Now I Can Die In Peace: How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, With a Little Help From Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank and the 2004 Red Sox

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Sports
Author:	Bill Simmons

I figured something out about me when I was still in high school: I was a sports fan. I cheered for the Lakers in the NBA, the Bears in the NFL and the Cubs in MLB. I enjoyed watching the Super Bowl (even if the Bears haven’t won it since 1985), and I’d stay up till the wee hours of the morning to watch either an NBA game or the FIFA World Cup. Still nothing was more energizing to me than watching MY team, the Ateneo Blue Eagles, play basketball in the UAAP.

I endured many losing seasons, most of which were during my actual college years between 1992-1996. There were times where I began to doubt whether I’d ever live to see another Ateneo UAAP basketball title. After all, the last trophy was won in 1988, and I wasn’t even an Atenean yet at that point. Imagine then the pain and anguish a person would feel after cheering for a baseball team for most of their life yet never managing to win the World Series. This was the dilemma faced by Bill Simmons, the so-called “Sports Guy” on ESPN.com.

I’ve been reading Simmons’ columns for about five years now, and I can honestly say that he’s my favorite sportswriter. The honesty that he brings to each column and the pop culture references to things from his childhood and today’s society have proven to be wildly entertaining to me. So, when Simmons’ beloved Boston Red Sox finally won the World Series in 2004, a part of me cheered for them because I wanted Bill to win. After all, the last Boston baseball championship was won way back in 1918.

“Now I Can Die In Peace: How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, With a Little Help From Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank and the 2004 Red Sox” is a collection of Bill Simmons’ sports columns over the years 2003-2006, specifically revolving around the Red Sox’s run to the 2004 World Series. It’s a bit autobiographical, especially since Simmons liberally uses footnotes to clarify some things and to explain what he was thinking when he originally wrote the columns. The book also allowed me to reflect on what I felt on the two times that my favorite team, the Blue Eagles, won UAAP Championships in 2002 and 2008.

The emotion that the author brought to each column is raw, honest, and (at certain times) downright illogical. Then again, that is what sports does to fans like us. As a longtime Simmons reader/listener (I listen to his podcast too), I’m used to his style of writing and find that it’s almost like listening to one of my friends. After all, Simmons throws around sports analogies and statistics while mentioning WWE wrestling, “Entourage”, “The Karate Kid” movies, and other obscure pop culture things that I happen to relate to.

Simmons is at his best when chronicling the pain that true sports fans (particularly from the Boston and New England area) have felt over their teams, specifically baseball’s Red Sox. Long seen as a joke, the team went 86 years between championships, and the pain they felt spans generations. When they did finally bring home the title in 2004, beating the hated archrival New York Yankees on the way to the World Series no less, the relief and hoopla that followed was quite unprecedented. Now you see where the book’s title comes from.

I have long sympathized with Simmons’ pain as well as his undying and blind loyalty to Boston teams. After all, this was the same guy that I wanted to skewer when he was cheering the rent-a-championship Boston Celtics last June. Yet I have also long wanted to emulate him, and the fact that he can write about something that he loves as much as I do (sports) and get paid big time for it. If it were possible, believe me, I would do it as well.

When Ateneo won the UAAP men’s basketball championship over the hated De La Salle Green Archers in 2002, I remember the feeling of utter joy, the numbness, the “pinch-me-am-I-dreaming”, and the euphoria that followed. Yes, the team was overexposed on TV, print, and all sorts of media, and yes, I absolutely loved it. The following season, Ateneo ran over La Salle on the way to the UAAP Finals, but lost versus Far Eastern University. I still clung onto 2002 since it was the best sports-related moment that I had felt, but I couldn’t hide my disappointment over that 2003 Finals. Funny enough, Simmons wrote something similar in the book’s afterword regarding the season following Boston’s World Series title.

This book is definitely not for everybody. It takes a certain twisted mind to be a rabid sports fan, and I’m thankful that Chad Gonzales is one of them (he lent me this book after all). There are parts of “Now I Can Die In Peace” where the references are too American, too obscure, or too downright slanted pro-Boston and anti-everyone else. Yet Simmons also gives astonishing insight into the mentality of both the fans and the players who participate in professional sports. The fact that I found myself nodding, laughing, or saying to myself “that’s what I would have said!” certifies my lack of objectivity regarding the book, but my stand against most of Simmons’ Boston teams gives me a certain distance from completely cheering for every word that he wrote down.

After Ateneo won the UAAP men’s basketball championship this past September, I once again was awash in the championship hoopla. If I could have written about it, I would be so biased, so unapologetic, yet so filled with happiness and pure joy that I might have just kept writing without a care for its ramifications (this means pissing off every La Sallite friend I may still have). In other words, I might have written like Bill Simmons.

Fr. Joseph Sia's first mass at Xavier, June 7, 2008

Who woulda thunk it? After all the many jerks and psychopaths that we produced in the Xavier High School class of 1992, we also produced a priest! Fr. Jo Sia had his first mass in XS, and it allowed us to have a mini-reunion, complete with old teachers and some parents too.