47 pages • 1 hour read
John GrishamPlaying For Pizza
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Importance of Loyalty
The shifting loyalties of quarterback Rick Dockery and Fabrizio, the Italian wide receiver, have a significant impact on the Parma Panthers’ season, demonstrating the importance of loyalty within teams.
At the beginning of the novel, Rick believes that, as the quarterback and the most experienced player, he should not be “subjected to the same drills and boot camp banalities required of the regular players” on the team (77). The use of the terms “same” and “regular” in this passage suggests that Rick sees himself as distinct from the rest of the team. Rick continues to put his own needs above those of his teammates, as when he shows up for a game after drinking all weekend in Milan. The Panthers’ coach Sam Russo criticizes Rick for being “a prima donna with a hangover,” and tells him that he “lost more than a game yesterday. You lost your team” (142).
Sam’s remarks suggest Rick still sees himself as the star (“prima donna”), and that his teammates need him to demonstrate his loyalty to them before they can fully trust him. Rick senses “the stares and the resentment” of his teammates and realizes that, although “[w]inning meant something, commitment meant even more” (147). From this point in the novel, Rick demonstrates his commitment to the players in several ways. First, he offers to “chip in a thousand euros a month for four months to get Fabrizio” back on the team (158). By offering to reduce his own salary, Rick demonstrates his material investment in the team. Rick also refuses to leave Parma despite better offers by arena football and Canadian Football League teams, citing his “loyalty” to the Panthers. Rick’s character development over the course of the novel demonstrates the importance of loyalty within teams.
Like Rick, the Italian wide receiver Fabrizio is at first loyal to only himself: While Rick’s loyalty stems from his desire to impress his teammates, Fabrizio’s narrative arc suggests that loyalty can be bought. In his first introduction, Fabrizio is described as a “high-maintenance, high-strung” diva who believes that he is “God’s gift to Italian football” (78). In the middle of the season, Fabrizio tells Sam Russo that the Panthers “can’t win without him” (151), and demands an official salary. Although Sam balks, Rick insists that Fabrizio will “act like a pro” if he is paid (158). Ultimately, Rick is right, and the novel explicitly claims that his “salary had brought a responsibility that the kid had maturely accepted” (212).
While Fabrizio and Rick may thus have different motivations, they each reach the same conclusion: That they must work as part of the team for the team to win, and that loyalty is an essential ingredient for success.
The Pressures of Fame
Although the novel’s central focus is on Rick’s quest to restart his failing football career in Italy, he also experiences all the downsides of being a professional football player throughout Playing for Pizza. Grisham uses Rick’s career to explore the pressures of fame, revealing that even a seemingly glamorous and exciting career can have serious downsides.
From the beginning of his career, Rick is harassed by reporters, with the novel suggesting that press intrusion and public criticism are both part of the darker side of fame. As a college football player, his youthful indiscretions were “sensationally reported by several newspapers” nationally (60). The use of the term “sensationally” suggests that Grisham does not consider this serious journalism, but rather an example of tabloid journalism, which is more interested in relaying scandals than something more mundane. Rick’s most vocal detractor is Charlie Cray, a sports reporter who “delighted in the missteps and foibles of professional athletes who earned millions yet were not perfect” (10). Cray’s vicious takedowns of Rick are featured throughout the narrative and are described as malicious: “[I]t was unfair to run him out of the league and out of the country, but to follow him to Parma seemed especially cruel” (160). This explicit condemnation of Cray’s reporting suggests that the tabloid press’s relationship with public figures can sometimes be detrimental or biased.
The novel also presents career pressures and setbacks, all experienced in the public eye, as another danger of fame. The novel opens with Rick seriously injured; he soon learns that despite his serious physical state, his team has immediately abandoned him even before he has had a chance to recover. Since no other team wants him, Rick must confront the reality that his public failure in losing the game has had swift consequences: His career can end abruptly at a moment’s notice. Later in the novel, Rick is tempted to play for a team in Saskatchewan, only to discover that the team’s apparent enthusiasm for him is not entirely sincere, as the coach is still actively trying to recruit someone else while pretending to be interested only in Rick. Rick cannot even trust his own agent to have his best interests at heart: He does not fully trust Arnie, who gives advice based on what Arnie believes is best for himself instead of what is best for Rick.
These pitfalls present fame as an often lonely and uncertain path, with Rick spending much of the novel having to break through his sense of wariness and pride in order to settle in with a team that truly values him as a person, and not just as a potential football star. The novel implies that, in the end, the costs of fame sometimes outweigh the benefits.
The Value of Forging Meaningful Connections
Over the course of the novel, Rick slowly develops from a self-centered and socially isolated figure into someone more open to other people and to adapting to a new culture. His journey thus explores the value of forging meaningful connections with others.
At the start of the novel, Rick does not appear to have any close friends, teammates, or family. The one person who visits him in the hospital is Arnie, who is his agent, not his friend. Rick also does not seek out meaningful connections with others: He has a reputation for being arrogant and unreliable when part of a team, and his interactions with women are limited to casual liaisons. When Rick hears that a woman he once had a fling with is ready to sue him for support for her baby, he considers that sufficient motivation for moving immediately to Italy, which emphasizes his deep reluctance to form more permanent connections.
Once in Italy, however, Rick’s attitude toward community and connections begins to change. As the novel’s title suggests, the Italian players on the Parma Panthers are not paid: They take their “delightful post-practice ritual—a late dinner of pizza and beer” as their compensation (81), playing for a true love of the game. The Panthers behave not just as teammates, but also as friends: “[T]hey cuss and fight, then they hug and go drink together” (44). Rick soon begins to realize that there is something attractive in the comradery the Panthers embody. He begins to try learning some Italian, and he willingly participates in the team’s usual warm-ups instead of acting as though the others are beneath him. As time goes on and Rick draws closer to his teammates, he begins to feel a genuine sense of loyalty and affection for the others.
Rick’s attitude in his romantic life also begins to shift. When he first meets Livvy, he assumes that his affair with her will be more or less like his other liaisons. Nevertheless, the more time they spend together, the more Rick begins to soften toward the idea of being more committed. He agrees to spend time doing activities Livvy likes—such as sightseeing—and when she shows up announcing that she needs to move in with him, he decides to allow it.
By the novel’s end, Rick and Livvy are in a monogamous relationship and are considering a long-term future in Italy together. While Rick’s football career remains uncertain, he no longer has an interest in playing with an NFL team in place of the Panthers. Instead, Rick feels at home in Italy, with the novel implying that one way or another, he will continue to nurture the meaningful connections he has formed.
Related Titles
By John Grisham
