"YOU CALL IT SPORTS, BUT I SAY IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE!"
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
For the last quarter century, Dan Jenkins has been fixing his cold-eyed stare and wisecracking style on the real-life Billy Clyde and Kenny Lee Pucketts of the sports world.
You Call It Sports, But I Say It’s a Jungle Out There is a collection of his best work from Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Golf Digest, and his nationally syndicated column, and includes a stack of new pieces written especially for this book.
Jenkins spares no one in his search for the culprits who have taken the fun out of sports: NFL owners and refs, PGA Tour administrators, basketball players who can’t read, tennis players who can’t speak English (or say anything worth hearing when they do).
He also finds things worth celebrating: the electric charge given off by Arnold Palmer at his best, the excitement of a truly great college football game, or a real heavyweight champion, like Joe Louis.
Overflowing with good ol’ boys, great one-liners, famous sporting events, and barroom tales, this is the best of Dan Jenkins—which is to say, it’s as good as sportswriting gets anywhere.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his 11th book, Jenkins ( Semi-Tough ) collects his magazine articles, syndicated columns and a few original essays in a lively anthology. Though his humor is anything but subtle, it is often on target--as when Jenkins escorts the reader to one of golf's major tournaments, the Chrysler/Shearson/Nissan Sausage 'n' Biscuit K mart Klassic, where winning 19th place pays the victor a half-million dollars. A fan of college football and pro golf, primarily, the author gives other sports short shrift, and allows his enthusiasm for the grid game to produce several interminable lists of facts (e.g., names, dates and scores of ``significant games in the first 120 years of college football.'') But bright, entertaining pieces on travel (``Dateline Erotica,'' on London), movies and literature (``Real Men Eat Cliches'') offer compensation. Misogyny occasionally mars the author's jocular, engaging voice.
