John Grisham’s Playing for Pizza does not take a flattering view of Cleveland, particularly its perennially down-in-the-dumps football team, the Browns. These are the same Browns who haven’t won a league championship since 1964, the Browns whose previous owner, Art Modell, may he burn in hell, skulked off in the night with the team in 1995, the Browns who have had one scant winning season since being reincarnated in 1999, who show signs of possibly winning half its games this year and that’s considered a good thing. Publishers Weekly describes Playing for Pizza “the author’s love letter to Italy.” He gave Cleveland the bird.
Football is the theme of this book, Grisham’s 230th (We exaggerate, but only slightly). Grisham played baseball and football, and aspired to be a professional athlete, according to his bio – and when you play at that high school competitive level, but with little hope of making a career out of it or achieving fame and fortune, you play for the passion for the game. You play, and you play hard, because you love the game. In football, it’s pure competition, mano y mano times 11. Plus special teams and substitutions. But let’s not get distracted here.
Back to football and Cleveland. These two entities have a long and sometimes discordant history. Art Modell fired the mascot, for cryin’ out loud! OK, maybe the “Brownie” of the early ’60s, a very nonthreatening elfin figure, was not the most appropriate image for a bunch of tough guys, but he looks pretty cool on the retro NFL “official” jackets. Cleveland has a long and painful history of spectacular failures and close encounters with greatness. The Drive. The Shot. The Sweep. Elway, Elway, John freakin’ Elway. Michael dag-blasted Jordan. Manny (it’s just Manny being Manny) bleeping Ramirez.
Jim Brown, whom the team was not named for, was the greatest running back to ever play the game. Period. Stop your debate now. Barry Sanders was really, really good. So were Gale Sayers, “Sweetness” – aka Walter Payton – and probably a dozen other immortals worthy of mention. Adrian Peterson may one day be worthy. Emmit Smith had more yards (and probably a better offensive line) and the adoration of many fantasy football team owners. But he wasn’t Jim Brown. They didn’t have fantasy football when Jim Brown played. They had players who fantasized about being as good as Jim Brown. There are linebackers in the game now who still fear him, afraid he might come back and run over them. Yeah, he was that good.
The team was named for Paul Brown (or was it their hideous uniforms?), who was a pioneering NFL coach, who was unceremoniously dumped by the previously mentioned and much-loathed owner Art Modell, who (Brown, that is, not Modell) subsequently founded the Cincinnati Bengals, frequently referred to as “Bungles” for their many years of futility that rival only those of the Browns. Or maybe the St. Louis/Arizona Cardinals (that is, until the 2009 Super Bowl).
Consider that the Browns’ dominant colors are brown, white and, occasionally, orange. Nice. No wonder Steelers fans have an overdeveloped sense of superiority. That’s saying something for a team with bilious puke-yellow-and-black unis. Only thing uglier is the Michigan uniform (They call their bilious yellow “maize”).
Grisham’s central character in Playing for Pizza, Rick Dockery, begins the day as a backup quarterback, and not a very good one, for the Super Bowl-bound Browns. That’s right, Super Bowl-bound Browns. We’re not making this up, Grisham is. But I like the way it rolls off the tongue. So the first two QBs get smushed, and in comes our would-be hero. Well, let’s just say things don’t turn out so well: Our hero ends up with a concussion and a pink slip and a mob of angry, drunk fans who want to lynch him. No Super Bowl.
So off to Italy he goes. Yes, to play football Americano. To the rest of the world, football is what we call soccer. Most popular game in the world. Except in the United States.
There is an NFL Europe developmental league, generally intended for up-and-coming prospects for the NFL, not washed-up NFL has-beens (Tthat would be Rick). Grisham notes at the end of the book that, while there are real elements to his story, he didn’t hesitate to make stuff up when it was convenient. It is fiction, after all! We call that artistic license.
Back to the unflattering view of Cleveland.
Our would-be hero bolts out of Cleveland, heading south on I-71 (lucky he didn’t get caught in the typical January blizzard/sleet/freezing-rain storm that always seems to hit right around Mansfield) and just kept heading south.
At this point his agent is eager to dump him. A former star QB at Iowa (OK, that’s a stretch – star quarterbacks come from USC, Notre Dame, Miami and occasionally Michigan and Ohio State), he can’t even go back to Des Moines, or Ames or Iowa City, for fear of embarrassing (or endangering) his parents. So when his agent calls with a chance to get the heck out of Dodge, he takes it. And so our education in Italiano begins.
Ciao!
The rest of the book is part travelogue, part foodie love story, part jockstrap soap opera. And, because this is a Grisham book, a little bit of legal intrigue.
WARM AND FUZZY MOMENT WARNING. SPOILER ALERT!
It’s also where Rick finds a bunch of guys who play football for the love of the game, the competition, the camaraderie. He rediscovers playing the game for the sake of playing the game, makes some great friends, discovers fabulous cuisine and actually commits to a monogamous relationship. It’s a fish-out-of-water story, and Rick grows lungs.
END WARM AND FUZZY MOMENT WARNING. END SPOILER ALERT.
In the end, Playing for Pizza was a nice, breezy read – a little predictable, but that’s OK with me. Grisham’s a fine storyteller, and that’s what he does here.
Dave Wilson is editorial director at DelMio.com and writes Our Daily Red, which is rarely daily and only occasionally red. Editor’s note: This originally posted in November of 2007, and made the move to the new DelMio site a bit after the fact.
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