Alone in the Trenches: My Life as a Gay Player in the NFL

After impoverished Samoan immigrant Tuaolo attended Oregon State on a football scholarship, he was drafted by the Green Bay Packers and then spent nine years in the NFL on five different teams. Yet he was "terrified" during the 1999 Super Bowl, when he was playing for the Atlanta Falcons: "not one teammate, coach or sportswriter knew I was gay.... What if one of those billion people watching recognized me as the stranger he had picked up in a gay bar?" Tuaolo's intimate description of such fears kicks off this absorbing, first-person account, co-written with journalist Rosengren. The author looks back with straight-talking honesty, recalling his Oahu childhood on a banana farm, his teen years in the continental U.S. and his introduction to the testosterone-crazed culture of the locker room. Pages filled with the kind of football lore that only an NFL insider could know are punctuated with Tuaolo's painful dread of discovery. The first player to sing the national anthem and then start an NFL game, Tuaolo now has a new career in musical theater and recordings. His book communicates a warmth and openness that will appeal to both football fans and the gay community. (Mar.)