Elementary Secondary Higher Ed Common Reads
0 0
Download high-resolution image
Listen to a clip from the audiobook
audio play button
0:00
0:00

Game for Life: John Madden

Part of Game for Life

Author Peter Richmond
Read by Chris Browning
Listen to a clip from the audiobook
audio play button
0:00
0:00
Audiobook Download
Audio | Listening Library
On sale Jul 30, 2019 | 3 Hours and 26 Minutes | 9781984892096
Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

See Additional Formats
Join the Pro Football Hall of Fame in celebrating the legendary coach, announcer, and video game personality! This new biography is based on interviews with John Madden himself!

Nobody knows more about football than John Madden does. His childhood revolved around sports. When an injury kept him from playing in the NFL, he continued to learn everything he could about football. As head coach of the Oakland Raiders, Madden won more games than any other coach in Raiders history. Then he used his football knowledge as a commentator and the creator of one of the most popular video games ever—Madden NFL. Find out why John Madden is such a beloved member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame!

Game for Life biographies support the Pro Football Hall of Fame's mission to honor the heroes of the game, preserve its history, promote its values, and celebrate excellence everywhere. Don't miss Game for Life: Michael Strahan!
It’s not every kid who has a playing field named after him. Then again, it’s not every kid who loves football so much that he’d jump onto a moving freight train to get up to San Francisco to see his beloved San Francisco 49ers play. Or hitchhike to their training camp. Or hop a moving streetcar to catch a San Francisco Seals baseball game.
 
It’s not everyone who loves sports so much that his whole world revolved around them when he was a kid.
 
And a teenager. And even now, as an adult.
 
It’s not every guy who’s been lucky enough to keep playing his whole life.
 
But John Madden has.
 
↔↔↔
 
He was born in 1936 in Austin, Minnesota. When Madden was a young boy, his family moved to Daly City, California, where his father, an auto mechanic, got work at a Chevrolet dealership. Daly City was an industrial town—­and a great place for a sports-­loving kid to grow up in. It lay just south of San Francisco, home to the National Football League’s 49ers and the Pacific Coast League’s Seals.
 
Better yet, it was a town with a large municipal park full of ball fields, although the truth was that Madden and his friends spent most of their time in the humble patch of ground next to his family’s home on Knowles Street.
 
The kids called it Madden’s Lot—­as in, “We’ll meet after school at Madden’s Lot.”
 
“I thought it was my lot,” Madden said. “I really did. You didn’t know who owned things in those days. I thought I owned it. It’s there, you play.”
 
It wasn’t much of a field: packed dirt, maybe sixty feet wide, a hundred feet long, not a lot of grass.
 
“It was a terrible lot,” his lifelong friend John Robinson said. “It was all weeds. Every time I go to a restaurant now and I see Field Greens as an expensive salad on the menu, I think of being tackled facedown with a mouthful of field greens as a kid.”
 
Madden’s Lot sloped a little downward. If you and your friends were playing football, and your side had the ball, and you were pretending to be, say, 49ers star running back Hugh McElhenny, the best play would be going downhill on a power sweep to the right.
 
For baseball, home plate was on the low side, and if you were Seals outfielder Neill Sheridan, your hit could clear Knowles Street. But if you pulled it too far left, you’d hit the Madden house.
 
“We’d break windows all the time, the dining room and kitchen,” Madden said. “But my mom didn’t say a word. My dad never said a word, either. That was a gift. I was lucky. It was never, ‘You can’t play anymore; don’t break the window anymore.’ He’d just fix it.
 
“Then he finally put chicken wire on the windows. I mean, he knew I couldn’t tell my buddies, ‘Let’s play in Madden’s Lot, but you can’t break a window.’ ”
 
↔↔↔
 
Daly City had one cool thing going for it that a lot of cities don’t: it was right on the ocean. You could smell the sea, especially when the fog rolled in.
 
“Daly City was the fog capital of the world,” Madden said. At least that’s what it felt like to the young boy. “I grew up in fog. I love fog. You know why? You never get tired in fog. You can play all day. We’d play early in the morning before school, then it’d burn off, then after school, it came back, and you could play in the fog again. . . . The fog was great for endurance.”
 
The science behind Madden’s fog theory might be a little suspect, but whatever the reason, it seemed as if he could play his sports forever. This meant, of course, that being a kid was not about grammar school at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, where Madden was never a top student. “I always made fun of the people who sat in front, the people who, when the nuns would ask a question, they’d be waving their hands.
 
“I never waved my hand. I just sat in back and talked about other stuff until I got in trouble, yeah. You’d go to the principal’s office and whack!”
 
Grade school was about waiting: for recess, so he could play; for lunch, so he could play; and for the final bell, so he could play.
 
“If it was football season, we were Forty-­Niners,” Robinson said. “If it was baseball, we were Yankees. Basically, when we were little kids, you’d start playing at nine in the morning and go home either when the sun went down or you got so hungry you couldn’t stand it anymore.”
 
Copyright © 2019 by Peter Richmond. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
© Anne Day
Peter Richmond is the author of six books, including The Glory Game (with Frank Gifford), which was a New York Times bestseller. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and GQ. He lives with his wife in Dutchess County, New York. View titles by Peter Richmond

About

Join the Pro Football Hall of Fame in celebrating the legendary coach, announcer, and video game personality! This new biography is based on interviews with John Madden himself!

Nobody knows more about football than John Madden does. His childhood revolved around sports. When an injury kept him from playing in the NFL, he continued to learn everything he could about football. As head coach of the Oakland Raiders, Madden won more games than any other coach in Raiders history. Then he used his football knowledge as a commentator and the creator of one of the most popular video games ever—Madden NFL. Find out why John Madden is such a beloved member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame!

Game for Life biographies support the Pro Football Hall of Fame's mission to honor the heroes of the game, preserve its history, promote its values, and celebrate excellence everywhere. Don't miss Game for Life: Michael Strahan!

Excerpt

It’s not every kid who has a playing field named after him. Then again, it’s not every kid who loves football so much that he’d jump onto a moving freight train to get up to San Francisco to see his beloved San Francisco 49ers play. Or hitchhike to their training camp. Or hop a moving streetcar to catch a San Francisco Seals baseball game.
 
It’s not everyone who loves sports so much that his whole world revolved around them when he was a kid.
 
And a teenager. And even now, as an adult.
 
It’s not every guy who’s been lucky enough to keep playing his whole life.
 
But John Madden has.
 
↔↔↔
 
He was born in 1936 in Austin, Minnesota. When Madden was a young boy, his family moved to Daly City, California, where his father, an auto mechanic, got work at a Chevrolet dealership. Daly City was an industrial town—­and a great place for a sports-­loving kid to grow up in. It lay just south of San Francisco, home to the National Football League’s 49ers and the Pacific Coast League’s Seals.
 
Better yet, it was a town with a large municipal park full of ball fields, although the truth was that Madden and his friends spent most of their time in the humble patch of ground next to his family’s home on Knowles Street.
 
The kids called it Madden’s Lot—­as in, “We’ll meet after school at Madden’s Lot.”
 
“I thought it was my lot,” Madden said. “I really did. You didn’t know who owned things in those days. I thought I owned it. It’s there, you play.”
 
It wasn’t much of a field: packed dirt, maybe sixty feet wide, a hundred feet long, not a lot of grass.
 
“It was a terrible lot,” his lifelong friend John Robinson said. “It was all weeds. Every time I go to a restaurant now and I see Field Greens as an expensive salad on the menu, I think of being tackled facedown with a mouthful of field greens as a kid.”
 
Madden’s Lot sloped a little downward. If you and your friends were playing football, and your side had the ball, and you were pretending to be, say, 49ers star running back Hugh McElhenny, the best play would be going downhill on a power sweep to the right.
 
For baseball, home plate was on the low side, and if you were Seals outfielder Neill Sheridan, your hit could clear Knowles Street. But if you pulled it too far left, you’d hit the Madden house.
 
“We’d break windows all the time, the dining room and kitchen,” Madden said. “But my mom didn’t say a word. My dad never said a word, either. That was a gift. I was lucky. It was never, ‘You can’t play anymore; don’t break the window anymore.’ He’d just fix it.
 
“Then he finally put chicken wire on the windows. I mean, he knew I couldn’t tell my buddies, ‘Let’s play in Madden’s Lot, but you can’t break a window.’ ”
 
↔↔↔
 
Daly City had one cool thing going for it that a lot of cities don’t: it was right on the ocean. You could smell the sea, especially when the fog rolled in.
 
“Daly City was the fog capital of the world,” Madden said. At least that’s what it felt like to the young boy. “I grew up in fog. I love fog. You know why? You never get tired in fog. You can play all day. We’d play early in the morning before school, then it’d burn off, then after school, it came back, and you could play in the fog again. . . . The fog was great for endurance.”
 
The science behind Madden’s fog theory might be a little suspect, but whatever the reason, it seemed as if he could play his sports forever. This meant, of course, that being a kid was not about grammar school at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, where Madden was never a top student. “I always made fun of the people who sat in front, the people who, when the nuns would ask a question, they’d be waving their hands.
 
“I never waved my hand. I just sat in back and talked about other stuff until I got in trouble, yeah. You’d go to the principal’s office and whack!”
 
Grade school was about waiting: for recess, so he could play; for lunch, so he could play; and for the final bell, so he could play.
 
“If it was football season, we were Forty-­Niners,” Robinson said. “If it was baseball, we were Yankees. Basically, when we were little kids, you’d start playing at nine in the morning and go home either when the sun went down or you got so hungry you couldn’t stand it anymore.”
 
Copyright © 2019 by Peter Richmond. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author

© Anne Day
Peter Richmond is the author of six books, including The Glory Game (with Frank Gifford), which was a New York Times bestseller. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and GQ. He lives with his wife in Dutchess County, New York. View titles by Peter Richmond

Additional formats

Other books in this series

Other Books by this Author

Related Articles

Books for National Depression Education and Awareness Month
Psychology

Books for National Depression Education and Awareness Month

For National Depression Education and Awareness Month in October, we are sharing a collection of titles that educates and informs on depression, including personal stories from those who have experienced depression and topics that range from causes and symptoms of depression to how to develop coping mechanisms to battle depression.

Read more

Books for National Depression Education and Awareness Month

Psychology
Literature

Horror Titles for the Halloween Season

In celebration of the Halloween season, we are sharing horror books that are aligned with the themes of the holiday: the sometimes unknown and scary creatures and witches. From classic ghost stories and popular novels that are celebrated today, in literature courses and beyond, to contemporary stories about the monsters that hide in the dark, our list

Read more

Horror Titles for the Halloween Season

Literature
Gender and Sexuality Studies History

Books for LGBTQIA+ History Month

For LGBTQIA+ History Month in October, we’re celebrating the shared history of individuals within the community and the importance of the activists who have fought for their rights and the rights of others. We acknowledge the varying and diverse experiences within the LGBTQIA+ community that have shaped history and have led the way for those

Read more

Books for LGBTQIA+ History Month

Gender and Sexuality Studies History
Subscribe

Penguin Random House Higher Education

© 2025 Penguin Random House

Back to Top
0
    • 0
    Wish List (0)