Growing up in Prunedale, Mike Souza never expected to live in
Italy, let alone be playing the sport he loved in the land of
pizza, wine and olive oil. But there, for two years, Souza was a
member of the Parma Panthers.
Growing up in Prunedale, Mike Souza never expected to live in Italy, let alone be playing the sport he loved in the land of pizza, wine and olive oil. But there, for two years, Souza was a member of the Parma Panthers.
The San Benito High School football team’s first-year running backs’ coach was playing American football with Europeans who smoked a pack of cigarettes between halves and played simply because they could. Players were as young as 18 and as old as 40. Most were the size of American kickers, and the few Americans who played, looked more like the Hulk surrounded by peewee football players.
“It was the strangest thing,” he said. “Here we are at halftime, and half the players are smoking cigarettes. It was something I really had to get used to.”
And for bestselling author John Grisham, it sounded like the perfect novel. With help from Souza, who was the Panthers quarterback in 2006 and 2007, Grisham stayed with the team over a long weekend in the spring of 2007 learning about the game. The book was published later in the same year.
Souza, now 28, was an instrumental part in Grisham’s learning about the game and the experience of living in a foreign place, according to the book, “Playing for Pizza,” and its author’s note.
“He took us out to lunch a few times. We also had a couple of dinners with him,” Souza said of Grisham, whose other known titles include such books as “The Pelican Brief,” “The Firm” and “A Time to Kill.”
“We just walked him around the city, he went to our game and we was constantly taking notes. But the big thing he wanted to do was eat and drink a lot.”
Everyone on the team was excited to meet the famous author of legal thrillers, he said.
And there are similarities between the book’s fictitious main character and Souza.
Rick Dockery, the main character, was a former National Football League quarterback that blew his chance by losing the American Football Conference Championship game with minutes left. In that game, Dockery was knocked unconscious and injured.
The combination of the injury and terrible play, blowing a 17-point lead, sends Dockery’s career into a downward spiral. The only contract he is offered is by the Parma Panthers, a member of the Italian Football League.
Dockery goes to Italy expecting to run over the league with his expected better talent, but like all sport novels it’s not that simple. Just transitioning into the different culture, where afternoons are dedicated to siestas and the go-to drink is wine, is troubling for the former NFL quarterback.
And for Souza the transition wasn’t much different. Coming from the humble background of Prunedale and learning the game from his North Monterey County head coach dad Larry Souza, Italian football was never a place he expected to be.
For the full story see the Free Lance on Tuesday.
