Now I Can Die in Peace; How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, With a Little Help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank and the 2004 Red Sox

New York: ESPN Books, 2005. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. viii, 353, [5] pages. Illustrations. William John Simmons III (born September 25, 1969), is an American sports columnist, analyst, author, and podcaster. Simmons first gained attention with his website as "The Boston Sports Guy" and was recruited by ESPN in 2001, where he operated the blog Grantland and worked until 2015. He hosted Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons on HBO for one season in 2016. He is the founder and CEO of The Ringer, a sports and pop culture blog and podcast network launched in 2016. Simmons is known for a style of writing characterized by mixing sports knowledge and analysis, pop culture references, his non-sports-related personal life, and for being written from the viewpoint of a passionate sports fan. Simmons also has created numerous internet memes, most notably the Ewing Theory (though he claims he did not come up with the idea) and the Manning Face. Simmons, a passionate Boston Red Sox fan, chronicles the team's 2004 season and 2004 World Series win. Booklist starred its review and said Simmons' tone was a "refreshing, funny take on Boston's reversal of fortune." Now I Can Die in Peace is a collection of Simmons' articles from 1999 to 2004. It chronicles events such as Pedro Martínez's 1999 Cy Young season, the loss to the New York Yankees in the 2003 ALCS, and the 2004 ALCS, when the Red Sox won the last 4 games after they lost the first three games of the series. One interesting article Simmons included in the book is not about baseball at all; it's his famous "Silence of the Rams" column that was written after the New England Patriots defeated St. Louis to win Super Bowl XXXVI. Simmons wrote that if the "Fredo of the Boston sports scene" could win a championship, then it was possible for the Red Sox to someday end their then-84-year-long title drought.