Now I Can Die in Peace: How The Sports Guy Found Salvation Thanks to the World Champion (Twice!) Red Sox - Softcover

Simmons, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933060727 ISBN 13: 9781933060729

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2009

Synopsis

ESPN's beloved Sports Guy replays the years leading up to the Boston Red Sox historic championship season and says goodbye to a lifetime of suffering. At least for now."The Red Sox won the World Series." To Citizen No. 1 of Red Sox Nation, those seven words meant "No more 1918 chants. No more smug glances from Yankee fans. No more worrying about living an entire life -- that's 80 years, followed by death without seeing the Red Sox win a Series." 
But once he was able to type those life-changing words, Bill Simmons decided to look back at his Sports Guy columns for the last five years to find out how the miracle came to pass. And that's where the trouble began. Why didnt he see it coming? Why didn't it happen sooner? What was the key deal, the lucky move, the funny bounce, the sign from above that he failed to spot? Pretty soon, The Sports Guy was second-guessing himself, rewriting history, sniping at his own past predictions, pounding the table -- that's what sports guys do, right And doing so, he let himself get sidetracked by the suffering of the Boston Bruins, frustrated by the false promise of the Celtics -- and driven into a state of ecstasy by the dynastic New England Patriots. 
The result is Now I Can Die in Peace, a hilarious and fresh new look at some of the best sportswriting in America, with sharp critical commentary (and fresh insights) from the guy who wrote it in the first place.

About this title

About the Author:

Bill Simmons is the CEO of The Ringer and the New York Times bestselling author of Now I Can Die in Peace and The Book of Basketball.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Thirtysomething Simmons, author of the witty "Sports Guy" column on espn.com, tells of his life as a Red Sox fan in this hilarious, irreverent account. Simmons recalls reading the Boston Globe sports pages before he was in grade school, taking in as much Red Sox lore as he could garner. When he came across a copy of Al Hirschberg's What's the Matter with the Red Sox? in first grade, he didn't want to believe that his beloved team was cursed. But as owners and players made one bonehead move after another, he could only sit back and wallow in the collective suffering. The reversal of the curse began, according to Simmons, with the acquisition of Pedro Martinez, the first sign that the front office was after young players approaching their prime rather than looking back at it. From that fateful day in 1997, Simmons, blending his reprinted columns with new material, tracks the essential moves that brought the Sox to the 2004 World Series and made possible their sweep of the Cardinals in four games. (The last 100 pages or so are a diary of the season's final weeks, the play-offs, and the series). The footnotes, cleverly arranged like sidebars, make for fascinating reading in and of themselves. Whether familiar with "Sports Guy" or not, readers will enjoy this refreshing, funny take on Boston's reversal of fortune. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1933060727
• ISBN 13: 9781933060729
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 468