Historian and award-winning writer Steve Sirk has delighted Columbus Crew fans for more than two decades by writing with humor, heart, and humanity about the first club in Major League Soccer. He's back with a second wide-ranging collection of Crew stories spanning from the late 1990s to the present day.
This time around, Sirk preserves the Circle of Honor induction stories of Black & Gold legends Brian McBride, Frankie Hejduk, and Sigi Schmid, as well as lengthy features about other club heroes like Clark, Maisonneuve, Marshall, Schelotto, Warzycha, Zelarayan, and more.
MLS Cup 2020 gets its own section. As many fans had to watch the big game in isolation due to the pandemic, the historic blowout is re-lived in vivid detail through just one set of eyes—those belonging to fellow Crew fan turned starting center back Josh Williams. The Massive triumph is further celebrated and contextualized through reflective reaction interviews with club icons Dante Washington and Frankie Hejduk.
Among the 32 stories in this fully-annotated collection are four previously unpublished pieces, plus two more that are expanded in book form. And, of course, there are chronicles of weird events, like when the 2007 Crew scrimmaged a local amateur all-star team (HINT: It did not end well), plus assorted silliness, like when Sirk convened The Massive Court, in which the 2008 championship team ruled in the 2012 beard-related case of Moffat v. Gaven.
As with Sirk's previous titles—"A Massive Season", "Kirk Urso: Forever Massive", and this book's Volume 1 predecessor—"A Massive Collection, Volume 2" is another essential compendium of Columbus Crew history. (And if you've ever wondered what the Crew term "Massive" is all about, its origins and usage are explained in the opening chapter.)
