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Rick Bass is a Texas native now living in Montana. Recognized by numerous Pushcart Prizes and the O. Henry Awards as well as the Texas Institute of Letters, Bass continues to publish celebrated fiction and nonfiction about the natural world and humans’ place in it. His recent books include For A Little While: New and Selected Stories and The Traveling Feast: On the Road and at the Table with My Heroes.<p>“‘To me, football is a living system,’ says a character in Rick Bass’s excellent new book, <i>Wrecking Ball</i>. Bass takes the reader on a lively and moving journey through that living system at a fundamental level, avoiding the glitter and gloss of big-time football.” - W. K. Stratton, author of <i>The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film</i></p> <p>“In <i>Wrecking Ball</i>, readers join a sixtyish-year-old Rick Bass as he moves from a journalist covering low-level semipro Texas football to pulling on the cleats and his #27 jersey and joining his teammates on the gridiron. <i>Wrecking Ball</i> shows us the dogfights, tackles, and touchdowns. But it also explores race, culture, poverty, and why we are addicted to sports.” - Sean Prentiss, author of <i>Finding Abbey: The Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave</i></p> <p>“To those who live it, football is not a game. It is a religion, an ethos, a riddle, a metaphor. To Rick Bass, it is ‘a microcosm of the world writ large,’ and he writes about it not as a fan, a critic, or even a <i>Paper Lion</i> immersive reporter but as a disciple penning his testament from the head-bashing, rib-crushing scrum of it all. <i>Wrecking Ball</i> captures the dirty, hungry soul of the game-that’s-more-than-a-game and the poetry of the pain cave.” - Kim Cross, New York Times best-selling author of <i>What Stands in a Storm: A True Story of Love and Resilience in the Worst Superstorm in History</i></p>
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.