Paper Lion is a 1966 non-fiction book by American author George Plimpton. In 1960, Plimpton, not an athlete, arranged to pitch to a lineup of professional baseball players in an All-Star exhibition, presumably to answer the question, "How would the average man off of the street fare in an attempt to compete with the stars of professional sports?" He chronicled this experience in his book, Out of My League. To write Paper Lion, Plimpton repeated the experiment in the National Football League, joining the training camp of the 1963 Detroit Lions on the premise of trying out to be the team's third-string quarterback. Plimpton, then 36 years old, showed how unlikely it would be for an "average" person to succeed as a professional football player.
Adaptations (1)
Paper Lion was adapted into a 1968 film.
Paper Lion1968 · film · 107 min · dir. Alex March · IMDb ↗IMDb6.2Sportswriter George Plimpton poses as a rookie quarterback for the Detroit Lions for a "Sports Illustrated" article.
