Wrecking Ball

Suit up with celebrated literary master Rick Bass as he writes, ala Buzz Bissinger (Friday Night Lights) and George Plimpton (Paper Lions), through the prism of battered semi-professional football and the refractions it casts on matters of race, masculinity, and yes, faith. The Montana writer Norman Maclean wrote, “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.” Rick Bass, born and raised in Houston, knows that in Texas, there’s no clear line between religion and football. In Wrecking Ball: Race, Friendship, God, and Football, award-winning writer Rick Bass chronicles three seasons on the field with the Texas Express, a semiprofessional team in the Dynamic Texas Football Association. This is unsung football. Light-years from the NFL, it has nowhere near the pomp of college football nor even of Texas high-school football, where hometown fans’ civic identity is always on the line. In the hardscrabble world of spring-season semipro ball, there are no fans. Eventually even the players’ families avoid these games. Most players are in their twenties, but some are older. Every year a few get to try out for the college game; others get scholarship money and a shot at another life. But for most, this is their last chance. Many—most—get hurt. One hundred and fifty-five pounds dripping wet and forty-five years past his playing career as a one-season walk-on at Utah State, Rick Bass came to Brenham, a flyspeck town outside of Houston, to write about the Express. But with a disastrous season unfolding and injuries, incarcerations, and plain boredom claiming players every week, Bass was induced to suit up and take the field. Suddenly the writer became part of the story in a tale reminiscent of George Plimpton and Paper Lion. Rick’s experience on and off the field and his observations about the game, the terrible injuries, the expectations and pleasures of comradery, the overriding influence of the coach, and race, poverty, and, yes, religion on the field, are the unforgettable subjects of Wrecking Ball.