Now I Can Die in Peace: How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, with a Little Help From Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank, and the 2004 Red Sox [Hardcover]

Bill Simmons (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 1, 2005

ESPN's beloved Sports Guy replays the years leading up to the Boston Red Sox historic championship season and says goodbye to a lifetime of suffering. At least for now.

"The Red Sox won the World Series." To Citizen No. 1 of Red Sox Nation, those seven words meant "No more 1918 chants. No more smug glances from Yankee fans. No more worrying about living an entire life -- that's 80 years, followed by death without seeing the Red Sox win a Series."

But once he was able to type those life-changing words, Bill Simmons decided to look back at his Sports Guy columns for the last five years to find out how the miracle came to pass. And that's where the trouble began. Why didnt he see it coming? Why didn't it happen sooner? What was the key deal, the lucky move, the funny bounce, the sign from above that he failed to spot? Pretty soon, The Sports Guy was second-guessing himself, rewriting history, sniping at his own past predictions, pounding the table -- that's what sports guys do, right And doing so, he let himself get sidetracked by the suffering of the Boston Bruins, frustrated by the false promise of the Celtics -- and driven into a state of ecstasy by the dynastic New England Patriots.

The result is Now I Can Die in Peace, a hilarious and fresh new look at some of the best sportswriting in America, with sharp critical commentary (and fresh insights) from the guy who wrote it in the first place.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Thirtysomething Simmons, author of the witty "Sports Guy" column on espn.com, tells of his life as a Red Sox fan in this hilarious, irreverent account. Simmons recalls reading the Boston Globe sports pages before he was in grade school, taking in as much Red Sox lore as he could garner. When he came across a copy of Al Hirschberg's What's the Matter with the Red Sox? in first grade, he didn't want to believe that his beloved team was cursed. But as owners and players made one bonehead move after another, he could only sit back and wallow in the collective suffering. The reversal of the curse began, according to Simmons, with the acquisition of Pedro Martinez, the first sign that the front office was after young players approaching their prime rather than looking back at it. From that fateful day in 1997, Simmons, blending his reprinted columns with new material, tracks the essential moves that brought the Sox to the 2004 World Series and made possible their sweep of the Cardinals in four games. (The last 100 pages or so are a diary of the season's final weeks, the play-offs, and the series). The footnotes, cleverly arranged like sidebars, make for fascinating reading in and of themselves. Whether familiar with "Sports Guy" or not, readers will enjoy this refreshing, funny take on Boston's reversal of fortune. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Bill Simmons is the funniest sportswriter of his generation." -- Chuck Klosterman, author of Killing Yourself to Live

"Destination reading for anyone who worships at the twin altars of pop culture and sports." -- Entertainment Weekly --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: ESPN; First Edition edition (October 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933060050
• ISBN-13: 978-1933060057
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (115 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #598,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bill Simmons writes "The Sports Guy" column for ESPN.com's Page 2 and ESPN: The Magazine. He is the author of Now I Can Die In Peace, founded the award-winning bostonsportsguy.com website, and was a writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live. He commutes between his home in Los Angeles and Fenway Park.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 61 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Still Probably Worth A Read Even If You Have Read His Columns October 24, 2005

By K. Palmer VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I've read Bill Simmons' ESPN.com columns since they began in 2001. His ability to combine sports with pop culture references made him a unique writer and one who can be wildly fun to read as you never knew what he could come up with. One column may be a running diary of his fantasy league basketball draft while another may deal with using "The Godfather" quotes to summarize the baseball season.

Bill's new book contains columns that he wrote for ESPN.com as well as those written before that time dealing with his obsession with the Boston Red Sox and their attempt to win their first World Series since 1918. If you started reading Simmons on ESPN.com, you'll get about 100 or so pages of columns you've never read before (written prior to mid-2001). The remaining 250 pages will probably seem familiar to you as they all appeared on ESPN.com, but Bill has added footnotes along the edges with additional obsevations, witty comments and thoughts on how he feels about what he wrote at this point in time. He also has appeared to rework his columns, with the most notable change being that he has added considerable profanity to his ESPN.com columns (which was not there when originally published). I thought that was an interesting twist to his reworking of the material.

The ups and downs of the Red Sox, with the gut-wrenching loss in Game 7 of the ALCS against the Yankees in 2003 chronicled as well as the joy he experienced from his team finally winning it all in 2004. He covers all the emotions well. When his 2004 season columns were originally written, I was genuinely happy for him and the other Red Sox fans, as they had gone through a lot over the years.

I don't think Bill is quite as good of a writer as he was 3 or 4 years ago (when, as he would put it, he was throwing in the mid-90s), but this book does a pretty good case of showcasing his talent on a subject that he is passionate about. I still think it is worth the purchase even if you've read the original columns.

I hope Bill puts another collection together of his columns someday. I just hope it doesn't deal with the Patriots!

39 of 47 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Damn Sports Book Ever September 16, 2005

By Elizabeth Gordon

Format:Hardcover

By compiling five years worth of past articles written for ESPN's Page Two, Bill Simmons manages to write, re-write, comment upon, criticize, and yes-even argue with his infamous Sports Guy musings while telling the story of how the Red Sox finally won the World Series. This is no lazy rehash of old columns. His ingenious use of footnotes (there are at least 2 million or so per page) adds layers of "back story" to the plot. If you are a dedicated Sports Guy reader, you can skip re-reading all those columns again and go straight to the footnotes for his skewed hindsight and hilarious ramblings on serial killers, mullet haircuts, Hoover Dam ,and of course, the Yankees. If you've never read Simmons before, this book is a perfect introduction to the Sports Guy.

Rather than being the typical sports retrospective play-by-play of the 2004 World Series, Simmons manages to tell a very personal and very funny story about becoming and staying a true believer. Sure, sure-we all know the ending of this story-the Sox finally win. In Simmons' hands, the ending is hardly the point. Rather, it's the five-year ride he takes us on, with stops in Hollywood, Fenway, matrimony, and even fatherhood. It makes no difference if you love the Sox, hate the Yankees, or even care about sports. Read this book if you enjoy sharp, opinionated, fast moving, and funny writing.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Best Consumed Online And In Small Doses October 13, 2005

By Bay Area Book Fiend

Format:Hardcover

Reading the Sports Guy has always been a mixed experience for me. There are times when he makes me laugh out loud, but for every guffaw, there's an equal feeling that I've just spent five or so minutes of my life that I'll never get back. This book helped me understand why I have these feelings.

The pluses: There are some laugh out loud funny moments. And I enjoyed reading the earlier columns from the pre-ESPN days.

The minuses: 1. the 500 marginal "footnotes." They're not superfluous; in fact, as the book progresses, they're more readable than the original text itself. But the way they're placed along the page margins is very distracting; and more than that, as I continued reading, I concluded that they were an extremely lazy way of putting these columns into context. It's as though Simmons couldn't have been bothered to write short essays introducing each section, where he could have made these marginal thoughts into something special, because it would have required some real reflection and construction in his writing. Which brings me to...

2. Reading The Sports Guy in a concentrated dose in print instead of online two or three times a week is a very different experience, and what works as you're reading online over morning coffee doesn't carry over as well in print. Simmons's writing style can best be described as, "let me just throw everything up against the wall, and if some of it sticks, OK, and if none of it does, that's OK, too." The book made me realize just how much I've skimmed through the online columns.

And I agree with a previous reviewer: the typos, as well as factual errors make we wonder if anyone read galley proofs, or if everything was just downloaded as is.

And Simmons should re-read his own footnote 426 and take his own advice where his copious TV and movie references are concerned. If he is serious about being a good writer rather a purveyor of cheap yuks, he'll take his own advice.