The Best Game You Can Name

Zusatztext “I could read Dave Bidini all day. And I have. He not only finds the music in hockey but somehow does the reverse. The result is this remarkable book. It's full of checks, drugs and rock & roll, at least if you consider a giant, skating pint of Guinness to be a drug. And I certainly do.” — Steve Rushin of Sports Illustrated “Bidini is a terrific writer — funny, clever, passionate.” — Toronto Sun “We want to be Dave Bidini when we grow up.” — Toronto Star “Bidini’s books give sports and travel writing a charge. . . . He’s hilarious . . . whip-smart.” — Georgia Straight “[Bidini is] witty, articulate, modest, and passionate — really passionate — about hockey.” — Montreal Gazette Informationen zum Autor Author and musician DAVE BIDINI is the only person to have been nominated for a Gemini, Genie, and Juno as well as CBC's Canada Reads. A founding member of Rheostatics, he has written thirteen books, including On a Cold Road , Tropic of Hockey , Around the World in 57 1/2 Gigs , and Home and Away . He is a three time National magazine award-winner, and his play, The Five Hole Stories , was staged by One Yellow Rabbit Performance Company, touring the country in 2008. His most recent book is Midnight Light: A Personal Journey to the North , and he is the publisher of the West End Phoenix community newspaper in Toronto. Klappentext Bidini returns to the game he loves best In 2004, Dave Bidini laced on his skates and slid onto the ice of Toronto's McCormick Arena to play defence with the Morningstars in the E! Cup tourney. While thrashing around the ice, swiping at the puck and his opponents, Bidini got to thinking about how others see the game. Afterward, he set off to talk to former professional players about their experiences of hockey. The result is vintage Bidini — an exuberant, evocative, highly personal, and vividly coloured account of his and his team's exploits, interwoven with the voices of such hockey heroes as Frank Mahovlich, Yvan Cournoyer, John Brophy, Steve Larmer, and Ryan Walter. All aspects of the game are up for grabs in The Best Game You Can Name — the sweetest goals, the worst fights, the trades, the off-ice perks and the on-ice rivalries, not to mention the rotten pranks. Bidini and the former players offer sometimes startling observations about the fans, coaches, owners, other players, and the huge rush of being on the ice, stick in hand, giving everything you have to the best game you can name. Leseprobe 1 A FROZEN RIVER OF STOUT If it’s true that the best time for sports is when you’re eleven, I’ve discovered that it’s also pretty good when you’re forty. My athletic renaissance came on the heels of turning thirty-­four, which is how old I was when I lit out to discover world hockey. Later, and older, I spent an entire summer dogging an Italian baseball team up and down the Boot. One evening while I was in Nettuno — my Italian baseballing town — I paced with some agitation behind the town’s seawall, holding my cellphone and listening to my friend Ozzie from his couch in Etobicoke, Ontario. He was shouting the names of undrafted nhlers: “Thomas Vokoun? Available, I think. Comrie? Gone. Brisebois? You really wanna pick Brisebois?” Purple waves licked the beach not twenty feet from where I was standing under the bright Roman moon, pondering the kind of quibbler that must have perplexed Marcus Aurelius or Cicero or any number of Latin thinkers who’d paced this same long stretch of sand: “Anson Carter gives us depth, sure, but if Brian Boucher’s around, you know we can never have too much goaltending.” Ozzie paused while a Sputnik orbiting hundreds of miles overhead ensnared our transcontinental frequency in static, then volleyed a thought about the unpredictability of a young American goalten...

Product details

• Authors: Dave Bidini
• Publisher: Random House Canada
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 05.09.2006
• EAN: 9780771014604
• ISBN: 978-0-7710-1460-4
• No. of pages: 312
• Dimensions: 141 mm x 210 mm x 22 mm
• Subject: Guides > Sport > Winter sport