sports fans of the 1970's (Boston fans might want to skip it though--lol).

This was a great read. Really a must for Buffalo sports fans, no matter their demographic. It takes you behind the scenes of glory days gone by, and is a vivid recollection of just how close those teams were to attaining the ultimate prize in sports.

Some of the Buffalo television stations seem to be having a contest about who can be the most relentlessly optimistic about the local sports scene in recent years. It's understandable to some extent, as station executives usually think it's good for ratings. Still, it's not a good look for journalists to be cast as cheerleaders - especially the news reports. You'd probably guess by that coverage that Western New York has never had it so good when it comes to its sports teams. And you'd be wrong. Life was even better in the mid-1970s around here. All of the major local sports teams found themselves in first place during a week in 1974. Even better, there were three of them - Bills, Sabres, and Braves. And even better, they all features players who were arguably the most exciting players in their respective sports. Take a bow, O.J. Simpson, Gil Perreault and Bob McAdoo. There's a good chance that many of you weren't around to see that era, or at least old enough to appreciate it. Luckily, Sal Maiorana is here to help you. The Rochester sportswriter, who has a ton of books to his credit, has come up with "When Buffalo Stood Atop the Sports World." It's probably fair to say that Maiorana has been waiting his entire life to write this book. He attended Buffalo State in the years in question (1973 to 1976), and thus had a good seat for all of the action. What's more, he's been close by for most of the years since then. Not only has he been able to follow the fortunes of the local teams, he's had the chance to write about them. One of the jobs of a sports reporter is to grab heroes of a previous era, and ask them about the good times of the past. It's often one of the rare pleasures of the job. The interview subjects usually love to talk about such triumphs, and the readers like to relive them. Sal reviews the Bills during the Simpson years, when O.J. was the biggest star in the sports universe. He set the all-time rushing yardage record in 1973, led the team to the playoffs in 1974, and had his best all-around season in 1975. The Braves follow the same arc in a sense. McAdoo emerged as a superstar in the fall of 1973 once he had a new cast around him. His team made the playoffs for three straight seasons, their only postseason appearances in their eight-year history. The Sabres followed a slightly different path. But the 1973-74 season was still eventful and interesting for the wrong reasons, but the team bounced back and reached the Stanley Cup finals in 1975. The 1975-76 season was another good one, although in hindsight there weren't going to be any happy endings around with the start of the Montreal Canadiens' dynasty arriving at the same time. Maiorana went into his own scrapbooks for a lot of information. But he also mined some other research materials to go into this story. (I'm proud to say a book I did on the Sabres was included here.) I'd like to think I know something about the subject here, having written extensively on these areas. Yet Sal came up with some facts that I didn't know about - which makes it more fun to read. This is a self-published book, and it's not particularly slick as a result. There are only a handful of photos, for example. But I can't say I noticed more than a couple of typos along the way, which beats the usual standard for this publishing technique. A little editing could have been done on the stories of individual games without much pain, but that's a relatively minor complaint. "When Buffalo Stood Atop the Sports World" covers the necessary areas of a sports history lesson in an entertaining way. Can't ask for more than that. I know a few people that should read it.

Good book for lifelong Bills fans who want to relive some of the glory days.

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Written by a local Western New York sportwriter, "When Buffalo Stood Atop The Sports World" is an excellent book detailing a time during the early to mid-1970's when Buffalo had three pro teams all enjoying high levels of success. As a pre-teen at the time, I remembered watching the NFL Bills and NHL Sabres (and having to point the rabbit ears antenna just right on the 12 inch B&W TV in my bedroom to pick up the Sabres station), but was not familiar with the NBA Buffalo Braves. This book did a nice job of filling the gaps in my knowledge about them. Maiorana's book breaks each team into it's own section, gives the team's background and related Buffalo culture, then discusses individuals involved in building the franchise - including players, coaches and management. The big names - OJ, Gil Perreault, Bob McAdoo - are discussed, but time is also taken to review lesser known important players such as Jim Braxton, Jim Lorentz and Jim McMillian. This is followed by descriptions of individual games in the the main series where the teams had success. After that, the author follows up with what happened in the years immediately following that success. I liked the way the book was organized into smaller sections, making it easy to read in short sessions if needed. If you remember any of these teams, the book is highly recommended. It was a great trip down memory lane. If you have any interest in learning about these teams, the organization of the book makes for easy consumption, without getting bogged down in minutiae. Though none of these teams won the ultimate prize in their respective leagues, fans who followed the teams during this time will remember the players and teams clearly. For those not familiar with them, it offers great insight into those teams (and their rivals) at a time when Buffalo teams enjoyed great success.

I bought this for my boyfriend for Christmas and he loved it