It's difficult, in the world of sports book publishing, to garner better advance publicity than John Amaechi had for his book Man In The Middle.

He was all over every ingredient of the ESPN network stew, he was featured on countless talk shows and he even started a little controversy that kept the whole show humming. And for all of this: He sold 9,000 books.

That's not very many; it's 1,000 more books than Paula freaking Poundstone sold. We mention this not to rip on Amaechi, who seems like a pleasant enough fellow. We are just amazed that the ESPN marketing machine couldn't do better. (We're sure Simmons' book sold eight or nine times that ... at least.) Hopefully Kordell Stewart's book will do better.

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