Death Threats Halt Vick Book Tour

It’s hard to say which publishing niche is most putrid: inspirational Christian books, or sports books. Thankfully Worthy Publishing has rendered the point mute by publishing Michael Vick’s book,Finally Free, an inspirational Christian sports book. The book says it’s an autobiography but it credits two additional writers, Brett Honeycutt and Stephen Copeland, both associated with Sports Spectrum, a publication dedicated to conservative Christian values and sports. A natural combination because wealth, fame, playing games for money, and making idols of the rich and famous were such important parts of Christ’s message.

Finally Free begins with high drama — enjambed sentences — that paint a metaphor à la Thomas Kinkade, of Mike Vick as a kind of winged predator plucked from the aether:

“Hokies.
Falcons.
Eagles.
I’ve always been a bird.”

But, alas, the Hokie is not a bird. Vick seems to have mistaken the Hokie mascot, a birdish creature, for a Hokie. (Note to the editors at Worthy Publishing – the San Diego Padre is not a chicken.) Maybe if he’d stayed more than two years at Virginia Tech Vick might have learned that a Hokie is just a nonsense word devised in 1896 to fill in gaps in the school cheer. On the other hand it’s the rare student athlete that takes a course as difficult as “Dictionary Definitions 101: How to Discover and Decipher the Meaning of Words.”

Anyway, the opening scene continues. This bird — it had to fly. It flew far from its foundation of God and family into the ego-centered world of football fame and riches (richest rookie contract in NFL history in 2001. Highest paid player in the NFL with second contract in 2004), which ultimately led to the winged-QB being cooped up in the federal cage at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

This would all be hilarious, if it weren’t so sad. I choose to believe, based on the evidence I’ve read at http://www.sportsspectrum.com, as well as the publisher site at worthypublishing.com, that it wasn’t Mike Vick who wrote this saccharin paean to Mike Vick, but his co-authors. (I need to read another christian sports book published by Worthy written by Randall Cunningham, Lay It Down. In addition to the masterful use of adjectives, Cunningham’s “non-fiction” plot pulls you in like a play action pass and then goes deep. The publisher blurb begins, “An astounding prophecy is whispered by a mysterious old woman to a sorrowful mid-40s couple who has just lost their two-year-old son in a hot tub accident.” Is this old woman a witch? Maybe she drowned the kid in the hot tub? Or was there a stronger wizard that gave her a false “prophesy”? And I can’t even imagine those poor parents. No doubt the hot tub was the best purchase they ever made—the magical steamy moments—now turned into a stew of dead child. But I digress….

So why does the caged bird sing? Is it because he wants to save the youth of America from strip clubs and McMansions filled with bloody dogs and high school dropouts, or is it because if he can resurrect his public image, he can make millions of dollars in endorsements? Knowing Michael, I’d say it’s both, but the latter is probably the prime mover.

In spite of the book’s shortcomings and Vick’s questionable motives, I think it’s hard to not feel some sympathy for him. Like many athletes who rise from poverty and strike it rich, he has been lied to and used by a legion of hangers-on and employers, from the clowns who operated the dog fighting ring in his Virginia home, to the Nike Corporation, the Atlanta Falcon’s, and the National Football League. Vick deserves to be free of his past crimes, including his first degree assault on literature. It’s probably good the tour was cancelled. I wouldn’t be surprised if his publisher manufactured the threat (or exaggerated it) to get him off the tour. I can’t imagine the bad press associated with protests would be good for sales.