Word: playbook
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...twice removed from reality. Plimpton's sly, unobtrusive narration allowed the reader to feel for himself the manifold agonies of the professional athlete: the pain of learning how to merge head with helmet, the humiliation of fumbling a handoff, the confusion of trying to study a playbook crammed with inscrutable diagrams. The movie gives Alan Alda the doubly difficult task of playing the role of Plimpton the sophisticated writer who is playing the role of Plimpton the ten-thumbed quarterback. Alda looks enough like George-and is clearly no better as an athlete-but his performance conveys little...
...field, Plimpton did the calisthenics and learned the playbook cold, but when the test came during an intrasquad scrimmage before a large crowd, his reflexes scattered and every play was botched. Along the way, the players came to like him and confide in him, partly because he took their skills as seriously as they did. Their descriptions of the intricacies of the various positions and their special moments of triumph are as authentic as only shoptalk can be. Said a player of the awesome Night Train Lane: "He's got pipes for legs, all bone, with just strings...
...play. He dreamed up the huddle, the direct pass from center, the shift, the man in motion, the unbalanced line, the onside kick, the delayed buck, the sleeper play, the Statue of Liberty. In 1906, the year the forward pass was legalized, he had 64 pass plays in his playbook - and Chicago lost only one game, to Minnesota, 4-2. He coached at Chicago for 41 years, fielded four unbeaten teams, and won six Big Ten titles...