"Expatriate Games"

Bill Littlefield comments on author Dave Fromm's cleverly written, Expatriate Games: My Season of Misadventures in Czech Semi-Pro Basketball , a personal account of Fromm's experience playing semi- professional basketball in Prague. From dealing with the language barrier to trying to adapt to life in the Czech Republic, Expatriate Games, promises to be an entertaining read.

After graduating from Boston College in 1993, Dave Fromm moved to Prague to play semi-pro basketball.

It was a curious decision.
 
Dave Fromm was a good enough player to have tried out as a walk-on at B.C. twice. He was bad enough to have been cut both times.

Then there was the little matter of communication. Fromm had visited Prague as a tourist, but he didn’t speak any Czech.

Beyond that, he had no idea whether there were any semi-pro basketball teams in Prague.

Otherwise his trip was a great idea.

As it turned out, Fromm found a team. His free-lancing U.S. style never quite fit into that team’s plans, but the members of TJ Sokol Kralovsk Vinhorady kept him around anyway, and it’s fair to say he did them some good. That, the pursuit of a graduate degree at a school for which accreditation was a long-term goal, and an up-and-down romance were enough to keep Fromm in Prague for the duration of the Czech basketball season, after which he and his teammates made one of the most agonizing road trips any team has ever undertaken.

Dave Fromm’s account of what he cheerfully calls his “misadventures” is entertaining and funny. You won’t necessarily find yourself wishing you had been there, but you’ll be glad he was, and that he remembers the season so well – or so creatively - and that he finally decided to write it all down.