They Don't Play Hockey in Heaven: A Dream, A Team, And My Comeback Season - Softcover

Baker, Ken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1592286054 ISBN 13: 9781592286058

Publisher: Lyons Press, 2004

Synopsis

Ken Baker wanted nothing more than to play ice hockey with the pros-until a brain tumor cut his dreams short while in college. After surgery and several years of rehab, Baker, who in high school was a top prospect for the U.S. Olympic team, put his successful journalism career on hold to attempt the seemingly impossible: a comeback.

He moved away from his family to become the third-string goalie for the Bakersfield Condors, an AA-level minor-league team in the dusty oil town of Bakersfield, California. At the age of thirty-one, Baker became the oldest rookie in all of pro-hockey, facing 1000-m.p.h. slap shots and long bus rides, hostile fans and cheap motel rooms, body bruises and battle-worn teammates.

From his visit to an NHL training camp to his first nerve-rattled minutes as a pro, Baker joins the rookies who still dream of making it to the Show, the veterans long past their prime, and the obsessive fans who keep them going. There's the coach who tests Baker at every turn; the troubled captain who gets arrested for battery on his wife; the former NHL goon who stages fights out of boredom; and the team's other goalies who eye the newcomer warily knowing there's only room for one of them in the net. Baker's pro-hockey adventure ends up teaching him nearly everything he will ever need to know about life.

About this title

About the Author

Ken Baker is the West Coast bureau chief for Us Weekly and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, Premiere, and ESPN the Magazine. A native of Buffalo, New York, Baker is also the author of the critically acclaimed Man Made: A Memoir of My Body. He has all his teeth.

From Publishers Weekly

Eight years after his college hockey career ended and two years after a successful brain surgery, Baker, a writer for U.S. Weekly, decided to try to play professional hockey for the first time. After working out at recreational rinks, he made the jump to a low-level minor-league team as an emergency goalie, in the oil-town of Bakersfield, Calif., (surprisingly, a hockey hotbed), for a team willing to take him on in the name of research. In a style that is equal parts George Plimpton-gonzo and Rocky Balboa-triumphalism, the author spends much of the book chronicling the culture of the team and his intense desire to play on it. Indeed, he gets almost no ice time; the story derives its suspense not from the question "how he will play?" but the question "will they ever let him play?". Yet Baker's account maintains a powerful narrative thrust, thanks to the neat structure of a professional sports season and the author's appealing psychological candor. Baker also shows great range-the characters on his team are colorful and the descriptions of life at the lowest echelons of professional sports are as poignant as they are startling. Though he lets in a few cheap lines (he has a tendency toward the maudlin as well as toward locker-room and self-help clichés, and he mentions his brain tumor so often it starts to feel calculating), the narrative remains touching and surprisingly effective.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1592286054
• ISBN 13: 9781592286058
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288