Comeback Season

Consider this excerpt:

With a heavy heart I watch that Sunday’s game between the Colts and the Jets. With 2:24 remaining in the game, Peyton Manning completes a 2-yard pass to tight end Bryan Fletcher, ending a 68-yard Colts drive. Colts 24, Jets 21. The Colts offense retreats to the bench, but before they can even sit down, the Jets kick returner Justin Miller runs the kickoff 103 yards to give the Jets a 28-24 lead with 2:20 remaining. Peyton Manning has just picked up the phone to talk to the quarterback coach Jim Caldwell when he looks up and sees Miller run down tiny little Martin Gramatica, the Colts temporary replacement kicker for Adam Vinateri. Manning hangs up the phone and quickly puts his helmet back on.

That may not sound like a paragraph from a woman’s memoir about trying to find true love in Pittsburgh, but it is. And amazingly, it works.

The book is Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love, by Cathy Day. It tells her story of what it’s like to be successful but single — or possibly single because you’ve been so busy being successful. But it also tells the story of coming back from failure, whether that failure is losing in the NFL playoffs or being passed over, yet again, by someone you cared for and who you thought cared for you.

The NFL comeback in question is that of Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, who lost (to the Pittsburgh Steelers, rah) in the playoffs of the 2005 season and then returned in 2006 to win the Super Bowl. We know from the start what will happen with the Colts, but we don’t know whether Cathy will be able to mend her broken heart and find someone to love. Therein lies the story.

And it’s great fun. Granted, I may be a bit biased in this assessment, being a somewhat successful and chronically single woman in western Pennsylvania who also happens to adore NFL football. My first thought on hearing about this book was, "Damn, I should have written that."  I started reading, and I had repeated jolts of recognition: Hey, I’ve been set up at parties too! Ooh, I thought I needed to write polite responses to everyone who wrote to me on Match.com also! Yes, I judge people by their command of spelling and grammar as well! After only a dozen or so pages, I was enjoying the book so much I was glad I hadn’t had to write it.

Then as I read further, and I saw where the story was going, how smoothly the storylines were woven together, how real the people were, how perfectly it all worked. And I started to feel a little envious again, this time because I knew I couldn’t have written this book — not as well as it’s written. Boy, it’s good.

I’m not the only one who enjoyed it:

“Cathy Day’s gutsy memoir is the stuff of a great Lucille Ball episode. Comeback Season is funny, sad; wise, idiotic; realistic, hopelessly romanticized. It’s a book to read all the way through — no flipping and skimming…How her season plays out is the stuff of good living presented as artfully as did the Queen of Comedy, who taught us misadventures have a place in prime time." —Nuvo: Indy’s Alternative Voice

If you know Pittsburgh, you’ll find little treats along the way: the Church Brew Works, Polish Hill, the Beehive on the South Side, and the Gist Street Reading Series all make cameo appearances, along with so many other local haunts. Pittsburgh’s sudden, stunning vistas pop up, just like in real life. And although she’s not from ’round here, Ms. Day paints a fair picture of those of us who are — which is impressive, considering she’s a lonely Colts fan stranded in Steelers Country.

(She does make one unfortunate reference to black and gold garb making local fans look like bumblebees. I’m only glad that the Colts and the Steelers never played each other during the season she chronicles, or there might have been real trouble.)

Comeback Season starts out as a clever premise but grows into a thoughtful treatise on the intersection of romance, success, confidence, and identity. Does Cathy win in the end? You’ll need to read the book and find out.

Order Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love online or buy it at your favorite bookseller.

Cathy Day currently teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh, so there’s a chance you’ll bump into her wandering around the Burgh. You can find her website at www.cathyday.com.

Better yet, you can hear her read from Comeback Season on Tuesday, February 12 @ 7PM, at the Joseph Beth Booksellers in the Southside Works, 2705 East Carson Street. UPDATE on Feb. 2: Due to a big ol’ winter storm, the reading is postponed. I’ll post the rescheduled date when that’s set. Stay home and stay warm!