It has all the makings of a champion: an anthology of Canadian sports writing selected by a master. But Trent Frayne’s All Stars reads like a marketing department idea sabotaged by weak execution. It’s far from a bad book, but it could have – and should have – been better.

Frayne has assembled 39 book excerpts, magazine articles, and newspaper pieces from true all-stars. Some, such as Mordecai Richler, David Macfarlane, and Barry Callaghan, are best known for writing about subjects other than sports. Others have well-deserved reputations as the best Canadian writers in a particular sport: Roy MacGregor in hockey, Lorne Rubenstein in golf, Stephen Brunt in boxing.

The collection offers plenty of hockey, of course, but also tennis, wrestling, and synchronized swimming, among many other sports. And plenty of the selections are worthy. “Nasty,” a magazine article by Brian Preston, is a wonderfully written tale of a five-day road trip with the Victoria Cougars of the Western Hockey League. The excerpt from Muriel Anne Lennox’s book on Northern Dancer is a hilarious look at the great stallion earning his oats as a prodigious stud. And the section from The Game, by former Montreal Canadien goalie Ken Dryden, is a fine reminder of why that book is still considered the best hockey book ever written.

Unfortunately, not all of the selections show the all-stars at the top of their respective games. There are too many unremarkable newspaper columns and some of the writers have produced better work. Roy MacGregor’s admission that the Canadian sports media is culpable for letting an American beat them on the Alan Eagleson story, for example, is a good column about a compelling issue, but it’s far from his best writing.

Any anthology will, needless to say, invite quibbles over who and what is included. But this book’s problems aren’t limited to the editor’s choices. The selections are not arranged chronologically, or by sport, or by any other readily apparent method. The credits are more frustrating. Only a handful include the original publication date. Worse, some credits are wrong. MacGregor’s column is attributed to the Ottawa Journal, even though he works for the Citizen and the Eagle’s legal troubles began a decade after the Journal’s demise. And while profiles of Blue Jays skipper Cito Gaston (by Paul Quarrington) and Roberto Alomar (by Michael Posner) are cited as first appearing in Saturday Night, both actually ran in Toronto Life.

Such carelessness isn’t enough to diminish the great writing that is included in Trent Frayne’s All Stars, but it does give credence to the notion that this book represents the triumph of marketing over a commitment to excellence.