DUKE CRAIG, TEN YEARS A PRO FOOTBALL STAR, is thirty-one. His body aches, his marriage is a mess but he still loves to win. He is clean-living, clean-thinking--and singleminded---a much admired hero of the football world. His teammates and next Sunday's game come first. Then he meets another woman.
Only a Game
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Book Description
DUKE CRAIG, TEN YEARS A PRO FOOTBALL STAR, is thirty-one. His body aches, his marriage is a mess but he still loves to win. He is clean-living, clean-thinking--and singleminded---a much admired hero of the football world. His teammates and next Sunday's game come first. Then he meets another woman.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This dark novel by the author of Prince of the City rings with authenticity...One of the top sports books of all time." --Sports Illustrated, Dec. 16, 2002
"A vivid picture of the pros--how they live, eat, think and suffer." --San Francisco Chronicle
"Daley writes of Duke's triumphs and disasters in a spare, terse prose that catches the hopped-up tempo of a world whose members live from Sunday to Sunday." --New York Times Book Review
"The story of an All-American, a dazzling halfback now 31, who is decent, shy and tremendously brilliant...then on the very first page of this moving novel he meets the other woman." --Boston Herald Traveler
"Sudden vivid shafts of light that will make the next football game you see a little more human. There are men in those astronaut suits, by God, who dream, bleed and have trouble picking up girls."
--Robert Lipsyte, Sports of the Times
"A vivid picture of the pros--how they live, eat, think and suffer." --San Francisco Chronicle
"Daley writes of Duke's triumphs and disasters in a spare, terse prose that catches the hopped-up tempo of a world whose members live from Sunday to Sunday." --New York Times Book Review
"The story of an All-American, a dazzling halfback now 31, who is decent, shy and tremendously brilliant...then on the very first page of this moving novel he meets the other woman." --Boston Herald Traveler
"Sudden vivid shafts of light that will make the next football game you see a little more human. There are men in those astronaut suits, by God, who dream, bleed and have trouble picking up girls."
--Robert Lipsyte, Sports of the Times
From the Author
I was 23 years old when I was named publicity director of the Giants. It was my first job and I was the first full time publicity man the team had ever had or needed. The biggest home crowd that first year was 30,000. No one was much interested in pro football yet and my principal job seemed to be to buy liquor for the coaches' meetings after practice, meetings I always sat in on. I was the same age as most of the young players. I went to the training camps with them, rode the trains and planes with them, played cards with them at night. Some became close friends. My eyes and ears were open at all times, and everything that went in there stuck. And so a number of the scenes in ONLY A GAME actually happened. That is what a writer does. He uses real events until they run out and invents only then. Unfortunately, some of the more intimate scenes which I thought were imaginary, invented by me, had, in real life, actually happened. Which, when the book came out, ruined me with the Giants' management, and perhaps with some of the players also. Well---
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Robert Daley At His Romantic Best,
This review is from: Only a Game (Kindle Edition)
WHEN I FINISHED READING BOB DALEY'S Only A Game I WAS SAD. NOT ONLY BECAUSE THE BOOK WAS OVER, BUT BECAUSE DUKE CRAIG AND MARGIE BERGER WERE VICTIMS OF FORCES MORE POWERFUL THAN THEMSELVES, NOT UNLIKE Romeo and Juliet.
LIKE SHAKESPEARE'S LOVE TRAGEDY, ONE FEELS THEIR ACCUMULATING SORROW, BUT WE'RE ALSO DISTRACTED BY THE EQUALLY POWERFUL STORY BEING PLAYED OUT ON THE FIELD WHERE DUKE'S OTHER LOVE, PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL, IS ALSO COMING TO ITS DRAMATIC CONCLUSION. WE'RE TEMPTED TO STOP FOLLOWING THESE STAR-CROSSED LOVERS, BUT WE'RE UNABLE TO. WE WANT THEM TO LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER AND DALEY KEEPS US GLUED TO HIS BOOK UNTIL WE LEARN IF THEY DO. John Robben
5.0 out of 5 stars
Robert Daley At His Romantic Best!,
This review is from: Only a Game (Paperback)
WHEN I FINISHED READING BOB DALEY'S Only A Game I WAS SAD. NOT ONLY BECAUSE THE BOOK WAS OVER, BUT BECAUSE DUKE CRAIG AND MARGIE BERGER WERE VICTIMS OF FORCES MORE POWERFUL THAN THEMSELVES, NOT UNLIKE Romeo and Juliet.
LIKE SHAKESPEARE'S LOVE TRAGEDY, ONE FEELS THEIR ACCUMULATING SORROW, BUT WE'RE ALSO DISTRACTED BY THE EQUALLY POWERFUL STORY BEING PLAYED OUT ON THE FIELD WHERE DUKE'S OTHER LOVE, PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL, IS ALSO COMING TO ITS DRAMATIC CONCLUSION. WE'RE TEMPTED TO STOP FOLLOWING THESE STAR-CROSSED LOVERS, BUT WE'RE UNABLE TO. WE WANT THEM TO LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER AND DALEY KEEPS US GLUED TO HIS BOOK UNTIL WE LEARN IF THEY DO.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Only a Game,
By Parisonn of Atlantis (Minneapolis, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Only a Game (Kindle Edition)
Robert Daley's six years as publicity director for the New York Giants pay off in this well-grounded novel about an aging halfback who feels his career, image, and sense of personal satisfaction slipping away. That this loss is dramatized through an extra-marital affair seems convenient and melodramatic, especially since the two women are superficially drawn, but the fading hero's sense of loss is acutely felt and the pro-football background of the pre-Super Bowl era is persuasively presented.
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