Road Swing [Hardcover]

Steve Rushin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 1998

On the eve of his thirtieth birthday, Steve Rushin decided he wanted to revisit the twin pursuits of his youth: epic car trips and an unhealthy obsession with sports. He had a desire to see French Lick, Indiana, the boyhood home of Larry Bird, to attend a Texas high school football game and to watch Louisville Sluggers being "Powerized"--whatever on Earth that means. So he got into his Japanese car and drove to American sports shrines for a year. "I was going to put my finger on the pulse of American sports, and I wanted that finger to be one of those giant, foam-rubber index fingers worn by pinhead fans across the land. So I joined Interstate 35 and traveled south out of Minneapolis in a cold gray mist. It was like driving into a sneeze. The radio reported ninety-four-mile-an-hour winds in southern Minnesota, as well as golf ball-, baseball-, and softball-sized hail. It was raining sporting goods, and I was following the perforated yellow line of the highway, like a trail of dripping ballpark nacho cheese, that would lead me to the soul of American sports--or whatever I was looking for."

Like a sports-addled Blue Highways, Road Swing is a hearty chunk of Americana, a travelogue about the places that are the soul of sports, and a reflection of those themes that are unique to the American character.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On the cusp of turning 30, Steve Rushin, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, sets out for a year on the road to scope out the odd and not-so-odd shrines that America's built for its fun and games. "I have no doubt," he writes in preparation for his journey, "that one can, through the keyhole of sports, see an entire culture, even one as far-flung and diverse as American culture." He didn't just want to see, though. "I wanted to put my finger on the pulse of American sports, and I wanted that finger to be one of those giant foam-rubber index fingers worn by pinhead fans across the land." His wit sharpened to a point, he sets out to scour the landscape with only the barest of necessities: 36 compact discs, a set of golf clubs, and a dozen rank cigars.

By the time he returns, he's visited basketballer Larry Bird's boyhood home in French Lick, Indiana; paid a nocturnal visit to the "Field of Dreams"; looked up and called Cleveland Brown in the Cleveland phone book; had lunch with Lou Groza; played real golf at Tam O'Shanter in western Pennsylvania and miniature golf down South; and immersed himself in the Baseball Hall of Fame. If his journey--and there's much, much more to it--seems like a lark, it isn't. The trip changes him and his appreciation of the sports world he toils in. "I had set out to test the Shakespearean assertion," he writes, "that 'If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work.' ... In short, all my year was a playing holiday." It's also a marvelous series of pit stops recounted with real verve. "And I could now say, with absolute certainty, Shakespeare should have been so lucky." --Jeff Silverman

From Publishers Weekly

You don't have to like sports to appreciate this sidesplitting travelogue, a literary home run from Sports Illustrated's senior writer and one of the most agile essayists around. Laugh your way across America with Rushin as he follows the "perforated yellow line of the highway, like a trail of dripping nacho 'cheez,' " feeding his own inner bleacher-creature while seeking out the people, places and events that define American sports and culture. Rushin is amazingly adept at wandering aimlessly without losing direction. In Austin, Minn., home of Hormel Foods, he observes, "A can of Dinty Moore beef stew... is roughly the same size and weight as a shotput, if not nearly as flavorful," and discovers to his disappointment that he's a week late for the "Spam Walk for Health." In Cleveland, Ohio, he talks to a man named Cleveland Brown about the departure of the football team with the same name. At a monster truck rally in St. Louis, Rushin affectionately compares the sound of big trucks driving over small cars to "the sound a beer can makes when collapsing against one's forehead." Rushin makes a more poignant, though no less droll, comparison at the desolate, garbage-strewn roadside tomb of "the world's greatest athlete," Jim Thorpe, in the Pennsylvania town that bought the Native American's corpse as a tourist attraction: "I couldn't stop thinking of the seventies public-service commercial in which the old Indian sheds a single tear at the sight of litter." Rushin scores a hat trick with his self-deprecating humor, eye for detail and ability to connect intimately with the reader. And read this book if for nothing else than the descriptions of motels ("La Quinta being Spanish for 'next to Denny's' ").
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (October 20, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385482299
• ISBN-13: 978-0385482295
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,361,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Road Book Since Euricledes' Appian Way, November 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Road Swing (Hardcover)

Steve Rushin writes in a fever, like a sports-mad monologist trying to get in the last word with himself. His style has the heat and bite of great gossip, and his thinking makes it literature. Rushin's prose has a breezy, confidential rhythm that pulls us right into his head. A scary thought, that, but a richly rewarding one.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Road Trip Since Hope And Crosby Met Lamour, October 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Road Swing (Hardcover)

Steve Rushin is the funniest sportswriter ever, and the fourth funniest travel writer. I haven't stopped laughing since I picked up this book. I can't wait to actually read it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rushin runs out of gas, August 7, 2008

By 

Timothy R. Sullivan - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Road Swing: One Fan's Journey Into The Soul Of America's Sports (Paperback)

I've been wanting to read this for awhile, finally did and have mixed feelings about it, the same feelings I had about the author when he was with Sports Illustrated.

Though I miss Rushin's musings in SI (I wonder what he's doing now?), he often gave himself too much credit for his fancy word play and not enough credit for his ability to write excellent, insightful stories. Too often we're left with word play and no insight.

This book is classic Rushin: He's awesome in parts -- the details of the pool players, the story on the "Field of Dreams," and he really hits paydirt with the feature on Tim Couch and his town.

Sadly, he's more into detailing his hotel life, and worse yet, his tricky word play. On page 199 we read this, "How do you take your coffee?" a flight attendant asked. "Orally," I replied. By that time in the book, I was weary of this "Naked Gun" movie lines. At other times, he's very funny. Too often he's questioning bad spelling and grammar on signs instead of going into the personalities of people and the sports that they play.

When Rushin gets to the West Coast you can tell he's tired and I was fatigued with him. Showing typical East or Midwest bias, he barely writes about the West. When he gets to Portland, he doesn't talk about the city, only the rain and something about pro uniforms. His take on Spokane only refers to a story he wrote in Sports Illustrated. Rushin's car wasn't the only thing running out of gas, the writer was, too. He then talks of Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore ... uh, I thought this book was about sports?

I don't understand why Rushin mailed it in the last 50-75 pages. He had a great idea and then bailed on it, opting to write about pro sports, bad grammar, National Parks, the Super Bowl, his family, and ignorning the West Coast.

When I finished, I closed the book puzzled as to why a writer as gifted as Rushin too often plays away from his strengths and writes to his weaknesses.