Thank you John Grisham for the "Best Book Ever"

Best book ever if you are still wrestling with the memories of a coach who pushed you way harder than anyone had a right to push. Sometimes fiction has a way bringing understanding to me that instruction, education or study never could. Every once in a while, by chance, I will read a really good book that so dramatically affects me that I have to try and get away from it for a while to be sure my initial impression is true.

 

This book is one of those books. Over a month ago I could not put it down. I read it over two nights and must admit it has changed how I look at my past. Growing up I played a lot of sports. A lot. And In doing so had a lot of coaches. Some great and some, not so much. Like John Grisham, I played football and was not an all-American. Unlike him I do not have a gift for fiction. In, "Bleachers" he tells an incredibly moving story of an all-American football player who has returned home as an adult for the eminent death of his estranged legendary high school football coach.

This book struck me on so many levels I do not know where to start. I am glad I waited for this story to sink and in doing so was able to find a deeper more significant moral that now I must share. Those who have made us greater than we are or could have ever hoped to have been without them are very, very special people. Love them or hate them we are their legacy. A legacy is not what people leave us, but what they leave inside us. I believe the human heart is a blend of our intellect and soul. I know in my heart that my father, my greatest coach, left me a legacy I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand and appreciate.

This little book that I bought for 50 cents to save it from a dumpster did more to further this understanding and appreciation than anything, save the love I have for my wife and the birth of my own three children.

My dad had a coach like the one in this book. They had experienced the kind of success described in this story. In his senior year at Maryland my dad, under the legendary coach Tatum went undefeated and in the 1952 Sugar Bowl defeated #1 ranked Tennessee. The book helped me understand why he spoke so little of his coach and how he always seemed to diminish the magnitude of such an accomplishment. I think sometimes people are so close to your heart and buried so deep in your soul that to speak of them distorts your very essence.

As I read this book I could only think about myself and the great men who coached me over the years. The best being Coach Rodger Manuel, who first cut me from the eighth grade basketball team, but believed enough in me to advance me to varsity baseball as a sophomore. Coach Cameron and Coach Rose, my high school and college football coaches still ramble around in my heart and mind and I may never know or be able to articulate how I feel about them, but their affect on my life is immeasurable. Both these men made me make similar stands as the primary character in this book. Both these men made me the man I am today and for that I am begrudgingly grateful.

As this book has set in I think more and more about my Dumb Dumb Daddy O. He was a great coach. He was an awesome father. He is in my very heart, soul and mind.

Thank you John Grisham for the greatest football story ever.