Now I Can Die in Peace: How The Sports Guy Found Salvation Thanks to the World Champion (Twice!) Red Sox Paperback – Illustrated, 24 Mar. 2009

thx

Una muy buena recomendación para aquellos que buscan libros en un idioma diferente al español. Bill Simmons te mantiene sonriendo con su divertido estilo.

The book was excellent! and the price was great.

Following the 2004 season, The Sports Guy wrote the best of the many books about the Red Sox championship run. In preparation for opening day of 2009, he has revised it to include 100 pages of updated columns.Simmons starts the new section with an analysis of how Sox fans confronted a new and uncursed existence. He asks "What happens when your identity gets stripped away, when you get the chance to start from scratch?" He follows this with: a comparison of Larry Bird and Big Papi, coverage of the Dice-K acquisition, the 2007 championship, the Rocket and the Roids, a defense of Manny being Manny and the 2008 loss to the Rays. Through it all, Simmons writing is more about what it is to be a fan than it is about the team or the game.If you strip away the occassionally on target pop culture references and the more accurately directed humor, this book is the story of the love affair of Simmons, his family and his city for a team. (Part of that sentence is stolen from Ken Coleman's 1967 Impossible Dream narration.) The Sports Guy proudly wears his passion on his sleeve: "I think like a fan, write like a fan and try like hell to keep it that way." It is a lifelong relationship: "You love sports most when you are 16, then you love it a little less every year."Reading these columns, another diehard instinctively feels an affinity for Simmons and appreciates his commitment, knowledge and intermittant suffering. This is made easier because the author often recognizes when he has stepped across the line that separates the healthfully obsessed from the not quite well (One of his footnotes points out, "This paragraph made me sound like an a**hole.") He doesn't always know when he is wandering on the borderline of the geek but that lack of concern and authenticity is part of his charm. He is, above all else, one of us.In The Natural, Robert Redford's Roy Hobbs character asks the sportswriter played by Robert Duvall if he ever played the game. The answer: "No. But I made it more fun to watch." So does Simmons. (This is my attempt at pop culture relevance.) In the 70s and 80s, I didn't consider a Sox season over until I had read what Roger Angell and Peter Gammons wrote about it. That mantle has passed to Simmons. And, apparently, he is not going to disappoint. His plan is to "re-release this book with more chapters every few years, kinda like what God did with the bible."Keep releasing them. We'll keep reading.

Bill Simmons ist der SportsGuy, ein Kolumnist für den amerikanischen TV-Branchenriesen ESPN. Das besondere an seinen Beiträgen ist seine Perspektive: Er nimmt keine neutrale Journalistenrolle ein, sondern schreibt aus seiner Perspektive als Fan von nebenan (der er wahrscheinlich auch wirklich ist). Dabei geht es nicht nur um rein sportliche Dinge, sondern auch um das zweitliebste Hobby eines Fans, nämlich das Fernsehen, aber auch um die Diskussionen mit seiner nicht ganz so sportbegeisterten Frau.Gleichzeitig ist er aber vor allem auch ein lebenslanger Fan seiner Boston Red Sox, dem Baseballteam seiner Heimatstadt. Die Red Sox hatten 2004 eine 86-jährige Serie von Pleiten, Pech und Pannen hinter sich, in der sie durch Pech und Unvermögen immer wieder die Meisterschaft verspielt hatten.Bill Simmons beschreibt in seinem einzigartigen Stil die Achterbahnfahrt seiner Gefühle dieser magischen Saison, in der die Red Sox den Fluch durchbrechen und erstmals wieder Meister werden. Dies gelingt ihm, indem er oftmals die Originalartikel dieser Zeit aus der ESPN-Welt übernimmt.Fazit: Für Baseballfans (und insbesondere für Fans der Boston Red Sox) eine absolute Pflichtlektüre, aber auch für "Nicht-Baseballer" ein absolut kurzweiliges Werk - übrigens in leicht zu lesendem Englisch. Ich habe das Buch an zwei Abenden "verschlungen"!

Gutes Buch, welches die Gedanken eines Fans toll aufgreift. Man bekommt die gleiche Gänsehaut, die man auch vor 11 Jahren bekam. Besondere Kenntnisse der genauen Ereignisse sind nicht nötig, da überall Fußnoten sind.