4) Ideas about the Main Character

          The main character in John Grisham’s novel, Playing for Pizza, is Rick Dockery. Rick is a NFL reject who is recruitedto play for an Italian football team in Param, Italy as their starting quarterback. Dockery never started in the NFL, in fact, he was the third string quarterback for all of the teams he played on during his career and hardly got any playing time. Although, he was still payed thousands of dollars for each game. Rick’s major mistake of his career and his worst injuries all occured in the same game in only an eleven minute period. This game killed his reputation and pride. As always, Rick was always a proud man, from the time he was in High School all the way up to his final NFL game as a Cleveland Brown. When he arrived in Parma, this attitude didn’t change. He still thought he was better than the rest of the men and was rather embarrassed to be playing with them. For example, on his first day of practice he had to run sprints with the team and was outraged because he had never had to do it before. He thought that the quarterback shouldn’t be worked with the rest of the team, but should have his own personal workout. While his attitude towards his teammates and the sport may seem poor, he is young and still has learning to do throughout the novel. During his time spent playing ball in Italy, Rick learns more about himself and the sport he loves than he ever could have learned by playing in America.