playing for pizza by John Grisham

During the 14-hour drive from Seattle to Berkeley, we listened to John Grisham’s Playing for Pizza.  The book is trite, cliché, and melodramatic, but also very enjoyable.  Grisham really loves Italy and the book is a gushing tourist’s love of the country, the culture, and all the tourist attractions.  The cardboard NFL characters and shallow protagonist are minor distractions from a good story.  I recently started learning about football because my youngest son is playing in the local pee-wee program.  The picture Grisham paints of the NFL from a third-string quarterback’s perspective is therefore more interesting to me than it would have been if I did not care about the game.  The key to the sport, as Grisham points out repeatedly through the action in the book, is the rough, barbaric, “killer” hitting.  When the quarterback chooses to go out and hit defenders or take hits to make plays, his team wins.  When he tucks and runs, or throws poorly under pressure, his team loses.  The sport, no matter which league or level of play, is about hitting, coaching, and injuries.