Bump and Run FROM OUR EDITORS
Our Review
A Feel-Good Book with a Bad-Ass Attitude
"I just basically look for four things in a player," says the general manager of the New York Hawks, the fictitious professional football team at the center of Mike Lupica's new book, Bump & Run. "Speed, intensity, instincts and an acquittal." Bump & Run is the funniest sports novel since Dan Jenkins's Semi-Tough. It's one of those rare works of fiction that overflows with unbelievable excess (in this case, excesses in professional sports of sex, drugs, gambling, and all other manner of
unwholesome corruption) and stinks of authenticity at the same time. The NFL will despise it. If you like sports even a little, you will love it.
The hero of Bump & Run is a lovable scoundrel named Jack Malloy, known from his days as a Vegas hotshot as
the Jammer, the black-sheep son of the legendary football man Big Tim Malloy and the brand-new owner of the New York Hawks. Jack inherits the team after Big Tim drops dead of a heart attack in his luxury box during a preseason game. He reluctantly takes the helm amid a riot of opposition -- from the press, the league, the other owners, his coach, his wicked siblings -- and embarks on a season of infamy and triumph. The central plot point, which comes right down to the wire and erupts in the perfectly orchestrated denouement, is that at the end of the season the other owners will vote on whether to allow him to keep the team or force
him to sell it (probably to his younger brother and sister, but possibly to a number of other would-be usurpers). Before we get to that point, of course, there are a lot of football games to be played, victory parties to be thrown, strip clubs to be visited, underhanded deals to be cut, and scandals to be uncovered. There are also icons of pro sports, media, and business to be lampooned; Lupica knows the worlds he's writing about almost too well, and no one is spared.
The cast of friends and foes that surrounds Jack includes a dizzying array of familiar-feeling personages, and if I can register any complaint against this intensely enjoyable book, it might be that Lupica's characters are a little too obviously drawn -- closer to caricature than character. There is A.T.M. Moore, the holdout star wide receiver with the criminal background; Mo Jiggy, the rap star turned superagent; Bubba Royal, the veteran quarterback whose drinking problem is overshadowed only by his addiction
to gambling.... The list goes on, full of silly names and recognizable people. But most of these characters go deeper than their one-sentence stereotyping suggests, and nearly all fit into the plot in clever ways, so it is really a very small gripe. This raunchy and
remarkably funny story is a perfect football fantasy -- Mike Lupica's best work, fiction or nonfiction, by far.
--Olli Chanoff
FROM THE PUBLISHER
As the go-to guy in Las Vegas, Jack Molloy thought he knew it all, but that was before he inherited half of the New York Hawks and found out that, next to the denizens of the country of Football, he was just a babe in the woods.
Over the course of a single season, Molloy will get a crash course in steroids, gambling, crooked quarterbacks, idiot sportswriters, control-freak coaches, and philandering announcers. He will end up with his brother and sister co-owners-"the demon-seed twins"-along with his coach, the commissioner, and most of his fellow owners, out to get him. He will discover just how far every mogul in America who doesn't have his own football team will go to get one. And he just might wind up falling in love with Kate, the smart, funny, tough woman who also happens to be his team president.
How Molloy prevails (or doesn't) against this sea of adversity is something only a writer like Mike Lupica would dare to dream up, but if you've ever wondered what you would do if you owned a football team ...well, Lupica's your guy. This is a delight from beginning to end: like Kate, smart, funny, and tough.
FROM THE CRITICS
Book Magazine
How would you react if you inherited a National Football League team from your father? New York Daily News columnist Lupica's fifth novel attempts to answer that question. When Jack Molloy finds himself part owner of the New York Hawks after his father's death, a series of adversaries try to get him to relinquish ownership. There are Molloy's two perpetually testy siblings, team president Liz Bolton, Molloy's stepmother, the team's coach and some of the other NFL team owners. But Molloy has his share of allies as well, among them his former Vegas boss and the Hawks' general manager. The novel is most effective when Molloy, an engaging narrator, ruminates on why someone who has just about everything else in life would want to own a professional football team. Less convincing are some of the supporting characters, several of whom are one-dimensional and stereotypical. Nevertheless, this is a fast read, and humorous in its depiction of money and greed in professional football. —Karen Shoffner
Publishers Weekly
High-profile sportswriter Lupica goes for the gold with this quip-fueled romp through the private offices, secret clubs and luxury boxes of the NFL. Jack "the Jammer" Molloy's life--as a Las Vegas casino's "go-to guy"--is interrupted when his father suffers a fatal heart attack and stuns the sports world, to say nothing of Jack's evil twin siblings, by leaving the New York Hawks to his ne'er-do-well elder son. The NFL team is a potential contender, and in spite of the objections of nearly everyone, including Liz Bolton, the Hawks' president, Jack takes the team's helm with the understanding that the world of big-time sports is no different from high-rolling Vegas; it all revolves around money, sex, image and leverage. As the team marches its uneven way toward the Super Bowl, Jack maintains control by applying "Vegas ways"--blackmail, physical threats, bribery and sexual coercion--to whatever problems arise. Although he possesses the moral compass of a drunken frat jock, Jack is an endearing hero whose first-person narrative is crisp and idiomatically trendy. The brutal revelations about what goes on behind the game are hilarious but slightly disturbing, for the reader senses that beneath the satire and broadly drawn characters there is something more than a thin layer of truth, that somehow there is no hyperbole here. Reminiscent of Peter Gent's North Dallas Forty and Dan Jenkins's Semi-Tough, this is a deliciously wicked tale of contemporary professional sports and the people who, for better or worse, run the game. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Lupica, a well-known sports reporter, TV analyst, and author (Parcells), knows the economics and politics of owning a National Football League (NFL) franchise. His story focuses on Jack Malloy, the black-sheep son who inherits and manages a New York football team despite the opposition of his family, his coach, the press, and other NFL owners, who could force him to sell the team, rings with authenticity. If anything, Lupica's barrage of in-jokes about and potshots at football personalities makes the narrative choppy and occasionally incoherent. Nonetheless, Jack emerges as a likable, talented manager who is able to fire his coach, refuse to renegotiate an essential player's contract, and still forge a Super Bowl team. The book will get major publicity, so you'll want to buy this for your football fans. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/00.]--Marylaine Block, "Librarian Without Walls," Davenport, IA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\
Phil Simms - Phil Simms, CBS Sports, and Super Bowl-winning quarterback, New York Giants
Bump and Run is outrageous, opinionated and, most importantly, funny as hell. In fact, I didn't know how funny Mike Lupica really was until I read this book. One more thing: Is there any way I can come back and throw a few balls to an amazing character named Automatic Touchdown Maker Moore.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
Truly hip, uproariously funny, and, my god, it might even be true. Bump and Run places Lupica high up among the funniest guys writing fiction. — Elmore Leonard
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