• Age: 15
• Grade: 10

In this fascinating collection Canada's most entertaining sportswriter revisits the glories of a career following sporting events and personalities that spanned five decades. Name any memorable event--from Canada-Russia 1972 to Rick Hansen's Man in Motion tour--or any famous name from Wayne Gretzky to Muhammad Ali to the San Diego Chicken, and Jim Taylor was there giving his insightful, witty and often sceptical take on the subject.

As Taylor writes, "when sport makes instant millionaires out of kids who can hit a ball or a puck with a stick or stuff a leather balloon through a fishnet, what's not to laugh?"

Here are tales of good guys and jerks, journeymen and giants playing games for a living with the world peering into the fishbowl and bigger, stronger, faster challengers coming at them every year.

Here too are the true originals, such as boxing legend Archie "The Mongoose" Moore, whose storied career defied age and logic; Sam Snead, the barefoot hillbilly who learned to play golf by hitting rocks with a stick and went on to win 135 tournaments; Willie O'Ree, the black New Brunswicker who broke the NHL's colour bar; tragic Percy Williams, the pint-sized sprinter who won double gold at the Amsterdam Olympics and later shot himself; and plenty of lesser-known heroes like the local legend Joe Johnson, who introduced a generation of BC kids to the love of soccer.

Both a retrospective of memorable goings-on in the sports world of the last fifty years and a first-rate read, And to Think I Got in Free! stands as proof that in the right hands sports writing can be great writing.

Born on March 16, 1937 in Nipawin, Saskatchewan, Jim Taylor of West Vancouver was B.C.'s most widely-read sports columnist. Taylor began his newspaper career in 1954 as a part-time sports reporter at the Daily Colonist in Victoria and later wrote for the Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Province and the Calgary Sun. He became a nationally syndicated sports columnist, author, and broadcaster. His 1987 chronicle of Rick Hansen's wheelchair journey, Man In Motion, reputedly had a record first printing for a B.C. book. In addition to Taylor's books on Wayne Gretzky, entitled Gretzky:The Authorized Pictorial Biography with Wayne Gretzky, and B.C. Lions` Jim Young, entitled Dirty Thirty. Taylor is credited with the re-write of a Soviet journalist's biography of Igor Larionov. In 2004, he compiled The Best of Jim Coleman: Fifty Years of Canadian Sport from the Man Who Saw it All. A member of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame, Taylor was awarded a lifetime achievement award by Sports Media Canada in 2000. He began his writing career as part-time high school sports reporter, drank beer from the Stanley Cup, saw Paul Henderson score "The Goal" in 1972, predicted rookie placekicker Lui Passaglia wouldn`t last with the BC Lions more than one season and wrote more than 8,000 newspaper columns. He recalls his half-century as a sports writer in Hello, Sweetheart? Gimme Rewrite!

Jim Taylor's profile page

And to Think I Got In Free! Highlights From Fifty Years on the Sports Beat

Jim Taylor began working at Victoria’s Daily Colonist in 1954, eventually becoming one of Canada’s best-loved sports writers and broadcasters. This book presents a collection of articles written while he was a sports columnist for The Calgary Sun, The Province and the Vancouver Sun. The author shares his personal experiences while reporting on sports events and personalities. The book is divided into chapters that convey how different sports have evolved and how the public has viewed sports over time. Taylor captivates his readers with his sardonic wit, as well as his genuine interest in the human side of sports. He shares stories of the courage and determination that he witnessed in so many athletes.

Taylor also wrote Gretzky, From the Backyard Rink to the Stanley Cup.