《Play Their Hearts Out》是2010年10月出版的圖書，作者是Dohrmann George。
基本介紹
- 外文名：Play Their Hearts Out
- 作者：Dohrmann George
- 出版時間：2010年10月
- 頁數：432 頁
- ISBN：9780345508607
- 定價：188 元
作者簡介,名人推薦,媒體推薦,
作者簡介
George Dohrmann is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated and the magazine’s investigative reporter. In 2000, while working at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, he won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of stories that uncovered a college basketball team’s academic fraud. Dohrmann lives in San Francisco with his family. This is his first book.
名人推薦
From publishers weekly
Starred Review. Dohrmann, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for Sports Illustrated, spent eight years chronicling the struggles and triumphs of a select group of California youths who chased their dream in his wonderful and immaculately reported first book. Dohrmann largely focuses his work on Demetrius Walker, the hoops phenom who seems destined for stardom at a young age, his travel team from California, and the club's complex and bombastic coach, Joe Keller. Dohrmann began reporting on the book back in 2000, when Walker and many of his teammates were only 10 years old, and followed them through to their high school graduation. Along the way, he shows the brutal nature of "grassroots" basketball, in which coaches can view their players as "investments," the power of sneaker companies in youth basketball, and the cutthroat antics of collegiate recruiting. But this is equally a story about relationships and the sad deterioration of many of them, whether it be among teammates, parents and son, or coach and player. It's a brilliant and heart-wrenching journey, and a cautionary tale to any basketball player who thinks the path to the NBA is a slam dunk.
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From Booklist
Basketball fans frequently hear references to AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) summer leagues, in which young players have a chance to hone their games. The AAU leagues are often criticized for exploiting young kids, but most of these charges have been based on rumor or hearsay. Until now. Dohrmann, the last sportswriter to win a Pulitzer Prize, spent approximately nine years researching this book; the story begins in 2000, when he convinced AAU coach Joe Keller to give him unfettered access to his team, the Inland Stars. The only condition was that the book wouldn't be published until the players—then 9 and 10 years old—were in college. Keller is a fascinating subject, a mix of positive characteristics—he is a genuinely caring father figure for many of his players—and profoundly negative. In Dohrmann's portrayal, Keller emerges as a shameless promoter of himself and his players, a poor coach, and a man for whom ethics are always relative. Money, of course, is key; surprisingly, there are lots of ways for coaches to profit in the underground basketball world, mainly from shoe companies (the real villains in this story) in the form of cash as well as products, prestige, and influence. In fact, as Dohrmann shows, everyone makes money in this “amateur” enterprise except the kids. An eye-opening look at the underbelly of modern American sports. --Wes Lukowsky
媒體推薦
“Sit down and read the Friday Night Lights of youth basketball. Except the landscape is even darker here, greed and blind ambition stirred together in a toxic stew, the perversions of the modern American athletic dream even more perverted. This is nothing less than Dickens brought up-to-date, the characters in Oliver Twist dressed in Adidas warm-up suits. Amazing stuff. You’ll never watch basketball the same way again.”—Leigh Montville, author of The Big Bam
“Like a versatile baller, George Dohrmann swings seamlessly from position to position: investigative journalist, social critic, gifted storyteller. The result, Play Their Hearts Out, is a gem of a book that addresses the question central to contemporary basketball: How does such an unseemly culture spring from such an essentially beautiful game? You'll come away rooting harder than ever for the kids and harder than ever against the basketball profiteers.”—L. Jon Wertheim, author of Strokes of Genius
“What happens when the nation’s foremost investigative sports reporter spends eight years probing the fascinating underworld of grassroots basketball? You get a page-turning narrative that will absorb and repulse you at the same time. I thought I knew a lot about grassroots hoops, but the scope and depth of the reportage in this book just blew me away. Play Their Hearts Out is a must-read for anyone who has ever watched, played, coached, or otherwise worked in—and cared about—the sport of basketball.”—Seth Davis, author of When March Went Mad
