Where might I find a copy of the story George Plimpton wrote in the
mid-late 1970s about his tryout and play with the Tampa Bay Rowdies
NASL soccer team?  I have found many mentions of this article, but
have yet to find a printed version of it anywhere in any form.

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Request for Question Clarification by jab-ga on 20 Apr 2005 11:56 PDT

Can you point me to a specific reference to this tryout for the soccer
team? I've just read through the Plimpton biography in "Contemporary
Authors" and there's no mention of it.

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Clarification of Question by cosmossoccer-ga on 20 Apr 2005 17:49 PDT

Here's one of the places the Rowdies stint was mentioned.  I will look
for others.  But I have yet to see the actual written work he produced
for his troubles.  I want to say he played witht their indoor team,
which would have probably meant the mid-1970s. . .
+ + +

"The public, uninterested that George Plimpton might have a serious
motive for his jaunts [boxing with Archie Moore and playing: tennis
with Pancho Gonzalez, golf with Arnold Palmer, basketball with the
Boston Celtics, hockey with the Boston Bruins, football with the
Detroit Lions, and soccer with the Tampa Bay Rowdies], took the view
that he was simply a moneyed idiot looking for ways to pass the time.
He persuaded Leonard Bernstein to let him join an orchestra he was
conducting, and was allowed to help out with the percussion. But even
playing the triangle is a skill. He missed his cue in a Mahler
symphony. Determined not to miss out next time, he prepared to strike
the gong softly in a Tchaikovsky piece. But, in a state of nerves, he
bashed it with all his strength, bringing the performance abruptly to
a premature end."


Plimpton, George (1927-2003) American writer [noted for such works as
Sake: A Drinker's Guide, Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes,
Playwrights at Work, The Writer's Chapbook: A Compendium of Fact,
Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent
Writers, and The Best of Plimpton]

[Sources: The Economist, Oct 9th 2003]

I've now searched Reader's Guide for this article; can't find it. So
Plimpton may have tried out with the Tampa Bay Rowdies, but I cannot
find that he ever wrote about it, at least not in Sports Illustrated
where he wrote a lot of these sorts of things. Still hunting though...

I've now gone through a few more bibliographies, including Lexis-Nexis
for 1972-1980 and Contemporary Literature, and none of them show an
article by Plimpton on the Tampa Bay Rowdies.  I'm tending to believe
he never wrote about this experience, or it was never published.
Sorry.