Paper Lion

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Paper Lion, published in 1966, is a non-fiction book by prominent American writer George Plimpton.

Plimpton pitched to a lineup of baseball stars in an All-Star exhibition, presumably to answer the question, "How would the average man off of the street fare in an attempt to compete with the stars of professional sports?" He chronicled this experience in his book, Out of My League. In Paper Lion, Plimpton joins the training camp of the 1963 Detroit Lions, on the premise of trying out to be the team's third-string quarterback. (The coaches were aware of the deception; the players were not until it became apparent that Plimpton did not really know how to receive the snap from center.) Plimpton, then thirty-six, showed how unlikely it would be for an "average" person to succeed as a professional athlete. When finally inserted at quarterback for a series in a scrimmage conducted in Pontiac, Michigan, Plimpton managed to lose yardage on each play, convincing many in the crowd that he was a professional sports clown inserted for amusement purposes, not someone who was genuinely giving his best effort.

However, the book is probably less memorable for its stories directly relating to football than it is for its insights into the personalities of the players and the coaches. Figuring prominently in the book are linebacker Wayne Walker, quarterback Milt Plum, defensive tackle Alex Karras, cornerback Dick "Night Train" Lane, and star player (head coach in the movie) Joe Schmidt, among others. The book launched something of a second career for Plimpton as a chronicler of the inside world of sports; despite having done so twice previously, in the baseball scenario mentioned above and by sparring with boxing great Archie Moore, it was this book, and the subsequent film into which it was adapted, starring Alan Alda as Plimpton, that made it possible for Plimpton to receive the access required to write books about other sports such as golf and ice hockey, and also to write two more football books. He also performed as a stand-up comic in a series of television specials for ABC.