Read from the introduction of Inside the Ropes: Sportswriters Get Their Game On edited and with an introduction by Zachary Michael Jack:

"So what’s it like to scale Everest, parachute out of a Cessna, stunt with the Blue Angels, tend goal for the Boston Bruins, burn rubber on a NASCAR track, marathon one hundred miles in twenty-four hours, quarterback the Detroit Lions, sail the ocean blue between Los Angeles and Honolulu on an all-woman crew? What’s it like to receive John McEnroe’s slice serve, paddle Jack London’s Alaskan river route, take a punch from Muhammad Ali, coach the Phoenix Suns’ Steve Nash, or call “fair” or “foul” to a Manny Ramirez line drive and suffer the consequences?

If you’re a good little sports reader, you know already—because you’ve skipped the dry stuff, the bunny hill of prefaces and intros, the bookish yadda yadda yadda—and headed straight for the slopes: the forty eye-popping accounts that follow from the world’s top participatory sportswriters."

To read a longer excerpt or to purchase Inside the Ropes, visit: http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Inside-the-Ropes,673978.aspx