Bleachers

If you're looking for a book about a bunch of stereotypical "all-American" jocks who peaked in high school then you've definitely come to the right place... I actually feel sorry for the characters in this book. Not because of the loss of their beloved coach but because they're all so stuck in the past that they don't have futures. I think to be 30+ years old and still longing for your high-school glory days is just sad.

Now a few words about Coach Rake...
I firmly believe that he was a horrible, horrible man. He treated everyone in his life poorly especially the football players. He was cold and mean and all of the players admitted to strongly disliking, sometimes even hating him. His poor treatment of his football players even results show more in severe physical injury and death. He was even fired for it. Yet he was still idolized and called a hero and treated like such. I know if I had a coach that treated me this way, I wouldn't keep playing and definitely wouldn't attend his funeral.... show less

John Grisham is one of my favourite Author's, always clever intelligent well written stories, this however is quite a departure from his usual fare. Nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed it and don't mind admitting it brought a lump to my throat and tears to the eyes of this grumpy old Yorkshireman. You don't have to understand American football to enjoy it, but it helps. Totally engaging character driven quick read about small town America.
Completely recommended.

I enjoy JG's stories but this one focused a lot on guys reminiscing about the American football days and on field events. This became boring for someone who doesn't know anything about the sport. But the character development was well done.

It’s been 15 years since high school graduation, and Neely Crenshaw and his former football teammates have returned to Messina, Texas, to hold a vigil for their former coach, Eddie Rake. As in many small, rural towns in the US, football reigns supreme in Messina, and the local football stars are venerated as heroes. And although Eddie Rake had been a dominant influence in their young lives, he was both loved and hated. Neal and the others must come to grips with their conflicting feelings about Rake, and about the turns their lives have taken since graduation – in Neely’s case, the loss of the high school girlfriend whom he still loves, and his failed career in the NFL. At the heart of the tale is a mystery that none of the show more players have ever revealed – as to what happened the night of their most impressive victory, when the angry Messina players banned Rake and the other coaches from the field and played the game without their direction.

In the following passage, Neely has returned to the high school, while classes are in session.

A loud bell, one that sounded so familiar, erupted nearby and jolted Neely back to the reality that he was trespassing 15 years after his time. The halls were alive with students pushing, yelling, slamming lockers, releasing their hormones and testosterone that had been suppressed for the past fifty minutes. No one recognized Neely.

A large, muscled player with a very thick neck almost bumped into him. He wore a green-and-white Spartan letterman's jacket, a status symbol with no equal in Messina. He had the customary strut of someone who owned the hall, which he did, if only briefly. The girls smiled at him. The other boys gave him room.

"Come back in a few years, big boy, and they will not know your name" Neal thought. Your fabulous career will be a footnote. All the cute little girls will be mothers. The green jacket will still be a source of great personal pride, but you won't be able to wear it. High school stuff. Kid stuff.

Why was it so important back then?

Neely suddenly felt very old. He ducked through the crowd and left the school.

Bleachers is a sensitive, enthralling novella, one that captured and kept my attention. Its theme and tone is very different in Grisham’s legal novels, reflecting the virtuosity of this skillful and entertaining writer. show less

“Bleachers” by John Grisham

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
Copyright: 2003, Published by Penguin Random House. Available in print (163 pages), digital (242 pages), & audiobook (4 hours, 19 min.). (No film)

CHARACTERS: (Not Comprehensive)
Neely Crenshaw – (Protagonist) Fifteen years ago, Neely’s number 19 was retired from the Messina High School’s Spartan football team in which he was the captain, and he hasn’t returned to his home town until now, at which time he and fellow former Spartans review the effect the coach has had on their lives, as they wait through the Coach's terminal stage of life to memorialize him at his passing.
Paul Curry – Formerly a receiver and co-captain on the Spartan’s football team. Returned to Messina to show more honor coach Rake.
Silo Mooney – Currently involved in criminal activities, Silo was a particularly aggressive player on the Spartan football team with Neely and Paul and a handful of other players from their team, and others, and has joined the gathering at the Rake football field in town at the end of Coach Rake's life.
Coach Eddie Rake – A militant coach for the Spartans for 34 years who the town had worshiped until a player died of heat exhaustion and Coach Rake was fired, whereupon he turned to church work, opening his home to abused children.
Cameron Lane – Neely’s former girlfriend whom he discarded for a sexier girl, and now, has long regretted.

SERIES:
No

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
SELECTED:
This was the next in line of Grisham’s novels, in the order of publication, so, though neither I, nor my husband who listens to Grisham’s books with me, are followers of football, we figured 4 hours wasn’t too long to hear about the subject.
ABOUT:
Neely Crenshaw, and many former Spartans football players, visit Messina where they were members of the high school Spartan football team under Coach Rake, a coach they’d all loathed and admired depending on the coach’s mood and the situation. His words had returned to them through the last 15 years since they had left, either when courage was needed, or when depression was indulged.
OVERALL OPINION:
Grisham is such a good writer, that he made this topic that I typically find boring; interesting, and moving.
For me, it posits the question of whether a good team requires a harsh master; a philosophy I don’t endorse, but maybe that’s part of why I don’t care for competitive sports. They're all about discipline, grit, violence, glory, vanity, and winning, most of which I find contrary to my preferred mode of life that employs self-rule, compassion, empathy, and goodwill.

AUTHOR:
John Grisham: (From Wikipedia-most recent update March 27, 2025.)
“John Ray Grisham Jr. (/ˈɡrɪʃəm/; born February 8, 1955)[1][2] is an American novelist, lawyer, and former member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, known for his best-selling legal thrillers. According to the American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 37 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide.[3] Along with Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling, Grisham is one of only three anglophone authors to have sold two million copies on the first printing.[4][5]”

NARRATOR(S):
John Grisham
*ME: For those who do not listen much to fiction audiobooks, you might think that OF COURSE an author is going to be an excellent reader. S/HE knows the emphasis s/he intended in her/his dialogue. That’s not always true though. In fact, I have found most fiction authors to be poor actors, but Grisham isn’t one of them. He does an excellent narration!

GENRE:
Sports Fiction; Football

SUBJECTS (Not comprehensive):
Football; Mentors; Players; Teams; Death; Hero worship; Small towns

Primary TIME:
1987; 2002

LOCATION:
Messina (Maryland?)

DEDICATION:
“For
Ty, and the wonderful kids
he played high school football with;
their superb coach;
and the memories of two state titles”

EXCERPT from Chapter 1
“When he was a boy, his father had kept him away from the north end. “Those county people” down there were drinking and sometimes fighting and they yelled foul language at the officials. A few years later, number 19 adored the racket made by those county people, and they certainly adored him.
The bleachers were silent now, waiting. He moved slowly down the sideline, hands stuck deep in his pockets, a forgotten hero whose star had faded so quickly. The Messina quarterback for three seasons. Over a hundred touchdowns. He’d never lost on this field. The games came back to him, though he tried to block them out. Those days were gone, he told himself for the hundredth time. Long gone.
In the south end zone the boosters had erected a giant scoreboard, and mounted around it on large white placards with bold green lettering was the history of Messina football. And thus the history of the town. Undefeated seasons in 1960 and 1961, when Rake was not yet thirty years old. Then in 1964 The Streak began, with perfect seasons for the rest of that decade and into the next. A month after Neely was born in 1970, Messina lost to South Wayne in the state championship, and The Streak was over. Eighty-four wins in a row, a national record at that time, and Eddie Rake was a legend at the age of thirty-nine.
Neely’s father had told him of the unspeakable gloom that engulfed the town in the days after that loss. As if eighty-four straight victories were not enough. It was a miserable winter, but Messina endured. Next season, Rake’s boys went 13–0 and slaughtered South Wayne for the state title. Other state championships followed, in ’74, ’75, and ’79.
Then the drought. From 1980 until 1987, Neely’s senior year, Messina went undefeated each season, easily won its conference and playoffs, only to lose in the state finals. There was discontent in Messina. The locals in the coffee shops were not happy. The old-timers longed for the days of The Streak. Some school in California won ninety in a row and the entire town of Messina was offended.
To the left of the scoreboard, on green placards with white lettering, were the tributes to the greatest of all Messina heroes. Seven numbers had been retired, with Neely’s 19 being the last. Next to it was number 56, worn by Jesse Trapp, a linebacker who played briefly at Miami then went to prison. In 1974, Rake had retired number 81, worn by Roman Armstead, the only Messina Spartan to play in the NFL.
Beyond the south end zone was a field house that any small college would envy. It had a weight room and lockers and a visitors’ dressing room with carpet and showers. It too was built by the boosters after an intense capital campaign that lasted one winter and consumed the entire town. No expense was spared, not for the Messina Spartans football team. Coach Rake wanted weights and lockers and coaches’ offices, and the boosters practically forgot about Christmas.
There was something different now, something Neely had not seen before. Just past the gate that led to the field house there was a monument with a brick base and a bronze bust on it. Neely walked over to take a look. It was Rake, an oversized Rake with wrinkles on the forehead and the familiar scowl around the eyes, yet just a hint of a smile. He wore the same weathered Messina cap he’d worn for decades. A bronze Eddie Rake, at fifty, not the old man of seventy. Under it was a plaque with a glowing narrative, including the details that almost anyone on the streets of Messina could rattle off from memory—thirty-four years as Coach of the Spartans, 418 wins, 62 losses, 13 state titles, and from 1964 to 1970 an undefeated streak that ended at 84.
It was an altar, and Neely could see the Spartans bowing before it as they made their way onto the field each Friday night.
The wind picked up and scattered leaves in front of Neely. Practice was over and the soiled and sweaty players were trudging toward the field house. He didn’t want to be seen, so he walked down the track and through a gate. He climbed up thirty rows and sat all alone in the bleachers, high above Rake Field with a view of the valley to the east. Church steeples rose above the gold and scarlet trees of Messina in the distance. The steeple on the far left belonged to the Methodist church, and a block behind it, unseen from the bleachers, was a handsome two-story home the town had given to Eddie Rake on his fiftieth birthday.
And in that home Miss Lila and her three daughters and all the rest of the Rakes were now gathered, waiting for the Coach to take his last breath. No doubt the house was full of friends, too, with trays of food covering the tables and flowers stacked everywhere.
Were any former players there? Neely thought not.“

RATING:
5 stars.

STARTED-FINISHED
3/28/2025 - 3/29/2025 show less

There is no doubt that Bleachers is not your typical John Grisham book. There is no legal intrigue. There are no courtroom heroics. Nobody is murdered. However, there is a good story here. At 163 pages, this book is closer to a novella than to a novel in length. I read the entire story in one day (I know, pretty lame) and it was a fun read. The story revolves around the return of football star Neely Crenshaw to his home town because of the impending death of his football coach Eddie Rake. Coach Rake made himself a town legend, but a controversial legend to be sure. Players from generations of teams migrate back to the field they played on – each for their own reason - to tell stories of their time in the program, both good and bad. show more Some see Rake as a hero while others can’t shake the man’s obvious flaws. But the real story is Neely trying to come to grips with his relationship with Rake – whether to hate him or respect him and the ‘incident’ kept a secret for 15 years – and the town’s reverence for both Rake and Neely over a ‘silly game.’ The book shines a light on the way sports can become far more than just sport and how people come to grips with their past when they are forced to come back to it. I think Grisham was wise to have written the story as such a short piece. It would have dragged if he attempted to turn it into a 350-page novel. But as it stands, it is a quick, fun read and I really enjoyed characters and the story. show less

I jumped into this one looking for a thriller and found...well...not a thriller. No bodies, cover-ups, or government corruption - at least in the traditional sense. A man does die, long-held secrets are revealed and the steamy underbelly of championship football is aired. Grisham takes a break from his usual genre to provide us with a sensitive look into the rough and tumble world of high school football and the incredible bonding experience of playing for a charismatic coach in a small city of rabid fans. Generations of players - cops, criminals, bankers, and gay book sellers - meet on the high school bleachers to relive old games, gossip, and come to terms with their own feelings about The Coach who is on the edge of death from show more cancer. As someone who went to OSU during the heyday of Woody Hayes, I have some insight into the phenomenon. This was an interesting exercise - not what I expected - but interesting. show less