The case for... bad sporting autobiographies

As a man of letters, I’m occasionally asked what books I’m reading. I’m quick to rattle off more illustrious choices: a greatly admired proof of some person I can boast about knowing in real life; a slim volume of difficult modern verse; a reissued Irish classic which speaks to the current moment with uncanny prescience. I’m less likely, however, to say that I’m re-reading Dennis Wise: The Autobiography for, ohhh, the third or fourth time.

I’ve always loved bad sports autobiographies. I do not mean the actual great works of the genre, such as Tony Adams’s searing, lyrical Addicted, Joe Simpson’s psychological masterpiece, Touching the Void, or Conor Niland’s masterful account of small-time tennis pros, The Racket. No, I mean books in which athletes – via ghostwriters – treat us to a bald catalogue of their sporting lives.

As a boy reading Ray Houghton’s Liverpool from the Inside, I found myself enraptured by what was, effectively, a series of match reports, interrupted by anecdotes of startling drabness. Does Ray have a favourite pair of shinpads? Not really, they’re all the same to him. Does he like long coach journeys? No, he finds them dull. Did Kevin Keegan once serve orange squash at a party? Yes, and you’d better believe he was teased for it.

What these books lack in incident, prose style, or even any concrete reason to exist, they make up for in information I would not divulge under CIA torture, such as Jermaine Pennant’s account of secretly burying his girlfriend’s cat after it was ripped apart by his dog, or my one true sporting laureate Dennis Wise’s brazen attempt to blacken the name of a taxi driver he assaulted, issued with such blank and expressionless prose, that it lulls me into silent, meditative bliss each time I re-read. I’d give you the exact quote but in attempting to find it, I’ve gotten sucked back in. Entertain yourself and cancel all my meetings for the day. I’ve some literature to catch up on.

Illustration by Miguel Porlan