You Gotta Play Hurt
by Dan Jenkins
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From the author of Semi-Tough comes a hilarious novel chronicling one year in the life of irreverent sports columnist Jim Tom Pinch. ​ Jim Tom Pinch is a unabashed sportswriter who has followed around and reported on too many blonde-haired skiers, basketball players with names like Potatus Fry, and Russian figure skaters who want to know how much a house with a toilet costs in America. Now he tells the story of a year of romance, cursing, bimbos, touchdowns, pandering, padded expense show more accountsÂ--from the Olympics to the Indy 500 to the heavyweight championship--a year that will leave neither Jim Tom nor the wide world of sports the same. "Bawdy, bitter, very funny...Jenkins's farewell salute to big-time sportswriting is a tell-all novel that deflates the hype around each and every event, from the Olympics to the Kentucky Derby to Wimbledon (Kirkus Reviews). show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Jim Tom Pinch gets center stage this time, in a humorous (and possibly libelous) look at sports writing. Jim Tom writes for a weekly sports magazine that is not SI. We learn about the upper echelons of magazine publishing from a distinctly sarcastic point of view. We also follow Jim Tom to several mega-events (The Masters, The NCAA basketball finals, The Super Bowl, The Olympics, etc.) and meet a number of unforgettable characters. A bit less lust than "Semi-Tough," a little bit more romance - although he underplays his feelings considerably. I love Jenkins' writing - and this one makes me laugh.
I don't collect autographs, but if I could have one book autographed, this would be the one. It's probably not nearly as good if you aren't a sportswriter, but I am, and I think it is brilliant.
I thought it was really good, quite hilarious.
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Author Information
30+ Works 1,309 Members
Dan Thomas Jenkins was born in Fort Worth, Texas on December 2, 1928. He graduated from Texas Christian University. In the mid-1950s, he became a writer and editor at The Fort Worth Press. He was promoted to sports editor before joining Sports Illustrated in 1962, where his main beats were golf and college football. His first novel, Semi-Tough, show more was published in 1972 and adapted into a movie in 1978. His other novels included Dead Solid Perfect, Baja Oklahoma, You Gotta Play Hurt, and Limo written with Bud Shrake. His memoir, His Ownself: A Semi-Memoir, was published in 2014. He later wrote for Playboy and was a senior writer for Golf Digest. He died on March 7, 2019 at the age of 90. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- You Gotta Play Hurt
- Original publication date
- 1991
- People/Characters
- Jim Tom Pinch; Bryce Wilcox; Christine Thorne; Nell Woodruff; Ralph Webber; Jeannie Slay (show all 9); Fenton Boles; Les Padgett; T. J. Lambert
- Important places
- New York, New York, USA; Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Fort Worth, Texas, USA; Augusta, Georgia, USA; Louisville, Kentucky, USA (show all 24); Indianapolis, Indiana, USA; London, England, UK; St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, UK; Paris, France; Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Dallas, Texas, USA; Austria; France; United Kingdom; USA; England, UK; Scotland, UK; Georgia, USA; Indiana, USA; Kentucky, USA; New York, USA; Texas, USA
- Important events
- NCAA Basketball Tournament; Masters Golf Tournament; Kentucky Derby; Indianapolis 500 Auto Race; Wimbledon Tennis Tournament; Olympic Games (show all 8); World Series; Super Bowl
- Dedication
- To the memory of Andre Laguerre, last of a breed - a writer's Managing Editor.
- First words
- Here's how I want the phony little conniving, no-talent, preppiewad asshole of a editor to die: I lace his decaf with Seconal and strap him down in such a way that his head is fastened to my desk and I thump him at cheery in... (show all)tervals with the carriage on my Olympia standard.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)So it was happy endings all around, the only known happy endings in the modern history of magazine journalism, and I said to Wayne one night in the neighborood tavern that if Nell could see to it that my column went another three whole months without a parenthesis in the lead, I just might marry that girl.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 108
- Popularity
- 300,255
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (4.21)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 7
- ASINs
- 3
