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

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.

Given all that's changed since when the book was written and today - for baseball, for the Red Sox, and for the author - it's well worth dusting this book off the shelf and appreciating just how good Bill Simmons was as a columnist in the late 1990s/early 2000s. I loved the ESPN Page 2 website, which has never been adequately replicated to this day, and the columns that make up this book were Simmons on this site at his absolute best - passionate, opinionated, blending a love of sports with relatable pop culture. He was such a great columnist that it was a shame when he graduated into other media and left the writing behind. I wasn't a Boston sports fan but you could relate to his passion for these teams. Well worth buying if you remember those days scrolling the Page 2 website for Bill Simmons' columns, or for the Red Sox fan in your life. Strongly recommend!

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!

I was actually reading one of the classics received by my sister and brother-in-law (both teachers) when this book arrived in the mail...needless to say, the classic sat and gathered dust while I tore through the whole book without stopping. If you a sports fan and/or pop culture fan, you will find this book extremely entertaining. Even if you don't know the finer points of baseball, or the gruesome details of the Red Sox's struggles before winning the big one, this book will still keep you riveted and laughing long after your first web search for some of the more obscure movie star and sports star references. No longer a hidden gem, Bill Simmons has made his mark and is becoming a household name, and has drawn in non-sports fans to join his die-hard New England followers. If you are already a big sports fan, then you probably don't need to read this review as you already have the book in your possession...

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.

thx

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.