47 pages • 1 hour read
John GrishamPlaying For Pizza
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 12-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary
The Panthers’ first game of the season is against the Naples Bandits, who take the train to Parma the morning of the game and return to Naples on an overnight train later the same day. The Panthers gather two hours before the game begins to warm up and discuss their strategy. The energy and excitement in the room are familiar to Rick, despite the difference in size between this locker room and his last team’s locker room. 1,000 fans are in attendance, having read about the Panthers’ new NFL quarterback in a newspaper article arranged by the team’s owner Signor Bruncardo.
During the first offensive series, Rick throws an interception to the Naples safety, repeating his disastrous final play for the Cleveland Browns. In his second series, he passes repeatedly to Sly before reluctantly allowing Franco to run the ball. Franco successfully carries the ball for 24 yards, and Rick throws to Fabrizio in the next play for a touchdown. Rick throws four over the course of the game and runs one in himself to lead the Panthers to victory.
Chapter 13 Summary
The next evening, Rick walks to the home of Rodolfo Bruncardo, the owner of the Parma Panthers. At Sam’s urging, Rick agreed to attend the opera with Bruncardo, his wife Silvia, and the Russos. Rick learns that the people of Parma are immensely proud of their opera, and consider themselves to be experts of the art. Performers who are not considered up to par may be booed by opinionated locals. Sam’s wife Anna offers Rick a program in English to help him follow the story of the opera, Verdi’s Otello.
When the show begins, Rick is overwhelmed. He is immediately enamored with the soprano performing Desdemona, a petite brunette identified in the program as Gabriella Ballini. At the end of the first Act, spectators in the upper level of the theater boo Desdemona’s performance, shocking Rick. Anna explains that Gabriella missed a few notes and that Parma fans are tough. Rick focuses on Gabriella throughout the opera and vows to see her perform again.
Chapter 14 Summary
While at dinner with a teammate named Pietro and his wife Ivana, Rick spots Gabriella Ballini eating with a man. Rick watches as Gabriella cries and the man does not comfort her. Ivana tells Rick that Gabriella has not been popular among Parma opera fans.
Later that night, Rick struggles to park the Fiat on a crowded and narrow street, angering a driver stuck behind him. When Rick gets out of the car to yell at the other driver, a stranger climbs into his car and parks it for him. As he thanks her, Rick realizes that the stranger is Gabriella. He greets her by name, explaining that he saw her at the opera, and asks her to join him for a drink.
Gabriella tells Rick that the man she was having dinner with was her long-time boyfriend, Carletto. She plans to return to Florence with him once Otello closes the following week. Rick agrees to see the show again, and the pair make plans to meet the next day for lunch.
Chapter 15 Summary
Rick attends another performance of Otello and is thrilled when he catches Gabriella looking for him. After her first solo, Rick cheers loudly and the applause spreads. Rick takes Gabriella out for a drink after the performance and convinces her to stay another week to watch him play in Parma.
Rick, Sly, Trey, and Paolo travel to Milan for the weekend before the Panthers’ game against the Milan Rhinos on Sunday. They begin drinking heavily on the train. The group chose Milan specifically for its nightlife, and after a long dinner, they start club-hopping at 2 AM. Sly and Trey leave with Irish girls, and Rick goes home with a married American who kicks him out unceremoniously the next morning.
The men regroup the next morning and continue drinking. On Sunday, the three Americans are hungover and exhausted, and the team performs poorly, scoring only after Sam removes Rick from the game. The Panthers lose their first game.
Chapter 16 Summary
The next morning, while Sam is acting as a tour guide for rich tourists, Rick finds him to apologize in person. Sam tells Rick that he is the leader of the team and needs to regain their trust. Rick has lunch with Gabriella, who had a subpar final performance as Desdemona. Gabriella reveals that she has decided to return to Florence with Carletto as planned and will not be staying to watch Rick’s game. Rick is bitterly disappointed but does not ask her to stay.
Rick jogs to the Stadio Lanfranchi to avoid thinking about Gabriella. He finds Sly in the locker room with a packed bag. Sly reveals that he’s returning to America after learning that his wife is pregnant. Sly feels he needs to start acting like a man, and suggests that their behavior chasing girls in Milan was childish. Rick chastises him for abandoning the team, but Sly insists they can find someone to cover him and leaves.
Chapter 17 Summary
The Panthers are quiet and gloomy at their next practice, wounded by the double insult of the loss and Sly’s decision to leave. Fabrizio, the star receiver hurt in the loss to Milan, does not appear for practice. Sam suggests replacing him, but Rick insists the team needs him. When he doesn’t show up again, Rick reluctantly runs plays using Trey and the back-up receiver Claudio.
Sam receives a call from a lawyer representing Fabrizio. Sam initially believes that Fabrizio is in trouble and is shocked to learn that the lawyer is handling Fabrizio’s demand to be paid for playing. Sam is unsure whether any Italian players are compensated for playing in the league, and rejects the idea.
Cleveland Post reporter Charley Cray arrives in Parma excited to report on Rick Dockery’s second act. The chapter ends with his insulting, sneering report on the Panthers’ disastrous loss to the Bologna Warriors, in which Trey’s leg is broken. Cray’s article suggests that Rick faces the same fate with the Panthers as he did in Cleveland.
Chapters 12-17 Analysis
In these chapters, Rick loses his two closest teammates when Sly Turner returns to America and Trey Colby breaks his leg, forcing him to reflect on The Importance of Loyalty to the team. The loss of Sly and Trey means that Rick is the only American player on the Parma Panthers. In chapters to come, this will have an important impact on his leadership style and decision-making.
The circumstances surrounding Sly and Rick’s departures highlight Rick’s connection to both men, despite their short tenure as teammates. In Chapter 15, the trio takes a trip to Milan “with Paolo […] as their guide” (133). Throughout this chapter, Grisham carefully distinguishes Paolo from the trio of Americans traveling with him, and the collective noun “the Americans” is used to refer to Sly, Trey, and Rick repeatedly (133, 134, 135). Grisham’s use of the term suggests that Sly, Trey, and Rick have begun operating as a unit.
Specifically, the novel suggests that, like Rick, Sly and Trey both have one-night stands while in Milan: The men “left with two blondes” who spoke English (136), and “compared stories” with Rick the next day. Their sexual escapades in Milan force both Sly and Rick to reconsider what they want romantically. Shortly after, Sly cites their weekend in Milan as a reason to return to America, saying that he can’t be “chasing girls in Milan like [he’s] still in college” when he has a pregnant wife and child to consider (145). In the same chapter, Rick decides not to pursue Gabriella after recognizing that “wedging into the middle” of her relationship would leave him “burned” (143), like he was with the married woman in Milan. Sly’s decision to leave and Rick’s decision not to pursue Gabriella suggest that both men have grown emotionally as a result of their weekend in Milan, which binds them together despite Sly’s departure.
The character of Gabriella is introduced as a potential love interest for Rick in Chapter 13 and disappears in Chapter 16. Rick’s fling with Gabriella is used as evidence of his growing immersion in Italian culture and his emotional development. As an opera singer, Gabriella acts as an embodiment of Italian culture: The fact that Rick sees Verdi’s Otello twice in order to see her suggests that her very presence makes him feel more connected to his new Italian surroundings. His decision not to try to persuade her to leave her Italian boyfriend demonstrates his emotional maturity. Although he “longed to race after her and beg like a fool” (144), Rick ends the relationship before either of them is hurt, which the novel suggests is a significant departure from his behavior in previous relationships.
This section of the novel also invokes The Pressures of Fame when Trey Colby suffers a leg injury in Chapter 17. Trey’s injury is reported to the reader through an article written by Charley Cray, rather than via direct narration. Cray’s article reports drily that Trey “landed badly” and was “hauled off the field with a compound fracture somewhere in his lower left leg” (154). The violence of this accident is belied by the detached tone of Cray’s article, suggesting that Cray is just looking for more reasons to belittle the former NFL players instead of depicting them with more objectivity. This structural detail also connects Trey and his injury to Rick, whose violent injury is also reported to the audience by a third party, Arnie, rather than being narrated to the audience directly. Grisham’s use of this narrative technique highlights the growing connections between Rick and his teammates while also establishing Charley Cray as the novel’s antagonist.
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