YOU GOTTA PLAY HURT

Book excerpt: From the author of Semi-Tough comes a hilarious novel chronicling one year in the life of irreverent sports columnist Jim Tom Pinch. ​ Jim Tom Pinch is a unabashed sportswriter who has followed around and reported on too many blonde-haired skiers, basketball players with names like Potatus Fry, and Russian figure skaters who want to know how much a house with a toilet costs in America. Now he tells the story of a year of romance, cursing, bimbos, touchdowns, pandering, padded expense accounts­—from the Olympics to the Indy 500 to the heavyweight championship—a year that will leave neither Jim Tom nor the wide world of sports the same. "Bawdy, bitter, very funny...Jenkins's farewell salute to big-time sportswriting is a tell-all novel that deflates the hype around each and every event, from the Olympics to the Kentucky Derby to Wimbledon (Kirkus Reviews).