cover image Glory Days: On Sports, Men, and Dreams That Don't Die

Glory Days: On Sports, Men, and Dreams That Don't Die

Bill Reynolds. St. Martin's Press, $22.95 (246pp) ISBN 978-0-312-18105-5

This is the story of a man who resisted admitting he had a sports obsession, but who finally decided that obsession was destiny. Reynolds's (Fall River Dreams) problem developed because he was good on the court but never great. Though a high school star, he was a less-than-stellar student who had to spend a year in prep school before being admitted to Brown University, where, according to him, rules were bent to keep him on the team. Before graduating he realized he couldn't succeed in the pros so he spent years batting around, barely surviving as a teacher and freelance writer and finding that his monomania poisoned his relationships with women, including the one to whom he was married briefly. Finally, Reynolds became a sportswriter in Rhode Island and started playing pickup games daily with other aging athletes--and found nirvana. His candid observations about himself and the passion for sports in this country raise his memoir above the ordinary. (Apr.)