Boston sports a winner in this essay collection

"The Rock, the Curse, and the Hub: A Random History of Boston Sports." Edited by Randy Roberts. Harvard University Press. 422 Pages. $24.95.

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Mention Bird, Boggs, Orr, Kelley, Marciano or Ouimet to a Boston sports fan and you will hear tales of triumph, heartache, struggle and endurance.

These sports legends share one thing - Boston. Boston molded them into athletes and they in turn helped form Boston's reputation as one of the great American sports towns.

Through the 15 essays collected in "The Rock, the Curse, and the Hub: A Random History of Boston Sports," editor Randy Roberts takes a historical overview of the ups and downs so inherent in Boston sports and connects them to the political and cultural environment of the time.

He shows the complexities of sports that go beyond mere winning and losing. Sports reflects the times. Women fought for the right to run in the Boston Marathon as they did for the right to vote. Minorities pushed baseball to integrate, yet the Red Sox fought against it.

It makes for anything but the typical sports book.

The essays, two by Roberts, cover the sports gamut. The great Celtics teams, the decades of Red Sox suffering, the Bruins' resurrection and the Patriots' rise from struggling infancy to greatness are here, as they should be in any book about Boston sports. But this book is better because it gives equal time to other sports, including rowing, the marathon, boxing and golf.

Golf took off as an American sport in Boston when a 20-year-old amateur American golfer defeated the great British pros in the 1913 U.S. Open in Brookline, Mass. There might never have been a Tiger Woods without a young man named Francis Ouimet.

One of boxing's greats, Rocky Marciano, grew up in the Boston area and left his sport with the longest consecutive winning streak, 49.

The Boston Marathon brought the ancient Greek tradition to America and then nearly lost its significance because other marathons began offering cash prizes rather than simply regional glory.

There's a much needed dose of historical reality added to the mix. Steeped in political history, the book shows that although Boston has often been the forerunner in American sports, it has struggled with change, in part because of its Puritanical past.

Racial tension diminished the uniting power sports had for New Englanders. Attendance by blacks at Red Sox games, for example, has been abnormally low for years.

It's no surprise since the Red Sox were the last big-league baseball team to integrate. Despite the team's early 20th-century success and overcoming decades of frustration to become 2004 World Champions, the Sox would rather forget this part of its history.

At times, the essays delve too much into Boston's troubled racial history for what is essentially a sports book. The depth and honesty of the sports coverage, though, intertwined with a cultural background elevate the book above the norm.

The city's link to each sport makes one thing very clear: Boston is one of America's great sports towns.

Boston sports fans will find much to be proud of in Roberts' book. But the story of a city with such passion and loyal following for its teams and athletic events can be appreciated by anyone who follows sports - even a die-hard Yankees fan.