Playing for Pizza, by John Grisham

remembered I thought I'd give it a try so I reserved it at my local library and promptly got the call. Good timing what with West Coast Don heading for Italy.

Playing for Pizza, by John Grisham. I've read a number of Grisham's legal novels and enjoyed most (Firm, Client, Time To Kill, Pelican Brief), but not all (Brethern, Runaway Jury, Street Lawyer). I only tried one non-legal book (Painted House) that I thought was unreadable. But the liner notes of this looked promising, so I thought I'd give Grisham another shot outside of the legal arena. What the hell. The Olympics were over. I needed a sports fix.

Rick Dockery is a career 3rd string QB who lives out of a suitcase in short term rentals...cannon arm with no touch, a penchant for interceptions and a need to avoid contact. Bad luck forces him into the 4th Q of the NFL championship game and 17pts ahead, but still manages to have the worst performance in NFL history, causing the Browns to lose (again) to the hated Broncos. Needless to say, he is summarily released and shunned by any team in North America.

His agent makes one more call before dumping him and gets him a starting QB slot for the mighty Panthers of Parma....Italy. From here the story is a fish out of water looking for acceptance and redemption. While it's pretty predictable, I thoroughly enjoyed Rick's overcoming culture, history, language, women, cathedrals, parking tiny cars, the Judge, and post practice pizza.

A few years ago I read another Italian sports book called The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinnis. the true story of a very low level pro soccer team, from an area of Italy no tourist would venture, that manages to climb to the Serie B of the italian pro soccer league. This is the equivalent of a winter rookie instructional baseball team finding themselves competing in AAA. A genuinely outstanding story full of colorful characters and situations. I suggested WC Don read it and I seem to recall he spoke highly of it. While reading Playing for Pizza, I frequently thought back to this book. Of the two, the McGinnis book is far superior, but this was decent...a little tweaking and Pizza could be a made for TV movie while the McGinnis could be a full season series...that's the difference in the range of depth of character and situation development.

262 pages, 6"x9" hardback. in the absence of other intrusions, like life or golf or jogging or (horror of horrors) the Democratic convention, this could be read in one or two sittings, it flows that easily and is fairly short. To me, it seemed like Grisham was on vacation and managed to write off a trip to Italy with a book when he discovered American football was played for pride in Italy. wish I had his imagination.

Pretty good, you won't be dissapointed. WC Don will either read it before, or during, his upcoming Italy trip.

East Coast Don