Description
Book SynopsisFrom the author of Paper Lion
It began as a fun filled stunt and came to a deeply hellish, nearly humiliating end. George Plimpton had the chance to answer every baseball fan's question: could I strike out a major league star? Out of My League chronicles what happened next as his inspired idea to get on the mound and pitch a few innings to the All-Stars of the American and National Leagues got seriously out of hand.
The original foray into participatory journalism that started it all, Out of my League announced George Plimpton as a giant of sports journalism, able to penetrate deep into the very spirit of sport, with his characteristic wit, charm and grace.
Trade ReviewBeautifully observed and incredibly conceived, this account of a self-imposed ordeal has the chilling quality of a true nightmare. It is the dark side of the moon of Walter Mitty -- Ernest Hemingway
A baseball book such as no one else ever wrote, and one of the best ever * New York Herald Tribune *
With his gentle, ironic tone, and unwillingness to take himself too seriously, along with Roger Angell, John Updike and Norman Mailer he made writing about sports something that mattered * Guardian *
What drives these books, and has made them so popular, is Plimpton’s continuous bond-making with the reader and the comedy inherent in his predicament. He is the Everyman, earnests and frail, wandering in a world of supermen, beset by fears of catastrophic violence and public humiliation, yet gamely facing it all in order to survive and tell the tale… A prodigious linguistic ability is on display throughout, with a defining image often appended at the end of a sentence like a surprise dessert. -- Timothy O'Grady * Times Literary Supplement *
