Title/Author:
“The Dancing Bear: My
Eighteen Years in the Trenches of the AFL and NFL” by Ron McDole with Rob
Morris
Tags:
Football (American),
professional, memoir, Bills, Redskins
Publish
date:
October 1,
2018
Length:
248 pages
Rating:
3 of 5
stars (good)
Review:
It isn’t often that one will find a memoir written by a football player
who didn’t play in one of the sport’s glamour positions, such as quarterback or
running back. This book breaks that stereotype
as Ron McDole was a standout defensive lineman during an eighteen-year career
with the Buffalo Bills and Washington Redskins. As a reader would expect, the
stories that come from a lineman are very different than those that would come
from a skill position.
There are aspects of the book that do fit the typical sports memoir and
some that break the mold. McDole follows
a tried and true form by starting with his childhood, then talks about his playing
days in high school and at the University of Nebraska. He continues it with
stories from his time with both professional teams with which he played.
That is where a change in the usual method takes place. Instead of
talking about particular games or seasons in the order they came, he becomes a
storyteller. Most of these stories come from teammates, although there are
stories from family members and personal friends later in the book. At times,
these felt out of place because just like when one asks someone to reflect on a
person, the narrator can go off on tangents.
That was good because that made the stories sound more genuine and
natural, but it did make reading the book take a little longer as it got off the
narrative track McDole was telling.
For example, it is unclear to a reader who didn’t know how he got his
nickname “The Dancing Bear.” In one account,
he got it from a Redskins teammate. In another story, it was given to him
earlier. The stories are both probably true, as they came from the memories of
the men telling them, but the information seems to conflict.
While stories like this make up the bulk of the book, this isn’t to say
there isn’t any good football writing.
This is especially true for McDole’s memoires from championship games in
which he participated – the three consecutive AFL championship games between
1964 and 1966 with the Bills and Super Bowl VII with the Redskins in January
1973. The latter game is one in which McDole tells about his bitter
disappointment with the loss by the Redskins, but what I especially liked about
that topic is the illustration of how little attention the Super Bowl received during
its early days, at least in comparison to the spectacle it has become today.
Much like the career of the author, this book is a hidden gem that while
it may not be the best sports memoir ever written, it does a nice job of
portraying a man whose performance in the game may not have brought a lot of
recognition from fans or the media, but it did garner widespread praise among
his coaches and peers.
I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the
book in exchange for an honest review.
Book Format
Read:
Hardcover
Buying Links:
No comments:
Post a Comment