Book Review: Playing For Pizza, by John Grisham

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http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1205297.Playing_For_Pizza

Rick Dockery is a third string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. Most of the time he warms the bench. However he was miraculously put on during a crucial game at the fourth quarter after the other quarterbacks got injured.

In the next eleven minutes, he throws three interceptions, blows the Browns' comfortable lead and crushes their hopes of making it to the Super Bowl. The only thing that saves him from being lynched on the field is the crushing tackle that gives him a concussion and puts him in the hospital.

Rick has done the rounds; he rarely spends more than a year playing for any one team after that game. He's even done a stint in the Canadian Football League.

The only place where people don't hate him now is Denver, the Browns' opponents during that fateful game. At the age of twenty-eight, his career in the NFL is pretty much over, according to Arnie, his agent.

Rick knows that his skills will never get him into the Hall of Fame, but he's not ready to give up on the sport yet.

When Arnie comes up with the far-fetched idea of spending a season playing for the Parma Panthers of the Italian Football League. They were looking for a former NFL player, any former NFL player.

The Italian players do not get paid. Most are enthusiastic amateurs who would be cut from most high school rosters. Rick isn't going to get rich, but at least he'll be playing. He'll even be the starter, fielding his team in front of a crowd of about a thousand fans.

Playing for Pizza is a fish-out-of-water story of the gentlest type but he does eventually grow fond of the cuisine and Italian women, especially an opera singer whose talents on the stage are rewarded as in much the same way as his football skills were in the U.S.—with boos.

The big question is whether Rick can lead the Panthers to their first Super Bowl. He's dogged by a mean-spirited journalist from Cleveland, a man who not only branded him as the worst goat in sports ever, but followed him to Italy to report on how far he has fallen.

The book works because Rick is a delightful rogue. He's self-absorbed, and he doesn't care if the women he beds are married or not, but he's true to his team and to his sport. The outcome is all but preordained from the beginning, but it's a pleasant enough ride, if a little high in caloric content.