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Loading... It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium: Football and the Game of Lifeby John Ed Bradley
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Really wonderful memoir of an American football player who played for LSU, the top football college in Louisiana, and absolutely football obsessed part of the world. For all the players it was such an intense experience that very many of them never really got over leaving it behind, and John Ed talks a lot about his struggles trying to come to terms with the experience. The book is a blend of these struggles and wonderful stories of his time as a player. Highly recommended. ( ) "Every time an artist showed you his work, he was really asking you a question, and the question was always the same: 'Am I any good?'" (Big Ed Stanton page 261) John Ed Bradley asked that question many times in this work. While he may not be convinced, the answer to his questions is a resounding, "Yes you are!" I watched John Ed Bradley and Big Ed Stanton and many other personalities in this book play or coach. I know many others vicariously as characters familiar to some I've known. Even the title rings nostalgically for me because there was a good while for which it seemed to hold (mostly) true. The proper time to play a game in Tiger Stadium (aka "Deaf Valley") was 7 or 7:30 p.m. after the usual humidity laden air had dropped its precipitation for the day. His use of interlaced vignettes pulls one into the story better than most novels ever do. We learn to know his parents, schoolmates, towns folk and teammates friends and admirers, and especially Coach Mac. John Ed Bradley shares the usually closed space behind the mask of masculine emotions, especially the doubts about measuring up to potential; to duty. no reviews | add a review
"A lyrical memoir . . . about his teammates, his coaches, his parents and the magnetic power of football in Louisiana."--NPR "The best sports book of the year."--Sports Illustrated Inspired by a classic essay about a visit to a dying coach, It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium explores in gorgeous detail the inescapable pull of college football--the cocky smiles behind the face masks, the two-a-day drills, the emotionally charged bus rides to the stadium, the curfew checks, the film-study sessions, the locker room antics, and the yawning void left in one's soul the moment the final whistle sounds. To understand why it's so painful to give up the game, you must first understand the intimacy of the huddle. "It ends for everybody," writes John Ed Bradley, "and then it starts all over again, in ways you never anticipated. Marty Dufresne sits in his wheelchair listening to the Tiger fight song . . . Ramsey Darder endures prison by playing the games over in his head . . . Big Ed Stanton never took up the game of golf, and yet he rides the streets of Bayou Vista in a cart nearly identical to Coach Mac's, recalling the one time the old man invited him for a ride." Far more than a memoir, It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium is a brutally honest, profoundly moving look at what it means to surrender something you love. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)796.332092The arts Recreational and performing arts Athletic and outdoor sports and games Ball sports Inflated ball driven by the foot American football Biography And History BiographyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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