I Dream in Blue: Life, Death, and the New York Giants

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HarperCollins, Aug 28, 2007 - Sports & Recreation - 240 pages

In your hands is the coveted answer to the riddle central to life: At what age does the eight-year-old boy in every grown man catch his last touchdown pass? When TV producer Roger Director was growing up in a ranch house on Long Island in the fifties, his heroes were not Batman or James Bond, but rather Frank Gifford, Andy Robustelli, Kyle Rote, and the other legends from that era’s New York Giants squad. Decades later, Director finds himself sitting in an estate lawyer’s office, faced with this question: To whom would he entrust custody of his beloved daughter should some unforeseen tragedy befall him and his wife? The answer comes easily to Director’s lips: “Tiki Barber.”

If you have no sense of humor, you will not like I Dream in Blue, the impassioned story of how one middle-aged fan ran away from Hollywood in order to fulfill his lifelong fantasy. Director spends the 2006-7 season with the latest incarnation of his childhood heroes: in the locker room and on the practice field with Big Blue, hanging with its prodigal quarterback Eli Manning, who serenely—too serenely, according to some—battles the impossible pressure of his mythic pedigree; with the untamable tight end Jeremy Shockey; and, of course, with his daughter’s future guardian, Tiki Barber. Refusing to let anything stop him—not his fumble-prone television career, not the very same hip injury that forced the great Bo Jackson off the gridiron, not even the constant strain of occasionally having to act like a responsible husband and father—Director is there with the team, from the first promising snap of summer camp in Albany to that final, soul-crushing rainy night in Philadelphia.

Along the way, Director asks you to imagine the story of how a family business, founded with only five hundred dollars by an Irish bookmaker during the gaudy Prohibition era of Red Grange, Jack Dempsey, and Babe Ruth, has endured to become an essen-tial component of New York City’s heartbeat—and of Director’s. I Dream in Blue is the story of a desperate Hail Mary—a die-hard fan’s quest to have one last touchdown pass, one final celebration of boyhood.

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Contents

CHAPTER
1
CHAPTER
15
CHAPTER 3
57
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

A screenwriter and television producer, Roger Director has been nominated twice for both the Emmy Award and the Writers Guild Award for such shows as NCIS, Mad About You, Moonlighting, Arli$$, and Hill Street Blues. His award-winning journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Sports Illustrated, and on ESPN.com. The author of the novel A Place to Fall, Director lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

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