Gallagher - Andy Roddick beat me with a frying pan : taking the field with pro athletes and Olympic legends to answer sports fans burning questions

A s any sports fan knows, the debates can be almost as interesting as the games themselves unless youre a Tampa Bay Devil Rays fan, in which case theyre much more interesting. And as any sports fan will tell you, the most enjoyable debates arent the same tired ones that sportswriters and media personalities rehash ad nauseam. Theyre the ones that rage on in living rooms, locker rooms, and barrooms around the world. (Full disclosure: I have not actually been around the world to confirm this.)

Youve probably had a bunch of these kinds of debates with your friends. I definitely have. Many drunken nights have been spent trying to figure out what kind of absurd handicap Id need to be able to compete against an elite athlete or arguing whether a glue-sniffing neighbors outlandish strategy really would revolutionize a sport. When I was coaching in the USBL, arguing about the validity of urban legends being peddled in cheap magazines turned long bus rides into the barbershop scene from Coming to America. And back when I was doing interviews for ESPN, the best conversations Id have with coworkers were the ones that could never be discussed on the air, in the magazine, or on the website without getting someone fired.

But there are limitations to being a fan beyond the limiting shame of screaming support for people dribbling a basketball who dont even know you. No matter how fun these debates are, arguing in and of itself is never enough to settle them in a satisfactory way. If youve been insisting for years that pro tennis players are so good that Andy Roddick could play with a frying pan and still crush your buddy who thinks tennis is easy, you cant just call up Andy and throw a skillet in his hand. If you believe a 1,000-pound goalie would dominate the sport of hockey, NHL teams arent lining up to shoot on your rotund ringer to prove you right. If you think a writer is just making things up in claiming LeBron James can touch the top of the backboard, you cant get BronBron to set the record straight. And if your coworkers are adamant that a Division I womens basketball player would whip your ass in a game of one-on-one, theres not much you can do but say you respectfully/disrespectfully disagree. In many ways, youre always on the outside looking in.

The bigger problem for fans who want answers is that no one on the inside is trying to settle these debates either. Working in sports as a basketball coach, writer, and TV producer, I found out why firsthand. Many times fans (of sports, not of me) approached me with questions they couldnt answer. Eventually I became so overwhelmed by how often certain questions came up, and was so curious about ones from my own life, that I turned to peers in the sports media to see what we could do. The good news was that theyd invariably say they had been bombarded with many of the same questions and were dying to know the answers themselves. The bad news was that theyd tell me to forget it; answering the questions would be too expensive, too time-consuming, and no athlete would ever participate.

It doesnt take an insider to understand the time and money limitations. Media outlets are businesses and want to maximize profits, and having talking heads blabber about the hot topic of the day is a lot more cost effective than staging events and doing research.But I always believed that the questions fans posed were so much more interesting than what athletes typically get askedor, at the very least, what I had to ask themthat theyd be happy to participate. So through the years I always kept the idea of answering these questions in the back of my mind.

To the rescue came Three Rivers Press, which was bound by neither hard daily deadlines nor the same budgetary concerns that limit media outlets looking to take advantage of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. They had the money to cover my expenses, I made the time to do the leg-work, and you, the fans, had the imagination, so I went out to get the answers weve always wanted.

As tempting as it was just to give my own blustery opinions on these questions and spend the rest of the year in Hawaii, I turned to the people who could really settle the debates: the players. As I had hoped would be the case, the questions struck enough of a chord with the athletes that many of the best in the world were happy to put them to the test on the field of play. Andy Roddick actually did play with a frying pan, the NHLs Washington Capitals really did shoot on a rotund goalie, and many others participated as well: the National League batting champion, a two-time Olympic gold medalist sprinter, a PGA golfer, a three-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer, a former American League MVP, Americas #1 darts player, a bowling Hall of Famer, and one of the greatest dunkers in basketball history, to name a few.

It wasnt just the events the athletes enjoyed. One of the most refreshing parts of this project was to see pro athletes who have been barraged with the same boring questions over and over again have their deadened eyes light up at the chance to have a fun, thoughtful, albeit ridiculous, conversation about the sport they have dedicated their lives to. I grilled everyone from LeBron to Johan Santana to Dwyane Wade to Eddie George to The Black Widow Jeanette Lee, and instead of rolling their eyes at me like Steve Nash used to at the dopey questions I was forced to ask, or screaming at me like a two-year-old like Stephon Marbury did, they were happy to oblige.

As much time as I put into this project flying around the country, renting out airport terminals, and importing sumo wrestlers from Mongolia, this was more than just work. Im as obsessed with sports as many of the fans who have approached me with questions, having wasted countless hours of my life playing and watching everything from basketball to baseball to tennis to soccer to pool. So it was insanely fun to be able to get into it with an NBA coach about his teams questionable moves, try to convince a loopy Mike Tyson to fight ten tough men in a single night, talk to Mike Cameron about how he has patrolled center field while drunk, listen to Wade and Carmelo Anthony call out Gilbert Arenas for keeping track of his stats during games, and try to start a bidding war between major league general managers for a midget baseball player.

Even when throwing myself into the action crushed my fantasy that a pro career was only a couple of trips to the batting cage away or blew a long-held belief to pieces, it was the most fun I ever had in sports.

Then again, how couldnt it have been? After twenty years of arguing with my dad, I finally settled whether a team of midgets could beat my beloved Pirates.

Like most questions that sports fans debate, the questions covered in this book typically fall into a handful of categories:

• The outlandish strategies: Would your friends insane plan to change the game really work or does he just need to get out of the house more often?

• The proposition bets on handicap matches: A coworker swears a pro golfer could play with a toothpick instead of a golf club and still crush you, or something equally amazing in magnitude. We find out just how good these guys really are.

• The myth busters: