“The Fat Lady Never Sings” is a nonfiction sports memoir by Steven Reilly, who assisted in the coaching of the Derby high school baseball team in the 1990s. Also a lawyer, Reilly found a sense of completion on the ball field that was missing from his professional life and returned to the team year after year, working with eccentric but powerful coach John DeFrancisco, affectionately known as D.
The book takes place in Derby, Connecticut, a town that worshipped its high school football team. After a twenty-year winning streak, you can see that there would be a lot to worship – a tradition of excellence had been established. But things took a downward turn that year, and the team lost the season. The scoreboard, which usually stayed brilliantly lit far into the night, was shut down early and the team went home without their normal fanfare.
Three of the seniors on the football team are disappointed by this loss, and don’t want to leave high school on that note. Having had experience with baseball as well, they decide to finish out the year with the baseball team, and end up taking the team, which was the smallest in the league, all the way to state and eventually winning.
The book comes to a climax as the pitcher pulls out strength from an inner source and saves the game, although his arm is completely dead. The Derby team rides back into town with a police escort that night, all appellations of “loser” forever banished.
I know very little about sports, and so many of the expressions and the technical language were foreign to me. However, the author ties the shop talk together with insightful prose that made the read enjoyable to me. I would definitely recommend this book to a fan of baseball or football.
Allow me to close with a quote from the final segment of the book: “As they (the players) smiled and laughed, I couldn’t help think how different their futures would be because they had won. They weren’t going to the White House or Disneyworld and weren’t getting World Series bonus money, but in their victory they had achieved something more valuable—greater than redemption. They had battled beyond anyone’s expectations of what was possible for them to accomplish. They had found out what it’s like to dig deep into your soul and fight your way out of the obstacles life puts in front of you . . . . they were champions forever. Nobody could ever take that away from them.”
Join me here tomorrow for a multi-part interview with author Steven Reilly.
(This book was published in 2006 by iUniverse.)
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